Talking of Blue Monday, it’s worth mentioning that I am in the middle of my annual health check. Every year, our local health centre clanks and crashes into action and invites me in to share my blood pressure readings and to provide them with a portion of blood to find out what’s wrong with me this time. It’s not something that I look forward to with any enthusiasm, given that I am always half-expecting them to find something else for me to worry about. We men are notoriously bad at getting ourselves checked out but there’s no escaping my annual check. These days, it’s a matter of getting it out of the way.
Oddly, the one aspect of my health that never seems to be checked is my mental health. No one ever checks on that. Too much cholesterol? Take this. Borderline type two diabetes? Take this? Trouble with gout? Take this? High blood pressure? Take these. “How’s your severe clinical depression with added ADHD?” No, never.
Even after I got my ADHD diagnosis from a parasitic private provider and told my local health centre, there was nothing, except to say that I mustn’t have the medication the parasitic private provider recommended. The latter was for specific medical reasons – it could make my physical health worse – but just a phone call, even a text, to check I hadn’t decided to throw myself under an express train. Well, that just wasn’t going to happen.
I have a theory, which could even be a conspiracy theory, which goes like this. The health centre records know I have been a basket case since the 1960s. I’ve seen countless therapists and once an actual consultant psychiatrist, a Mr no less, and my depression is just about under control thanks to prescription drugs and a monumental effort by myself to just keep going. (Sorry if that comes across like showing off.) So the theory is this: I’m still here, I’ve made it into my geriocracy, I haven’t topped myself and I haven’t been sectioned. I might be ill, but no doctor will end up being pursued through the courts by my devastated family because I’ve done something fatally damaging. And therein lies a simple truth. If you have survived, you don’t need a mental health service that in any event doesn’t really exist.
It seems to be a thing that men are much worse about going to the doctor’s than women. I am no expert on the reasons why but judging from my worldview that appears to be the case. I used to work with a bloke would not go anywhere near a hospital. When I asked him why, he simply replied, “I hate hospitals.” How was I supposed to reply to that? By saying how much I fucking loved them? Or ask him, “Why not? Hospitals are such cheery places to be, apart from all those sick people, obvs.” I don’t like hospitals, or medical centres for that matter, but needs must.
I’d actually welcome some inpatient treatment for the mental part of me. You know, a few days in a padded cell where I could chat cheerfully with a mental health practitioner and be made better. But that’s not an option and it’s never going to be one, either, given the way mental health has become the Cinderella arm of the NHS.
When I see the nurse practitioner – it won’t be a doctor. That would asking way too much – maybe I should ask whether they were going to ask me whether I was still as mad as a box of frogs and if they thought I was, would they been then referring me for treatment? But this would be utterly futile since I know why I don’t have even an occasional mental health check. It’s because the country still doesn’t take it seriously.
“People DO take mental health seriously these days.” “It’s good to talk.” “Depression isn’t the stigma it used to be.” No they don’t, yes it is, yes it is. I thought the steady trickle of famous people opening up on their mental health might bring about a change in attitudes, particularly in government, but it hasn’t. The rich and famous can always afford to buy their own mental health treatment whereas the rest of us can go to hell. You don’t think that when the England cricket team captain was diagnosed with a mental health condition he joined a never-ending waiting list for NHS treatment, do you? I don’t knock people for using their wealth to seek better mental health – I would almost certainly do the same – but the idea rich and famous people coming clean on their issues helps anyone else is a nonsense.
I’m a bit sick in the body, for which I take various medications and a lot sick in the head, for which I take half the level of medications I used to take, as per the health centre’s instructions. But no one asks how your head is. Which is probably just as well since there’s nothing they can do to help you anyway.
