‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here’ is, according to Google’s AI overview, ‘a famous inscription from the entrance to Hell in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy‘. My loyal reader has probably twigged by now that I am not exactly the most cultured person in the village and will not be surprised to learn that I thought The Divine Comedy was the name of a popular beat combo outfit from Northern Ireland, basically Neil Hannon. However, I am familiar with the ‘Abandon all hope‘ quote and have used it from time-to-time in a semi-humorous context, with places like Ashton Gate, the home of Bristol’s ‘other’ club and other places I would not want to be seen alive in, never mind dead. I am extended its usage to comment on the entry point to the National Health Service’s mental health services, such as they are.
God, if he existed (spoiler alert: he doesn’t), would know how many times I have entered this wacky world and left it, often very quickly, because one does tend to abandon all hope. Now, the time has come to abandon any hope that the NHS has anything to offer me for my ailing mental health, other than drugs.
Thinking and overthinking my mental health has made my mental health much worse. That’s a simple fact. Barring a period in my pre teen years and a positive experience with a ‘Mister’, an actual consultant at Southmead Hospital many decades ago, the treatment I have received has generally failed. And for most of my life, I have been, foolishly I now believe, hoped that treatment, maybe even a cure for my clinical depression was just round the corner. I’ve now reached the stage where I am going to call an end to my seemingly endless and futile search for a cure and seek other solutions, which may involve just muddling through the rest of my life the best way I can.
My latest referral has resulted in them offering me Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), something I reluctantly accepted. I say reluctantly because I have tried it at least twice, maybe three times, before and it didn’t work. At least on the first two occasions all the sessions were face-to-face, which was something. Now, they are going to be over the telephone. At first, I accepted the offer, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought: if I am going to speak to someone, I want to be in the room with them and not behave as if I am dealing with a call centre worker (nothing against call centre workers). Putting these two things together, I called the whole thing off. Someone telling me over a mobile phone how to change the way I think, isn’t going to work when it didn’t work when I was actually in the room with a therapist. I am not going to waste their time, or mine, so they can see, or rather hear, someone who may just benefit from something that doesn’t work for me.
This is not to say that I am going to abandon therapy altogether, but I may have to seriously consider something that appals me and goes against all my principles: seeing a private therapist.
When I was advised to have an ADHD assessment, I didn’t realise that it might take eight years for it (probably by telephone). Desperate to understand whether I did have the condition, I did go private at huge expense, found I had the condition big time, returned to the NHS to discuss treatment and found out that there wasn’t any. Maybe I could contact a private provider and offer a kidney or two in exchange for long term therapy? Money talks for the vultures and parasites in the private health business and as I don’t have much money, maybe offering a few body parts in part exchange could work? Or I could simply stop eating for a few months? Sounds appealing, doesn’t it? It’s either that or I abandon all hope full stop? Maybe I should?
Having referenced the Divine Comedy earlier, perhaps I should ‘take the National Express when (my) life’s in a mess‘? Indeed, Hannon says this immortal line: ‘And everybody sings, ‘Ba-ba-ba-da. We’re going where the air is free. Tomorrow belongs to me.’ Well, yesterday certainly didn’t, but we can but hope. Or maybe not?
