Do you remember the days when you could simply arrive at a GP surgery and get an appointment to see a doctor? Probably because I am so old, I recall doing exactly that. The family surgery was on Wick Road in Brislington, located in the downstairs section of a large house. Two doctors ran the practice. No one else worked there. No receptionist/gatekeeper, no practice manager, no nurse practitioners, no one else. You arrived at the surgery, sat down and worked out who was in front of you in the queue. Then either Dr Carmichael or Dr Mills would call you in.
There are obvious advantages to today’s Behemoth health centres who can do a lot of preventative work, flu jabs and all kinds of other stuff that would otherwise have required a lengthy trip to hospital or a special clinic (no, not THAT kind of special clinic). However, if you actually want to see a GP, good luck with that one.
My surgery runs on the basis that you ring up, the gatekeeper/receptionist takes your details and if you are lucky a GP or nurse practitioner rings you back sometime later on. They then decide whether you are worthy of seeing a GP of their choosing, perhaps in a few weeks if you are lucky. This is no good to me because my condition, which is a heady mix of mental health issues, is complex and I would prefer – no, I actually need – to see a GP who has seen me before and knows a bit about me. Going through 50 glorious years of mental ill health with another locum doctor is not a good experience. Anyway, this week, I found myself even lower down the NHS food chain, so to speak.
Earlier in the week, I submitted a renewal prescription for my cocktail of drugs that keep me going mentally and physically and I got a call back from the surgery, or so I thought. I was asked how I was feeling and whether anything had changed and – by the way – I was on a heavy dose of anti-depressive medication and did I want to reduce the prescription? It was a pharmacist.
Physically, I replied without any kind of health teaching, I appeared to be okay. Mentally, the last thing I wanted was a reduction in my medication. Actually, I wanted more and I wanted, needed, actually, more therapy. “You will need to speak to a GP about that,” said the pharmacist. “So, what on earth was the fucking point of you calling me, this morning? You’ve asked me to self-diagnose and when I said, yes there was something I’d like there was nothing you could do about it,” I didn’t reply. He seemed a nice guy who was going through the motions as best he could. And that was as far as I got.
I concluded some time ago that for all the fine words of politicians and medical professionals, and despite the illusion widely peddled that mental health was being taken more seriously, the reality was that nothing had changed. Save a famous person bravely going public on their struggles and lots of weasel words from everyone else in society, mental health remains the Cinderella service of the NHS. My experience, I have to tell you, and that of the fellow sufferers in my social group, is that things are getting much worse. Barring a complete meltdown – and (here I go again) I recommend you are not working for the British Red Cross if you are likely to suffer from one of those – it’s an endless waiting list for therapy. Just hope the drugs do work.
I’d absolutely love to see a GP and gain access not just to a few weeks of counselling but serious therapy that the better off can always buy privately, but it’s not there for the lower orders. We just have to grin and bear it. We are not all Ant and Dec (and, by the way, good luck to whichever of them had a bit of a breakdown the other year: I don’t begrudge him the treatment he was fortunate enough to obtain because he was rich. I am not that childish nor petty).
It’s not just the depression and anxiety that kills you, it’s the near certain knowledge that it will never go away and it’s the constant reminder that huge parts of your life have been at best hindered by poor mental health and at worst utterly ruined. And I think about this every single day. Being able to do nothing about it, short of taking drugs and getting an occasional phone call from a pharmacist, there’s nothing even vaguely like a cure to look forward to. Even my good days are not as good as they used to be.
