It’s never nice to see a grown man cry, nor anyone else for that matter. Sometimes, I fear I have actually lost the ability to cry (I haven’t), which is something that makes us human. But in recent days, I have seen people cry and it always affects me.
Earlier on, I met a man I shall refer to as John. John is not a well person. He lives in a place I suspect few of us would want to live in. He is too ill to work, the benefits system is so harsh and frugal that he can’t always afford to eat or keep his bedsitting room warm. And he has serious mental health issues. Sadly for John, there is little out there for him.
He told me that he didn’t have any medication for his very serious medical conditions which include diabetes and psychosis. Without medication for any serious amount of time would see him die. The John I saw today was in some ways barely alive.
I asked him what he got for his psychosis and his answer was simple: drugs. Was there any other form of treatment available? Only if his condition deteriorated still further and if you were unfamiliar with psychosis, you might wonder if it could, would he possibly become eligible for help, if being sectioned under the mental health act could be called help at all. He had been sectioned before and for him it was something temporary. Once the episode was over, he returned to his version of real life. It is life, as Captain Kirk might have said, but not as I know it.
I met a young woman, too – Jane, I shall call her – who was living in emergency accommodation and clearly had issues with drugs and, I could smell, alcohol. But Jane’s biggest issue was mental health, which had taken her from what we might see as a ‘normal’ life to one a distant from what we would describe as normal as you could imagine. However, as her life wasn’t in total meltdown – I think you can guess what’s coming here – there was nothing and no one who could help.
I was not surprised by any of this because this Britain as it is today. I have known for a long time that there is nothing out there for me and I have long feared that there is not much more, if anything at all, for those who are in far worse shape than a mere clinical depressive like me. It’s almost as if the Tory philosophy of self-reliance has been expanded into the NHS mental health services, or rather the lack of them. It’s the pull yourself together school of science, where all you need to do is snap out of it and be happy with what you’ve got, with a dollop of there are many people worse off than you on top.
I get the impression that the government no longer cares, if it ever cared in the first place, about those many people who fall through the wide cracks in mental health services. Sometimes, I find myself acting as counsellor and therapist to people I barely know, with only empathy to help them.
My annual health check is all but over and I’m no worse than last year, which is something. Of all the tests I had, not one involved my mental health; not so much a “how’s your severe clinical depression?” because nurse practitioners are expected to ask questions like that. But then, on the rare occasions I have actually seen a GP who, of course I had never met before, even if I do raise my basket case status, the most I have ever had in reply was a few websites to check. They might as well have prescribed aromatherapy and homeopathy for all the good it did me.
Yet I am sound enough of mind – it’s all relative, I know – to at least ask the question, but the people I saw today don’t have a settled life like I do. When my life wasn’t settled, I could have gone down the same road.
I am absolutely fucking sound mentally compared with John and Jane. And best of all, I have a partner, who is as much a carer as a partner, who keeps me the right side of life. A rock. And my rock is, without doubt, responsible for the fact I am still alive and kicking, albeit with the odd arthritic twinge.
If you’re sick about reading about mental health, it’s probably best to avoid me. Most folk do. But I won’t stop banging on about it because John and Jane deserve better, much better. And in my own little way, so do I. If no one does make a fuss, those oily uncaring bastards who run the country will continue to ignore us. If I can be the itch they can’t scratch, maybe I will get something right.
