There’s a big difference with our NHS when you seek help for physical problems compared with when you are, like me, a bit mental. I’ve got the odd physical health issue at the moment – nothing immediately life-threatening, I should add – and I can’t fault my local health centre and whoever it is that turns round my blood and urine tests, sometimes on the same day. Monitoring my physical health is very good too, with constant reminders over this, that and everything else and drug prescriptions are ready before you can say gout. But the mental health stuff: forget it. If anyone from the government suggests they give equal priority to both physical and mental health you are free to call bullshit.
As my loyal reader is doubtless tired of reading, I’ve given up on getting actual therapy for my depression and anxiety. The access to psychology that worked so well for cricketer Ben Stokes was there because he was wealthy enough to pay for it, courtesy of parasitical, private, run-for-profit private health companies which doesn’t exist for mere riff raff, so we muddle on until we end up at the crematorium. And one reason I have given up is I am so tired.
Take the last two days – please. I’ve had another knockback, this time from a ‘not-for-profit affordable private health care provider’ we belong to – I know: the shame of it – and they can’t help me, so they basically take our money and hand it to someone else. At least it’s a bit socialist but not much use to me. They can’t help with assisting me to get an ADHD referral either, which doesn’t surprise me. I have some very serious advice for anyone who is thinking about suffering from depression, anxiety any other mental health condition: stop thinking and so something else. Snap out of it, remember how lucky you are compared to others, stop wallowing in a pool of self-pity, pull yourself together and everyone gets a bit fed up from time to time. If you tell yourself often enough that mental illness isn’t real, you may one day believe it, even if that means you continue to suffer from things that don’t exist.
I do have some proper advice though, apart from the pretend advice I gave about getting over yourself. If you are close to anyone, especially someone young, you know, like a child, then see your GP and see whether an assessment would be helpful. I grew up in an era when rather than seek solutions to, say, constant fidgeting and, shall we say challenging behaviour, you were told to ‘STOP FIDGETING’ and ‘SHUT UP’, even by well-meaning and otherwise kindly family members. That was my life, although at least my old mum, bless her, took me to a psychiatrist when I went bonkers at the age of 12. For all I know, it may have been a private psychiatrist, possibly paid for by my dad who had long been living in Canada. (I don’t know this, but he could be very generous like that. I can’t see how my mum could have afforded it unless she went without food, which when I was very young she literally did.)
They might have to wait for years to get assessed but it could be life-changing. I don’t really like to think too hard about how different my life could have been had I been assessed for something and not now when I’m almost waiting for God (not that he exists, but you get the drift).
At least the drugs keep me alive and only relatively insane. Hopefully, things can only get better, can’t they? I’m literally tired, exhausted even, of waiting.
