Amid the bills and junk advertising that seem to pass for mail these days, comes an envelope from one of the GPs at my local health centre inviting me to take part in a ‘Study of Integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for depression’ (CBT), being carried out by a number of universities, including Bristol. It’s not a personal letter, more a generic, stock letter with my name and address added, but it does seem interesting. The universities, in partnership with my GP surgery (it says here), are looking at a new way of delivering CBT and they have asked if I will help. Of course, I will.
Once again, I am showing what a wonderful human being I am. Not only do I work in a food bank and visit a lovely guy in a care home every week, I am going to be a guinea pig on behalf of people I will never meet in order to help them recover from depression. It shows no such thing, but nonetheless I do feel morally obligated to help and I’m going to.
Naturally, when the documentation arrived I misread the whole thing. As ever, I only read the bits that seemed interesting and ignored the rest and concluded that, somewhat selfishly, that I was being offered treatment for my own ongoing life with depression. I’ve had CBT a couple of times before and, frankly, it didn’t make much of an impact and I’m not confident it would work any better if there was a next time, but it turns out there isn’t a next time.
And anyway, I’ve absolutely given up trying to get meaningful help from the NHS for my depression. I came to the conclusion that I would simply have to live with it and just hope that the drugs – the antidepressant ones, I mean – continue to work. But in saying I’ve decided to get involved with the study in order to help experts come up with better forms of treatment, I’m far from confident that the NHS, which is currently on its knees, will have the resources to implement them. My experience is that mental health is a very low, almost non-existent priority for this government and, in all honesty, they don’t care. Billionaire prime minister Rishi Sunak doesn’t have to bother with his local NHS health centre: he uses a private scheme which means he gets appointments and treatment the same day.
So, if you’re suffering from depression and starting to despair about where your help is going to come from, then fear not: I’m riding to your rescue. I’ll let you know how it goes.
