Yesterday I found myself sitting down in a meeting with my manager. The meeting was your typical return to work after a bout of sickness, which, I’ve admittedly had a lot of lately. Honestly, I’m just finding life in general difficult to deal with. I used to refer to it as “coping” but essentially it was a lot of moulding myself into what – to some – would appear to be a hard worker. I would take my work home with me and had no real distinctive line in the sand as to where the work would stop and my life outside of work would begin. I drowned myself in procedures and protocols, filling in spreadsheets from home and making plans based on ideas I had to improve my work area. Honestly, most days I think that this obsession with work is the only thing that got me promoted into the role that I am in, I don’t necessarily feel well-suited to my job but, somehow, this is where I ended up. My point is that I used to have ways to distract myself and recently those ways haven’t been working. I don’t know whether it’s the rapid changes in my medication or just some sort of mental health-related early mid-life crisis. Maybe I’m just exhausted? Exhausted after spending years of searching for answers, begging for a diagnosis so maybe I can finally put a name to what I’m experiencing and receiving nothing. Being told I’m too young or not bad enough yet. When are we going to realise how fucked up it is that there are people literally attempting suicide in a desperate bid for help? Even then we still ignore them. Maybe we’ll pretend to listen to them for a few weeks, stick them with the Community Mental Health Team and hope they just forget about it eventually. Yeah, maybe. Maybe, if they’re really desperate we’ll keep them in the hospital, for a day, a week, a month, who cares? We’ll throw them back out into the real world and disregard any sign they might still need help. I’m just so pissed off with the fact that nothing ever changes.
This brings me back to what I originally opened with, my return to work meeting. My manager sat across from me and listened, making notes, as I gave him the whole spiel about my crazy experience with antidepressants and how, when I told my GP that I was experiencing blackouts with my new medication, they admitted that maaaybe they shouldn’t have made me immediately stop the high dosage of the previous antidepressant I was taking for a sudden switch to a new one (great, right?). He finally came round to the question on the form that I dread the most – especially upon returning from mental health related sickness – “how is the colleague feeling now?” I despise this question because I never know how to answer it. I know the answer to the question but what’s the answer that the person asking me truly cares about? What they want me to say is “I feel great!” because it provides no further action necessary. Ultimately, what this question is for is to identify if the person is ready to come back to work or if they require any additional support. A positive answer provides and straightforward – colleague is back, no problems, back to work – kinda process. For me, it’s difficult for me to be anything but honest so I tell him the truth. I say “I’m feeling exhausted and like nobody is listening to me when I try and ask for help.” Because that’s the honest truth. His response to this was expected. He expresses how unfortunate it is that the Mental Health services in our country are so overstretched and reminds me of the private counseling support that the company is offering me. Initially, I agreed with his sentiment, that people really did want to help, that there’s just a lack of funding supplied to our Mental Health services which then equates to a lack of resources, which really limits the capacity with which those who work within the NHS can help. I really did agree with this at first and still do somewhat. I still want to hope that there are people out there working within the mental health industry that do so because they actually want to make somewhat of a difference, I really do hope for that. But then I think about the real-life experiences with the NHS mental health services that I’ve both lived through and witnessed.
And yes, maybe these things do have an effect on the current treatment of mental health patients within the NHS. But what’s even scarier? That a psychiatrist, who assessed my sister, Karis, shortly before her death, stood up in a Coroners Courtroom, in front of our family as we relived the trauma of her death, and stated that, should the situation repeat itself, he would not change a thing. And guess what? All it take’s is a quick google search for “Goodmayes Hospital suicides” to see that, as per his own words, things have not changed.
I live in guilt every day that I did not do more for Karis, whilst the doctors who – had they cared – could have actively done something to prevent her death, sleep soundly in their beds at night. Only to wake up the next day and shrug off the next patient who needs to be heard and helped. And please don’t take this the wrong way, I know that there are some people out there who work for the NHS with every intention to do what they can to help others, I don’t doubt that these people exist. But where are they in the mental health services? I don’t know, I have yet to meet them. I’m just so tired. So tired of being angry, guilty and desperate for help. I’m so tired of seeing news articles about people who are let down by mental health services. I’m just so tired of mental health issues not being treated seriously. I’m tired of being dismissed until the point of an actual suicide attempt. I’m so tired. I want better. I wish my sister had better, I want better and I want my younger siblings to have better. I’m so so tired.
jadziaedmb 