Tuesday 24 February 2015

'Professional' Input

(Health and Social Care Trust)
     

When I get a letter with this little sign printed on the top I get the heebie-jeebies.  Most often it's been a kind invitation requesting the privilege of using my arm as a pin-cushion, but today it was the kind I dread most - a psychiatrist appointment. 

    
I can't complain; I knew the letter was coming.  I made the appointment on the phone after grudgingly consenting to be re-referred to the mental health team, but now I'm dreading tomorrow at 2:30pm.  Everyone loves a psychiatric assessment...  

I've gotten to know the drill over the years and I know how to answer those couple of inevitable, all-defining questions without dropping myself in it.  


'Do you have any plans to harm yourself?'  
'No.'  If I did have any serious plans I'd have to be pretty stupid to tell you.  

'Do you feel you can keep yourself safe at the moment?' 
'Yes.'  No, I don't want to go to hospital. 

I'm pretty sure I'll leave the appointment feeling dejected and misunderstood, but whether or not I leave with a prescription is less certain.  I haven't been on medication for a year and a half now and although I never vowed to stay off it for life, I have my qualms about anti-depressants.  In the past medication has done me more harm than good.  I'm not saying that I don't believe medication can be helpful, but I've seen the zeal with which doctors are willing to medicate and have watched the deeply distressed become deeply zombified.  I've listened to professionals likening taking your anti-depressants to taking anti-biotics for the flu and have heard others describe them as 'mind numbing drugs' that just mask the problem.  I don't believe either opinion.  I think they're all wrong.  

The first anti-depressant (an SSRI) I tried gave me severe psychotic side-effects: visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, delusions and paranoia.  The second anti-depressant (a NaSSA) did absolutely nothing and nor did the anti-psychotic that was added to try to augment it's effects.  Ironically, it's NaSSAs that I'd be dead set-against.  I was on the second medication for over two and a half years, despite being told that I'd only be on medication for six months to a year.  I don't want to be on medication for life.  If my camhs consultant had had her way I would never have come off medication at all.  After two weeks on a low dose of the SSRI I experienced more of an improvement than I got from the NaSSA in two years.  An SSRI would be a risk, but I've seen a little evidence that it might be a risk worth taking.   

If it were just an anti-depressant that I wanted I'd go to the GP and I'm pretty sure he'd prescribe me anything I wanted, but that's not the point.  I'd like the opinion of someone who knows what they're talking about and who is concerned enough to think about what the best option would be as opposed to just palming me off with the first drug that springs to mind.  If I don't trust the psychiatrist I wouldn't be inclined to take the medication, but then again, would taking an anti-depressant of any kind be better than self-medicating with paracetamol to take the edge off and risking liver damage?  

The real problem is that the professional opinion on the topic seems to be pretty dogmatic.  I want to make an informed decision, but I'm just a depressed person and my opinion therefore invalid.  I'm not hopeful.          

Saturday 21 February 2015

It's Raining

I made this blog with the best intentions to post regularly and keep up to date.  Despite the fact that I always intended to blog predominantly about mental health, it completely slipped my mind just how debilitating a depressive phase can be.  

It's scary how quickly you can sink back to the lows that you thought you'd hauled yourself out of.  Sure, you feel yourself slipping, but it's just a bad day.  Okay, maybe it's a bad week, well, at a push, a bad month.  Before you know it you've drawn the conclusion that life is definitely not worth it anymore and are planning your escape route.  

Pretending what's going on isn't happening doesn't make it any less real.  Telling yourself you're fine when you're chest feels like an empty, soulless cavity isn't going to make you feel whole again. Your mood is like your internal weather.  How can you live in the midst of a storm?  

'If it's raining it's no good saying it isn't raining. Water is actually falling from the sky.' - Stephen Fry 

When it rains, it rains, but it can't rain forever.  No one can avoid the odd shower of sadness, but even the most depressive downpours will ease off in time.  

Moods, like the weather can be unpredictable, but nothing happens without a reason.  When the clouds are saturated with water vapour it rains, when positive and negative charges meet there's lightning and when air heats up and expands there's thunder.  What goes on in the atmosphere can be a bit of a mystery and so can what's going on in the subconscious.  

I'm beginning to put the pieces together and figure out why things got so bad, but the truth is it would have been so much easier if I'd opened my eyes to the situation before it escalated.  You mightn't be able to control the rain, but if you know the forecast you can at least have your umbrella ready.    

Thursday 5 February 2015

Blog for Mental Health 2015




“I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2015 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.”   



I mightn't have all that much experience with blogging, but I have had much more experience with mental illness than I'd like. 

Everyone has just about enough awareness of mental health to know of it's existence, but having a psychiatric diagnosis remains taboo. 'Let's not talk about that...'  This results in many painfully awkward exchanges, which, inadvertently, make it blatantly obvious that people actually are aware of the exact circumstances they attempt to claim complete oblivion to.  If you ask me, this elephant in the room scenario is the biggest problem in terms of mental health.   

Coming in at a close second to feigned ignorance is actual ignorance, which sometimes verges on arrogance.  With a lack of understanding comes inevitable misconception, which only serves to feed the stigma.  'Just pull yourself together' has become the stereotypical trademark of insensitivity towards mental illness, but there are countless variations of this, some more subtle, that are equally infuriating.  

Generally I don't hold it against someone when they make an unhelpful comment or offer extremely patronising encouragement because, until mental illness struck me, I would probably have been guilty of the same thing.  When professionals get it completely and utterly wrong, however, it can be incredibly demeaning. 

The view that only a certain kind of person is susceptible to mental health issues is wide spread.  In the eyes of the world, the criteria for mental illness are not to do with mood, state-of-mind or self-perception.  Mentally ill people are often thought of as lazy, under-achieving, unintelligent, badly dressed, unhygienic, dislikable or violent, but there aren't any statistics to stand by these speculations.  

In the four years that I've been in contact with mental health professionals, more often than not, I've been left frustrated.  My GP turned red when he was obliged to ask if I'd been having any more of my 'Erm... issues'.  I was told by a therapist that I self-harmed to get attention because people don't self-harm due to anxiety.  (This still bewilders me...)  I was told my depression would alleviate of it's own accord because I'm 'a nice girl'.  Doctor's were reticent to recognise there was a problem, despite me meeting all the diagnostic criteria, because I was well-dressed, polite and could hold a conversation.  When I was transferred to adult services on turning eighteen I met the regional consultant who asked me to tell him my history.  His response to which was: 'What?  Seriously?  But, you're... nice!'  Society has even managed to engrain that mental illness only affects a specific kind of person in people that spend their lives working in mental health care

It seems that no one is immune to the misconceptions flying around about mental illness.  The one thing I'm sure of though, is that no one is immune to mental illness.  In the same way that everyone has a body, everyone has a mind.  We all accept that our bodies have their weak spots; maybe a bad back, a sensitive stomach or a dodgy thyroid, but no one wants to accept that they have emotional weak spots too; maybe a tendency to catastrophise, to become paranoid or to lose control of their temper when things go wrong.  Just like no one is 100% physically healthy, no one is 100% mentally healthy.  If you have a mind, you have the potential to become mentally ill.  We all think that we are somehow personally exempt. 'It'll never happen to me.'  We're all wrong, but some of us will discover that the hard way. 

The stigma surrounding mental health is the biggest barrier to making progress, but that stigma is extremely difficult to shake off.  Every soap opera has an stereotypical psychopathic character and every time an abhorrent crime is reported in the media alongside the facts come conjectures about the culprit's mental health.  How many people form their opinion based on fact rather than fiction? 

Despite having been rather lucky and having always had professionals on board, the best widespread understanding of mental illness that I've come across has been online.  I've learned a lot more from reading blogs in the last couple of months than I've learned from listening to psychiatrists and reading NHS leaflets.  Real, relatable experiences beat clinical jargon.  They say it's all in the mind and it's true.  If people don't understand how their own minds work, what hope is there?  The answer to lies in listening to people, not just reading textbooks.  

The blog for mental health project is new to me, but has been running for a few years now.  There's a long way to go in fighting the stigma surrounding mental health, but I've found blogs to be an amazing resource.  Good blogs can be a little bit difficult to locate, however, but, for me, the Blog for Mental Health Project is has solved that problem!