Make an Impact this Mental Health Awareness Month

I live in a rural area and I work as a nurse in a local GP practice. It is very difficult for people with mental health issues to access psychiatric care and psychological support. There is a lack of services available therefore people rely on GP care which isn’t always appropriate. GP’s aren’t that well equipped to care for people with complex mental health disorders. There is a lack of psychiatric services to refer to. It is often up to the patient to find their own psychiatrist for referral. This can be very challenging for people in crisis. I would like to see better psychiatric pathways and networks for GPs to refer to.

I'm getting through reading these messages but only through @Ainjoule @Bowe

Upon reflection -

I only want to comment that Sane forums gave me a Voice.

• Re: Make an Impact this Mental Health Awareness Month

  Hi, and thanks for the invitation to participate.

  I would like to discuss something using a character and keyword. Firstly, I was not born (or do not think so) with a mental health issue, it developed in mid years making it something of an unknown quantity at the start which is where my keyword and character enter the story.

  “Do you know Miss Diagnosis?”

  There are some who consider her a fiend of some sort so fortunately I have not made her acquaintance.

  The Diagnosis family though have quite the reputation for “service to the community.”

  It seems the trick in life at times is in making the acquaintance of people, and I never knew but for a period of some years The Diagnosis family or a member (perhaps not Miss Diagnosis) were who I needed to meet.

  Why?

  My head was shrouded in mist, it had never happened before and not having experience with a misty head one does not know if it is a phenomenon, event or ongoing trauma. In my case it was an ongoing trauma, but with no knowledge of such much time was spent pondering and lurching like a drunkard until a GP eventually referred me to a member of the Diagnosis Family, not Miss Diagnosis fortunately, and that encounter led to discussions, investigation, rumination and eventually medication.

  The odd thing though was how long it took for someone who apparently knows The Diagnosis family, or so it is said, my GP to make appropriate introductions.

  This may seem a simple issue, and I did not want to mark my thoughts as criticism or whinging as since meeting a member of the Diagnosis family there have been many positive outcomes, but to me it was life-altering and perhaps it is or has the propensity to be for others as well if only they knew of The Diagnosis family and how to reach them when and if necessary.

  Regards and thanks once again for the invitation to participate

  Alittleorange

Hello @Ru-bee I don't like the diagnostic method in hospital settings. They isolate you in a cold clinical setting stripped of your supports and you get plunged to the lowest ranking on socioeconomic ladder viewing you as the problem needing to be fixed without taking into account the broader circumstances that brought you there.

The treatment has to change.

It must embrace the persons friends, family and circumstances to arrive at an assessment of what is really going on instead of using a medical algorithm or tick the box approach to discern a diagnosis.

When I wound up in hospital I lost everything friends, the little family I had - the lot.

I was faced with a registrar who was struggling to finalise his studies, working late nights and hating everything about his job at the hospital. He used to abuse patients. I was misdiagnosed by him and loaded up with a large non quantifiable amount of medications to make 'psychiatric problems' go away.

They never did. I just elected to stop talking about it because I knew he would continue drugging me.

Years later the truth came out after what happened to me it was medical malpractice and misdiagnosis. The registrar had no worldly education just a middle class hegemonic set of beliefs and experiences with a more fortunate set of personal circumstances as a budding doctor.

I think these registrars either need to be supervised by more skilled psychiatrists or have a treatment protocol that makes it binding on the friends and relatives to show up and protect the rights of an individual against medical culpability. If you ever read the book Hospitals and Health which was written by a psychiatrist medical errors occur every 5 minutes in a hospital.

These young doctors are spared of experiences that fall outside their purview and therefore they pathologise everything a patient says.

It should be a crime for the patients friends and family failing to show a duty of care to a patient in their most vulnerable time of need.

You don't sit a patient in a cold room, pouring mind altering drugs into their throat while Rome is burning.

What's the one improvement you'd like to see in the mental health system to make the experience better?

I guess i'm luckier than a lot of people here in that i've never needed to go to a hospital for a mental health issue, other than a psychologist appointment.

I was put on a mental health care plan earlier this year by my GP and my 10 visits barely lasted six months, and that was intentionally spacing them out. It was so little help that I sought out support groups like here, which has been incredibly helpful to me. If I only visited here for an hour once a month, then I doubt I'd get much benefit from that either.

Until I found support here my mental health was getting progressively worse. The psychology visits weren't helping but I only had a few of the 10 visits left and anywhere else was just too expensive. The gap fee at my subsidised visits even went up by 65% during my 10 visits so how was I going to afford anything else without being employed?!

Even local support groups seem to be struggling to stay feasible now as even in my year or so experience with them, I've seen many struggling to keep running. There is little to no funding for them anymore so people run them just out of their own dedication and generosity. I even started my on support group this year and found it difficult even just finding a place to hold the meetings, everywhere wants some payment... even local community/neighbourhood centres! We were just very fortunate that one of the local private hospitals were willing to let us use one of their rooms for free. Without them we would have struggled to run the group unless we found someone else equally generous.

Speaking to other, far more experienced support group leaders, they told me how they used to get funding for holding awareness events, but there's very little funding for that anymore so it rarely happens. Especially to region areas where travel costs, and even accommodation if it's far enough, just make them unaffordable for most people now.

So i think there really needs to be a focus on giving people the support they desperately need before they find themselves reaching a point where they are suffering so badly that they need to seek far more urgent and serious care. Where a lot of them seem to have stories like members have shared here of the many issues even when this point is reached. Stories that are similar to what my sister has shared with me about here own mental health battles.

Thank you for taking the time to find out about our experiences.

I would like to see many, many more programs/resources for people to connect to along all stages of their mental health journey - that are free and accessible. It takes so long to get into programs, get appointments, find relevant resources, etc. I would like to see an extensive 'register' of all these places developed that a person can access to find what they need. Currently, there is very little power or voice given to the 'client/patient' and this needs to change. Having a place 'we' can access to find what best suits us would be very valuable and personally empowering.

I like seeing you @Zoe7 @Ru-bee @MJG017 @Former-Member @Alittleorange

This is my complaint and it's about carers and support workers. I just saw my ( over 20 years younger ) support worker off.

I am tired of getting very young carers who are checking their phones.

Get paid when not turning up

It feels like there has to be more rigid rules around going to help someone out.

Also, I went to the supermarket and saw a carer helping someone load groceries into the carers car while casually chatting to his friend on the mobile.

Iv just sacked my support worker but not told support coordinator why as I'v got enough in my plate and don't want her to lose her job but she was constantly on the phone checking what's app...etc. in about a month I'll tell my support coordinator but not right now.

The support coordinator is amazing but her support workers aren't. Iv hot a new one - a new support worker now.

@PeppyPatti I haven't had much experience with support workers but the one you had was incredibly rude and unprofessional. If the support coordinator keeps arranging workers like that, then maybe it's time to get a new coordinator. I know it's all stressful for you, but you deserve a competent support worker to, well, support you. When you so decide to have a chat to your coordinator about it, maybe tell how it's an ongoing issue and can she find someone more professional. Maybe the care provider company is the thing that needs changing.

@PeppyPatti this very thing happened to a facebook friend of mine in the LBTQIA+ community living with MI in a small country town.

He had a carer that was constantly checking her phone. He's not the kind of person to sack someone but when you are relying on someone for carer support you either do the job or you don't! ❤️

He was faced with a very difficult decision of having to speak up which is something he's never been good at and in the end he brought it up with his support co-ordinator and they were able to get someone else more suitable.

He was so glad he got someone he was more compatible with. He was an older gent who treated him well and had the correct level of personal engagement.

I think your issue could possibly then be a more widespread than you think. I also believe theres a lot of ageism and I don't think the younger generation want to work.

She may not be suitable for being a carer, her heart is not obviously in it. Hopefully she can get the type of job that is better in line with where she wants to be.

I'm sorry you are being placed in this position. Maybe if you get on ok with your co-ordinator they can possibly shift workers around maybe for you?