Exhale - anyone find professional help overworked and therefore lacking in the actual help needed?

It sounds like this has been really disheartening for you to find these services lacking in what should be such a crucial element @Former-Member

For me, I do think that it's totally due the pressure that these practitioners are placed under and the burnout that can subsequently arise. It's hard to find the energy to form that human connection when you're overworked and stretched thin. Creates a culture of just getting people in and out, without the additional care and connection as you've noted

@Former-Member @Ru-bee

I haven't had that much to do with professional mental health services, but quite a bit of the health system in general the past 2 years from GPs to a range of specialists. A GP appointment is now about 6 or 7 minutes. It was 20-25 when I started seeing a GP in 2017. My specialist appoints are often a hour or more late, and you're in and out as quickly as possible. The whole system seems to be so overwhelmed and underfunded that it feels like more of a production line, than a chance to sit down and talk to someone about your health concerns. I go in, get the important information I want/need and then i'm out. Some of them like the Oncologist, I do get a little bit of time to talk about how i'm going, but most of the appointment is with a junior or student to do most of the appointment.

Absolutely that is my conclusion and what I try to tell myself when I'm met with such brutality. It's fatigue, burn out, an overloaded system.

It's just so sad that professions that are created to help people can no longer do the essential services of human interacting because they're so overwhelmed.

I guess it must be hard on them too.

@MJG017 @Ru-bee

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@Former-Member wrote:

I guess it must be hard on them too.

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@Former-MemberNo doubt. I'm sure they all went into the profession to help people, and they do, but they see the system from the inside and must be so frustrated with it. I'd love to hear from one of them about what it's like working in that system.

Hi @Former-Member

I hear you. I agree with the others @MJG017 and @Ru-bee that the system itself is the problem, but I also think there is another element of vulnerability that comes with being sick, injured.

When someone is well, they can be healthily brusque, they can move forwards, choose where to go, how to go, they have the identity of profession, their company, their allocated time, all these things which are everyday frameworks or layers, protective or restrictive, that people operate in usually without too much thought. Their internal self isn't exposed. They may get annoyed, or hurt feelings in their job, but when someone is unwell, they are bare, stripped of their former buffers, given a different role within a system and shipped through it to be assessed, measured and allocated to the new section of "patient". It can feel dehumanising. But that's just my take as someone who has been through the health system.

I do think that if you had good intentions in your practice, that is what really counts. No-one is going to be perfect in an imperfect system. But the longer wait times and shorter appointments really reduce the healing professions.

Talking about it is really healthy. Thanks for raising this discussion! It can only bring more compassion.