Hi @Maggie15 . Welcome to the forums! 🙂👋
I, too, have been horribly harmed by therapists. And more importantly, I've been failed to be helped by them.
I hate to say it, but in my experiance:
1. Writing to your local MP typically just results in a polite, lip-service reply from their secretary ("on behalf of" the MP themself), perhaps with an assurance that the MP will forward whatever matter you've raised on to the mental health minister.
2. Writing to the mental health minister typically also results in a response written by an underling, which usually reads like a standard scripted acknowledgement letter, which only touches on whatever issue you've raised in the broadest possible terms, and leaves you wondering if anybody actually read your letter, or just enough of it to surmise what general subject it pertained to.
3. I've never tried writing to the GG, as my understanding is that she's just a powerless figurehead who can only do what the PM tells her to do? My understanding is that she's constitutionally obligated to be politically neutral, and is not aloud to influence government policy in any way. But perhaps someone with a better understanding of politics might be able to tell us whether I'm right or wrong about that?
In my experiance, the best way to contribute input that it feels like somebody's actually listening to is to make contributions to the various inquiries that the government and it's various departments run from time-to-time, into mental health and other related matters. It can be a bit hit-and-miss; but I often see that the particular issues I've raised in my submissions are acknowledged in the inquiries' final reports. And I've even been quoted in these reports several times; so somebody's obviously reading my submissions, if they can quote from them! I can't say I've ever gotten that sensation of 'being heard' from any responses to the direct letters I've written to MPs or ministers.
The trouble with those inquiries, unfortunately, is that they usually go on in the shadows, and by the time you learn that there's been an official inquiry that you could've contributed something to, the darn thing has already stopped accepting submissions.
It also means that you can't just raise a problem your passionate about right away; you have to wait around until there's enough public/beaurocratic interest in the issue to set up an inquiry into it, which can take year (or an eternity).
But to me, it feels like you accomplish much more with them then it does when you send random letters off to MPs and ministers.
