"It's pretty grim. Most people supporting a family member or friend with a mental health issue are stretched to the limit and are often seeking mental health support themselves for the stress of dealing with their loved one. To be told you are not doing enough is a smack in the chops with a wet fish. This sort of scapegoating is pretty despicable, and of course leads to further cuts in services. If you can blame friends and family, you can cut services further.
It's pretty awful. I'm sorry you are suffering, pig. I just hate that at the moment the responsibility for mental health is being taken away from the individual and formal health services and dumped at the door of family and friends who are not in a position to provide 24 hour care and counselling services. We do what we can. But it has to be in line with formal care and a level of personal responsibility, not instead of it. "
Littleoldladywho, thanks for your reply, I have copy-pasted the first two thirds of your post. Firstly I wanted to say I don't think this should be dictated in terms of blame, I don't think that's helpful. I haven't said anything about scapegoating family or friends.
The other thing, unpalatable though it is, is that it's simply not true to say everyone has a supportive family who does all they can.
I'm okay and know I can manage to ride out my current shaky spell alone, but when I was really sick years ago my parent didn't call me for weeks at a time. They didn't write either. Nor did my siblings. I was probably pretty awful to listen to on the phone, granted. We don't live in the same place so it wasn't as though I was inflicting my physical presence one anyone. I asked for a birthday card, which was ignored.
Part of the problem was difficulty in the parent child relationship, and we have somewhat resolved things now.
I also don't have a lot of time for when people start talking about how you have to take responsibility for your mental illness. It's often a disguised way of saying "I don't know how to respond to you, but I'm pissed off and fed up and want you to go away".
I'm lucky that I more or less CAN sort myself out now even though i don't feel brilliant. When I had an acute MH crisis several years ago, I was so terrified and chaotic and on the edge of disaster, but again luckily I was able to solve it by having money to go to a private psychiatrist and get medication. I'm just lucky that when I was really ill I had that money - I don't have it now, but what I do have is the experience of having survived it, so I feel I can again if it ever gets that bad again. If that makes sense.
But what about people who are in a really bad way, with no options to pay to go to a doctor? Or someone trying medication and nothing is helping? I feel it is very unfair to level blame and say they are not taking responsibility for themselves.
Someone who 100% genuinely believes they would be better off dead is not going to be making balanced choices. Someone psychotic isn't able to either.
People can be taking medication, going to therapy and still not getting better and be accused of not taking responsibility. Brilliant way to shut down conversation and shame someone for being honest in saying that unfortunately they still feel like shit. We wouldn't accuse a cancer patient of not taking responsibility if the chemotherapy isn't working.
I'm sorry that you feel how you do over this, I'm guessing you are at the sharp end of caring for somebody with serious mental health issues.
Thank you to everyone who is putting forward their thoughts on this. It's not easy for anyone concerned/