To think labelling mental unwell patients as chronic cases

[User755]

Is only likely to make them feel hopeless?

Chronic means long term in health care.

As opposed to acute.

I don't know, what ever term we use, means the same thing.

Chronic or long term? Which one is less 'hopeless'? - neither is the answer. The only thing making the patient feel hopeless is that they have a long term illness, not the word used to describe it.

I'm a bit confused.

Are you misunderstanding the use of chronic (long term)
Or are you worried that by telling a person their mental health condition is long term they will think they can't get better ruining morale?

Sadly some patients with mental illness will have a chronic illness ,s some manage their symptoms very well others not so much.

But it is a major problem, that so many patients with mental health problems do not take their condition seriously and stop taking the drugs. Underplaying it is not the way forward

I have chronic mental health issues. Started at 5 now 57x. I’m fine with it.

Shoukd l say long term instead?

I have ‘recurrent depression and anxiety disorder’ ergo it’s chronic.

I have that label and I’m fine with it.

Are you misunderstanding the mean?

I have a chronic mental health condition - depression and anxiety - and my biggest fear is that medical professionals don’t want to see it as chronic. In the past, I have tried several times to come off the antidepressants - because I wanted to believe that I didn’t need them. I wanted to believe that I had gone through some bad years of depression, but I had come out the other side - I was cured, and didn’t need the tablets any more. I had had therapy - group therapy and CBT, and I wanted to believe that I had learned enough to manage any further bouts of depression.

But I was wrong, and I always slid back into depression and anxiety, and nothing I had learned in therapy helped me get out of the blackness. I always ended up back on the tablets - and I realised that my condition was chronic, and that it was better for me to stay on antidepressants permanently, and to keep my mood stable than to live through the deep troughs where I wanted to die.

It scares me that sometimes my GP starts muttering about getting me off the tablets again, because I know how bad things would get for me, and I know that my GP can’t prescribe the combinations of ADs I am on without me seeing a psychiatrist - and the thought of having to wait for an appointment via the NHS before I can get back on the right medication is terrifying.

Words mean something. Changing the word doesn't change the condition. It just means that no one knows what they are talking about.

It is beloved of the insurers - as soon as they can say you have a chronic condition they can stop paying for your treatment.

No. If they're chronic illnesses they should be described as such. Some mental illnesses are for life, and there's no easy way around that either. You have to be realistic about what you're managing with your health.

A friend of mine of twenty years spent 15 of those trying to “get better” and off meds with a lot of acute crises along the way.

In the last five years she’s accepted that the meds save her life and seems much more at ease with how she is and what to do when she feels herself slipping (which is NOT to try to push on through) and she hasn’t had a serious crises.

For her acceptance of the chronic element has been positive.

Exactly what I was trying to say, @museumum - but you said it far more clearly!

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius I didn’t see your post till I wrote mine. You explain well the fear of being reliant on doctors agreeing with what you know is best for you.

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius Your post is fantastic!!! Explains it all.

This is why l won’t move and change my GP. And l found a private pyschiatrist who’s really good who l see sometimes. A wait on the NHS could literally be the difference between life or death.

But some mental illnesses are chronic, even though people can remain stable on medication for many years.

Illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar have no cure (yet) but can be controlled. Bipolar tends to follow cycles of mania-depression so is considered relapsing by nature.

Other illnesses (EUPD, depression, anxiety, PND, drug-induced psychosis, OCD etc) are more likely to respond to specific treatments and once the person recovers they may never have another episode. They’re only considered chronic illnesses when all available treatments have failed and the person continues to suffer acute symptoms.

Unexplained psychosis often gets better on its own, in hospital.

I know one person with MH issues who has really suffered from the idea that all ills have to be curable and if you're on medication or needing care longterm you are simply doing it wrong, or being failed by the system, or not Caring Enough about getting well. Same person has a physical condition and it's a bit the same there.

What makes her feel hopeless is not the knowledge that she will have to take medication and adjust around her condition all her life: it's the fear that people, and medical staff in particular, will resent her for it and try to stop her accessing help. That she herself will start feeling a failure if she can't snap out of her condition. That this knowledge will make her suicidal again.

Other conditions can and are referred to as chronic also.

I have a chronic pain condition.

I struggled with that too at first but at least now I know that it is understood - to an extent anyway by some doctors! - with the word chronic there so I'm not dismissed by any.

I'm in the same situation as you SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius regarding lifelong depression and anxiety. I have come off the medication in the past but always had to go back on it and when my GP retired he made sure that it clearly says in my notes that I will need to stay on antidepressants for life. This has been understood and respected by subsequent GPs. I was first hospitalised because of my mental health 50 years ago at the age of 16, so my illness can certainly be described as chronic.