I've been with mental health services now for five years, hospital, etc.
I'm about to discharge myself from the community people because they are DOING MY HEAD IN. Long story, but it isn't me being paranoid or anything, they are just cancelling so many appointments, not passing messages on and so on that I'm better off with my GP.
I have come to realise that I am kind of traumatised by having been mental, iyswim. I'm scared of police cars, I have flashbacks to hospital and so on. I'm also still very anxious and not as stable as I would like (although apparently this is all my fault and if only I would stop doing my degree and spend more time hoovering instead of expecting my husband to to almost as much as me I would be well - another reason why I am binning the community nurses)
SO, if medication isn't going to work (I am on meds, but every time I see a doctor they say they will change them and give me a list to think about, then next time I see another doctor with a completely different set of options) and the community team are being twattish, I am left with sorting stuff out myself.
I'm thinking CBT. I've tried it five times now, in bursts over the last 12 years, and it has never worked, and always been really patronising, but maybe this time?
I did try a support group, but it was only me and one other person turned up. She had an awful like and was a bit depressed about it, which was fair enough tbh, so I felt like a fool with my brilliant life and my severe mental illness. But maybe there is a better one? It would need to be one where we could talk using long words and so on - I'm not doing hospital again.