Mental health settings personnel

[Angryresister]

How do women feel about mixed sex facilities, either staff or other patients? From experience it seems that this may add to difficulties in recovery for many women.

Honestly I think it depends on individuals and is very much a damned if they do, Damned if they dont situation. I'm hugely uncomfortable with other women and have never been able to trust them. I struggled to find a male therapist and ended up paying money I cant really afford to go private but there is no way I would have opened up to a woman.

nothing Do you think you have the right to ask for male nurses/ carers/ therapists? How well is this accepted, and your reasons for asking?

I usually ask but they look at me like I have two heads and say they dont have any male practitioners available. Especially if they know that I was sexually abused. I couldnt get any mental health care at all from either Mind or the NHS despite being suicidally depressed and was simply discharged as having declined treatment. I was willing to travel too but apparently there are no male psychologists in the whole of Essex.

The one I see privately actually does work with Mind as well as private practice so they didn't even try to help, just fobbed me off.

If I asked for a woman though, that would be fine and they would bend over backwards to accommodate. Why the double standard? It should be fine to ask for a practitioner of the gender I feel most comfortable with. Instead they just assume that all women must prefer to see a female therapist. I even agreed to try with a woman and made no progress whatsoever, I actually felt worse and would dread sessions.

I am much more stable now that I'm working with someone I actually feel safe with.

I prefer male psychiatrists and therapists. I have seen both sexes but mostly men. My nhs therapist was a male and I have seen more male psychiatrists than women. I think I only had one female psychiatrist long term.

When I’ve been ill the last thing on my mind was the gender of the staff. I had slightly more pressing concerns, like psychosis. But then I’ve never been too concerned about male medical staff, they’ve seen it all before!

Oriflame: I guess this concerns more people who has trauma in the background.

So far, I've never needed inpatient care but if I did, mixed sex would be horrific as adam's apples are a trigger. I have had a male psychologist (he wore turtle necks) and all the psychiatrists I've seen are male. I would prefer a female but whilst my current one makes me very uncomfortable on many levels (telling me I'm beautiful, handshakes which last slightly too long, comments about what happened to me worded very weirdly), he also prescribes sleeping pills and even when other doctors thought I should be sectioned, he was my biggest advocate for remaining at home and as a consultant psychiatrist...he got the final say.

See I could deal with having a female nurse or doctor but a psychologist whom I would have to open up to, I could not cope with a female. I just couldn't do it, I'd be in there forever.