Have you ever regretted asking for help?

[farawayplanet]

I had a mental breakdown last winter and have been struggling to keep going ever since. I finally phoned the GP the other week and she said she'd refer me for help and changed my medication because my current one just isn't working and I'm terribly depressed and struggling to function. I am middle aged and have kept going for as long as I could and I've always worked.

It took me a lot to ask for help as I generally just try to do stuff myself and take meds. I have a bad trauma history and I'm also autistic and have adhd.

Someone phoned me today about it and she was so abrupt and uncaring. She asked what I was depressed about - I can't just tell them at the drop of a hat as it's very unpleasant and somewhat complicated. She was only really bothered about whether I was going to hurt myself. The whole thing just felt horrible and a tick box exercise.

She also said I'd need to be assessed by them for the adhd because I'd previously gone private. I was assessed by a psychiatrist at PsychiatryUK, who do NHS work all the time. I can't afford to go back there though as I've lost my job.

I feel totally despondent and invalidated by their rejection of my adhd diagnosis and I really regret asking for help. My history is extreme and I think I deserve help, but I can't cope with this. I have no one to talk to about it.

You do deserve help and compassion. I'm sorry you were treated so shoddily - not everyone working in mental health is like that but sadly some do lack compassion and conduct box ticking exercises.

Do you know if this was IAPT? Or a Community Mental Health Team?

We're you able to indicate that you have a history of trauma? (Not details of what, just "trauma"). When you're at the box ticking stage if you can mention that then it should get you in the right pathway for the right support and treatment.

I would hope that once you've made it past the gatekeepers doing initial assessments that you would be able to work with someone who treats you with compassion, consideration and basic humanity.

I am really sorry you've been left feeling like this. I know how hard it is to ask for help and try to navigate this stuff. You do deserve help.

I think it was a community mental health team. My brain wasn't processing much about it and I was just panicking and garbling somewhat. I did say I had a trauma history. It's so difficult dealing with these things because I feel as though people might just think I'm moaning or something.

I have, unfortunately, different circumstances to yours though, it put me off seeking any other help for many years.

I would contact the charity MIND, I’m sure they will be more helpful.

Sometimes, you find compassion where you don’t expect. At my lowest, a pharmacist in Boots was really caring towards me. There are some good people out there.

As to the question in your title, yes I definitely have. If I could go back in time, I'd never involve the NHS in my mental health at all, ever, and would just seek private therapy instead of having any permanent diagnoses on my file that will forever colour all my dealings with the NHS. (I have a bad trauma history that has been brushed under the umbrella of BPS, but it is what it is.)

I suppose my own personal recommendation would be that if you can afford it (or can find ones on a sliding scale you can afford), seek therapy privately. It'll mean you can pick someone you personally get along with, whose approach suits you, and who you won't feel judged by. There are some charities out there, of course, if you can't afford private, but you won't have the option to choose, and might have to wait and have a very limited amount of help (Mind in my area has very long waiting lists, only offers very basic counselling, and for very short periods, for example). You should look for small local charities, too, and not just national ones like Mind. (In comparison, a small local art-based non-profit has provided me with lots of very helpful art therapy).

As to the NHS not recognising what you've been diagnosed with privately... You need to decide if it's something you have the energy to fight for. I've been privately diagnosed with PTSD and a dissociative disorder. The NHS, on the other hand, has seemingly used the very fact that I've sought other diagnoses as grounds to verify my BPD diagnosis. At one point I decided it was more harmful for me psychologically to try to get the NHS to acknowledge anything beyond their own judgement than it was to ignore them, as it wasn't getting me anywhere, and always left me feelign worse. I tried to make peace with them always having a certain idea of me that won't quite match my own, and get along with things the best I can, seeking my own help where I can, separate of them.

Yes OP. In the first ten years or so I had contact with mental health services in the NHS, I was met with nothing but contempt, condescension, scepticism, intransigence, a recurring feeling that the people I was talking to had no understanding whatsoever of the issues I was describing to them, and I was referred for a wholly inappropriate type of therapy that first of all was completely mis-sold to me, then carried out by a therapist that I felt never developed the slightest hint of insight into me as a person at all. Their end of treatment report, which I read, just confirmed for me that they were both hopelessly inept, and completely incapable of assessing me with any sort of accuracy whatsoever.

Latterly, I had one half-hour appointment with someone very senior, a person who had been deliberately made practically impossible to see on a one-to-one basis, who carried out a quick questionnaire, confirmed with me that they viewed things exactly the way I did and always had, was incensed by my account of my treatment by NHS services to that point, and agreed with me a course of treatment that I had been enquiring about endlessly for years with no joy until that point.

In short, having shitty experiences with NHS mental health services is almost a universal experience for service users. I've realised this not just because of my own experience, but because I've spent ten years working with other NHS service users now. The only way to navigate it is to persevere, dig your heels in, don't accept shitty and ineffective Drs and therapy, and demand second, third, and fourth opinions if required.

There's a reason why Mental Health is seen as a black art and the arse-end of medicine by the majority of medical professionals, and I'm really not surprised then that there appear to be so many utterly useless doctors who end up working in that field.