I may be depressed but I am the SAME PERSON

I have had a really bad week, and its been made worse by the fact that a number of people have "unfriended" me on facebook after I made a status update openly talking about my experience with seeing the psychiatrist and about how at that moment in time I was feeling very suicidal.


What I don't understand is the way that some people treat you very differently before and after knowing you have mental health problems or are suicidal.


I am the same person, I am the girl you met at the party, the girl you played football with, the girl you know through your friend, the girl you worked with and the girl you went to school with. I am still her, I have always been her and I always will be her.


Yes I'm evolving as a person but everyone is, so why should it make any difference now that you know a tiny bit more about my medical history. For the record I've also had my tonsils out and I'm also having an echocardiogram soon if that makes any difference to your feelings on me as a person. No? Didn't think so, so why does it matter that I'm clinically depressed?! 


Also it's not like I've become depressed over night, the majority of people I know I have met, or at least got to know a lot better since I've been on antidepressants. And for long periods before I was prescribed any kind of medication I was experiencing many of the same symptoms that I experience now, so chances are most people I know have not known me when I have not been unwell.


The thing that I don't like is that sometimes I feel that I can't be the open honest person that I am, because of how other people will react. I hate altering myself because of other people. I will dress how I want. I will say what I think. And I WILL talk about my depression, because I'm not ashamed, and it shouldn't change what you think of me. 


(Also I would like to say that I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful kind words that I have received over the last few days. I have some truly amazing people in my life, that I feel most of the time I do not deserve and even though I say this you do not give up on me. I am, although I frequently cannot see it, extremely blessed.) 

The NHS is there to make me better right?

I’ve had a pretty darn rough couple of weeks and I thought I’d talk about what I’d been through.

I was sent to an emergency assessment with a community psychiatric nurse because the counsellor at my university service (I’m taking some time out of my studies and I was given special funding to have six sessions whilst technically not a student) was really worried about me with regards to thoughts of self harm and suicide.I didn’t feel that the assessment was a very good experience, you sit a suicidal person down and ask them to go talk through everything that makes them feel bad and then just send them out into the world again. Also I was accused of finding the proceedings “boring” because I was slouching in my chair and not wanting to make eye contact, in actual fact I just find any form of talking therapy both physically and emotionally draining.   

I was told I would hear in 1-2 weeks what they decided so I went on as normally as I could given that I was in the middle of one of the worst depressive episodes of my life.

So a couple of Fridays ago, just over a week later, I receive the letter from the nurse, I was already in a pretty bad place because I was post night out and nights out are never very good for me because it’s a time at which I feel most inferior to my peers and especially to my close friends. Also this particular night a friend of mine had said something truly awful to me when I was in a really bad state.

I open the letter and I’m told that after a meeting with the rest of the team they have decided that “We do not think that at this time we have anything to offer you” and that should my “symptoms become worse” they would be happy to reassess me. Needless to say it wasn’t what I need to hear, it just made me feel that there really wasn’t any point in living any more, if a service that was meant to be keeping me alive was turning me away when I was, at some points, really battling incredibly hard not to step out in front of a car I really had no idea how I was going to be worse without actually doing something serious to myself. I think this way of talking to severely depressed people is at best irresponsible and at worse downright dangerous.

So I spiralled into a really bad place, I so wanted to be dead, I was having near constant visions of serious self harm, and was just so, so scared of what I might do to myself. I didn’t want to go into the kitchen because there were sharp things and hot things there and I didn’t want to leave the house because of the traffic, so I didn’t. I pretty much stayed in my room for 3 days, I cancelled all of my plans that meant leaving the house and I needed my housemate to prepare food for me.

Fortunately I had my final session with my counsellor on the Monday morning, however I knew I wouldn’t be able to get there myself, I was lucky enough that my mum was able to take the day off work so she could drive me (no crossing roads needed).

My counsellor was fantastic; she rang the nurse but was told I would have to be reassessed (I think I was unable to adequately articulate my situation for a variety of reasons in my original assessment), and my GP to try and get me an emergency appointment as I was probably the worst I’ve ever been. On getting in touch with my GP she was told that going to A&E would probably be best, and she also explained this to my mum.

My memories of A&E are hazy, however a few things stick in my mind, when I was seen by the doctor I was told there was nothing “medically” wrong with me but there was something psychologically wrong with me. I can only assume that he had meant to say that there was nothing physically wrong with me. But it still smacks of an attitude that I still believe is present amongst those in the general medical profession, that treating mental illness isn’t “proper” medicine.

Also a couple of things that the mental health nurse that I saw said,  firstly that I had been wrongly assessed and that I needed to be seen by a psychiatrist, not a community nurse and that if he had a pound for every time a patient had been assessed by the wrong person and ended up presenting in A&E he would be a rich man. So if it happens so often why isn’t something being done about it?! That’s the problem, those of us that want to fight for better services are those with the least capacity to be able to.

Secondly he also said that he would much rather see me in A&E like I was on that day rather than with a stomach full of paracetamol and that if I ever thought that I needed to be in A&E but didn’t have a way of getting there just to ring 999. This is probably the best thing that could have been said in that situation.

It’s been a week since then and I’m much better, I’m no longer completely scared of myself but I am still in a very bad place, and I’m just grateful for my friends and my parents. I also saw my GP today and she agreed that the letter was extremely badly phrased, and basically had to apologise for what I’d been through.