(no subject)
I’m very lucky to have experienced some of the best mental health care the NHS has to offer.
In my decade in London I’ve been bounced back and forth between three or four psychiatrists at Community Mental Health Teams (including one I ended up having to complain about to the GMC) - and that would’ve been more had I not fought that.
Thanks to sitting through at least five separate >6 month waiting lists (one entirely to get a diagnosis I literally already had) I’ve seen 7 different NHS therapists, most over the course of a couple of single year spells. One pair of them were notable in that one was running a therapy group, and claimed the latter give some solo therapy sessions alongside the group (which most didn’t attend - about half the sessions had only two of six, and in the eight months I attended, I don’t know if there were more than two sessions with more than three present), when I saw I have been exceptionally fortunate to be in situations stable enough, and requiring infrequent enough moving, to be able to get to these. To have been a PhD student (though paused my studies for 6 months then a further six to allow for medication changes) giving me the change to actually try and get somewhere without damaging my career too much - although I notably am not in academia now, and to have a job that has let me miss work for therapy sessions with only minimal damage to my career. I’ve had three periods of more than six months of weekly therapy sessions paid for by the tax payer where I’ve sat in a room with someone for hours utterly failing to get anywhere. Bashing my head off a brick wall, two of those with a therapist who I got on extremely well with.
This, you see, makes me vastly more lucky than most who try the NHS mental health system.
In my decade in London I’ve been bounced back and forth between three or four psychiatrists at Community Mental Health Teams (including one I ended up having to complain about to the GMC) - and that would’ve been more had I not fought that.
Thanks to sitting through at least five separate >6 month waiting lists (one entirely to get a diagnosis I literally already had) I’ve seen 7 different NHS therapists, most over the course of a couple of single year spells. One pair of them were notable in that one was running a therapy group, and claimed the latter give some solo therapy sessions alongside the group (which most didn’t attend - about half the sessions had only two of six, and in the eight months I attended, I don’t know if there were more than two sessions with more than three present), when I saw I have been exceptionally fortunate to be in situations stable enough, and requiring infrequent enough moving, to be able to get to these. To have been a PhD student (though paused my studies for 6 months then a further six to allow for medication changes) giving me the change to actually try and get somewhere without damaging my career too much - although I notably am not in academia now, and to have a job that has let me miss work for therapy sessions with only minimal damage to my career. I’ve had three periods of more than six months of weekly therapy sessions paid for by the tax payer where I’ve sat in a room with someone for hours utterly failing to get anywhere. Bashing my head off a brick wall, two of those with a therapist who I got on extremely well with.
This, you see, makes me vastly more lucky than most who try the NHS mental health system.