Stop blowing smoke up my arse and show me some respect

As a long term user of mental health services in Nottinghamshire nobody needs to tell me how bad mental health services are. A combination of over demand, underfunding and many staff who don’t give a shit I suspect are behind this situation.

It’s because services are so poor that I try my very best to avoid bothering them or using them. But sometimes, like now, things get so bad in my mind that to avoid walking out into the sea I need to ask for some help.

On Monday morning I called and asked to speak to someone from the duty team. I was promised a call back shortly which never happened. At 16:30hr on Monday I called again asking for help from the duty team and was again promised a call back from the duty team that never happened.

On Tuesday at 13:30hr I finally received that call from a member of the duty team but because I was driving at the time she said she would call me back at 16:00hr.

At 16:50hr she finally called back to talk!

I started to explain just how things are at the moment and how, every day I get up, have a shower, make a coffee and sit down and try so hard to not end my life there and then because I just can not live through another day fighting my own mind and the damage that has been done from a lifetime of fear and struggling.

I won’t go into details but this is not about “feeling a bit unhappy”. This about fighting with EVERYTHING I have to not put into action the plan I have had in place for a very long time. This is about convincing myself to hang on for one more day, one more hour or one more minute in the hope that something changes even though I know it won’t.

After talking to the lady from mental health services all she could say was that “I was doing so well getting a shower every morning”

I’m sorry, but on what fucking planet does having a morning shower cancel out wanting to actively end my life? I’ve come to the conclusion that these people are actually trained to ignore the serious problems and blow smoke up peoples arses because by ignoring the big issues they then don’t actually have to do anything.

I think they call it “deniable plausibility” and when the shit hits the fan and people die they can say “we didn’t know there was a problem”

So, am I going to follow this up with a complaint?

If for one second I thought someone at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust would listen to what I have to say and make changes then yes I would. But the reality is absolutely nobody cares and therefore it would be a total waste of my time and only serve to upset me even more.