So, I just watched Channel 4s 999 Whats your Emergency? : Mental Health, and from personal experience I can 100% related to the cases documented. If you are lucky enough to be found in time after your suicide attempt or self harming spree sure the ambulance will get you to the hospital, but what happens then? Shit all thats what (in terms of Psychiatric input), and most ambulance drivers do not have as much patience as those featured on tonights documentary. As one of the paramedics featured so rightly said - they are not trained to deal with Mental Health patients at all. If you have been on a cutting spree and sliced yourself to ribbons with a razor blade the hospital will stitch you up, treat you as a nuisance, make you wait to see the Psychiatric Assessment team, (up to 10 hours later as mentioned), who will then send you home - even though home may be miles away and you have no transport. (Yes I do know this from personal experience.) In a worse case scenario when you have taken an overdose (which, when you do so the first few times, you never take enough to kill yourself because you dont know what amounts are toxic) you are taken to hospital, made to drink some charcoal, made to wait hours on end again while being treated coldly and disdainfully, and then sent home after your Psychiatric Assessment. But when you go for the BIGGY - when you have done your research and you know just what amounts of which medications to take in combination so that you really are in huge danger of losing your life - do you get treated any better? No you darn well dont!! On more than one occasion (and as recently as less than 2 years ago) I have taken lethal overdoses. I am not going to fault the staff on the Medical Assessment Unit or Intensive Care because I am still alive now. I was rushed in (most recently) and constantly monitored, attached to drips and antidote fluids and wired up to every possible monitor. In addition blood pressure and blood samples were taken every hour along with torches being shone in my eyes etc etc - they did their job professionally but coldly. I said I wouldnt fault them but in all honesty they made me feel like a time waster - again the problem of not being taught how to deal with Mental Health patients. Sure I was a pain the ass - out of my head on an overdose, pulling out the drips and detaching the monitors and trying to run off - to the extent that they had to get a security guard to make sure I stayed put. I wasnt being detained on psychiatric grounds though - not on your nelly!! On the medical grounds that I could have a heart attack, fall into a coma or have respiratory or organ failure. So my life was in danger - damn right it was. Now I have said the staff were not happy with me - but heres what REALLY made their blood boil - after days of this intensive nursing and when I was finally out of danger the Psychiatric Team assessed me as fit to go home!! No Section. No observation. Just sod off home after all the medics had done to keep me alive. Home happened to be 11 miles away and I had neither my purse, my mobile, or my shoes!! (and I would be unsupervised when I got there). Within 48 hours I was back - another overdose. After miraculously pulling through again the Psychiatric Team once more sent me on my merry way. The system is failing those in desperate need such as the people featured in tonights documentary. 14 people a day commit suicide in the UK - and 90% of those have an existing Mental Health condition. Beds in psychiatric wards have been cut by nearly 2000 since the ConDemns came to power. I think the word I am looking for is Scandalous and that I have said more than enough. I just wanted to share my first hand knowledge of how harsh and uncaring the Mental Health system has become.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 01:50:17 +0000
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