My bad experience with the Mental Health team.

This is a bit long-winded, but this is what happened to me. This was three years ago, in a different part of the country to where I live now.

I had been in a bad way for a while, in a (sexually and mentally) abusive relationship and already suffering from previous traumas. My then-husband pushed me to the edge and I really couldn't take anymore. I pretended I had a bad cold, so I could sleep on the sofa downstairs and take an overdose - I wanted it to look like an accident for my son, I couldn't bear him thinking I had left him.

I took a concoction of medications, drank a large amount of whisky and passed out. When I woke up I was ill, exhausted, confused and angry I had failed at my suicide attempt. Instead of going to work, I travelled across two counties on three buses to get to the nearest psychaiatric hospital. I told them what I had done, how bad I was and that I needed hospitalised. They told me I would have to go to an institution nearer my home and so I left and headed there. Two buses later, and I repeated the whole story again, to be told they couldn't help me, I should go to my local emergency department. Another two buses, and I went through it all again, to be told I needed to see someone in my own area. They put me in an ambulance and sent me to the local walk-in centre, where they had a mental health unit.

The doctor at the mental health unit said taking me into hospital was not the solution to my problems. I explained what had pushed me to this point, and she then (this is the point I really fell apart) made me ring my husband to come down to the hospital. He was absolutely livid with me. No sympathy at all.

Anyway, the doctor called him in with me, and I just sat there, shaking and sobbing. He put on a big smile and told me I was an attention seeker, there was nothing wrong with me. Despite the obvious state of me, and the amount I had gone through that day (not mentioning the suicide attempt), she sent me home with him.

Two days later I got a call from the Mental Health team, advising they were coming out to see me. They came to my home, interrogated me and made me feel like I had done something wrong. They came several times, until my husband left me some months later, and then I pretended everything was absolutely fine as he was gone, and signed myself off their services.

I have never felt so alone and so let down as I did that first day.

Luckily, my current GP, CPN and hopefully my new psych, have been a lot more understanding and supportive, and I am striving hard to make sure I never have to be in that dark place again.

It's no wonder we feel as if there is something really WRONG with us, when we get treated in this way. Just because you can't see our illness, doesn't make it any less traumatic or dangerous than any other serious medical condition.

Rebecca xx

Hi Rebecca,

What you have been through is truly awful. Yet some how you managed to come thorugh it and are now receiving the much deserved and needed support that should have been given three years ago. You are perhaps stronger than you know.

It is people like you who give me hope to contiue with my therapy. I have not had to fight to get it like yourself and others have.

So thank you for sharing your experience.