My Mental Health Experience

In 2009 I was assessed by the community centre mental health team due to suicidal thoughts. Whilst I had suffered short bouts of depression in the past but nothing like this. Later that week I tried to commit suicide and ended up in Swanson Centre for five days. I felt angry, lost and confused. No one explained how the centre ran or what options I had available to me. I dont remember much of this time as I was heavily sedated. When I was discharged the only follow up care was a call 2 days after discharge to see how I was coping. I had not been offered any advise on services available to me. Two weeks later I wound up in emergency and I did meet a nice gentleman who did arrange for my local community centre to follow up and engage with me on a regular basis. I would see a mental health nurse twice a week. I felt that these sessions did not help me to understand my suicidal thoughts or help me to get to the source of what was driving these thoughts. In one of the sessions i was given a list of symptoms and asked to identify if they applied to me such as hopelessness, suicidal ideation etc. I identified 4 or 5 of these as being relevant to me at that point in time. Boy did that comeback to bite me on the are. More about that later. Needless to say after 3 weeks I again tried to commit suicide. I had been drinking to blackout point as I dont remember being tackled by police and mental health worker. I just woke up in Emergency in handcuffs guarded by police. I spent the night in Emergency before being transferred to Swanson Centre again. I was now frightened of my own thoughts and actions and begged the psychiatrist that I needed help in trying to sort through my chaotic thoughts and actions. He simply said the crisis has past you are being discharged. I begged him to help me to no avail. That weekend I made the decision that I would admit myself to a private psychiatric facility for help with both my alcohol abuse and mental distress. When I advised my mental health nurse of this the local community health centre called an emergency meeting with my mother and daughters who were 15 and 19 at the time. Well this is where the are biting comes into play. The lead psychiatrist of the team started to disclose in front of my kids about my past traumas with there dad before I abruptly told him to shut up. Then he went on to talk about how I had made a wrong choice the night I was raped at 15. His words were you "chose" path b instead of path a. Then he went onto advise my mum that putting me in a private facility was the worse thing they could do as I had a borderline personality disorder and they shouldn't feed into it. By the way I had only ever met with him once before and that was on my first admission to Swanson Centre. This come from me identifying those 4 or 5 statements that I thought were relevant to how I was feeling a month earlier. As a team they advised that I should participate in a DBT program but they could not state when the next group would start. In the mean time they advised my family not to buy into my chaos. My mother had a meeting with them later that week after reading the information they had given her and she disputed the diagnosis saying that I did not meet those characteristics. I was heavily involved in the community, had strong relationships with work colleagues and friends if more than 15 years. They did not take into account what she had to say and simply dismissed her. My oldest daughter became gravely ill 2 weeks later and was able to focus on meeting her needs whilst she was hospitalised for a month. After her release I wrote my will and once again wound up in hospital and my family were advised that I probably wouldn't make it through the night. I was placed on life support. Fortunately I did make a full recovery. On the Monday a day after coming of life support I spoke to a psychiatrist who I had not met before at the hospital. He held me accountable for some of my actions, but for the first time someone actually listened to me. I felt like I had been heard. He transferred me to Swanson Centre that night. The lead psychiatrist released me the following morning a mere 15 hours after being transferred. II was just dismissed as attention seeking. Lucky for me my mum researched the psychiatrist I had spoken to that had actually listened to me and discovered he also had a private practice and he specialised in people with past traumas and suicide attempts. Early 2010 I began to see this psychiatrist privately. I started the DBT program as had been planned and my psychiatrist supported this. This can be a very dangerous program. It is full of people with horrific traumas and was very triggering. It did lead to several more suicide attempts but because I was seeing my psychiatrist privately he would take over my care when admitted to hospital as he was a consultant at the hospital. I was no longer being dismissed and instead shown compassion and empathy. I no longer continued care with my local community health centre. I did compete the DBT program but I honestly would not suggest undertaking this program while you are in crisis. It is triggering and some participants are manipulative and severely disturbed by there pasts. To be honest I was glad to get out from under my local community health centre and find private psychiatrist. I was lucky enough to have the funds to afford this and unfortunately that is not the case for the majority of people experiencing mental health issues. After several years of therapy I asked my psychiatrist whether he believed I displayed borderline personality traits given we had been meeting weekly for 2 years and I believed he had been able to observe me at my worst. He did not concur with the diagnosis. I believe that my treatment had been hampered within the public health system because of this rash diagnosis. Fortunately my mental health is now in a much better place. I sill attend therapy every 6 to 8 weeks just to stay on top of things and I have a handle on my alcohol intake thanks to my therapy. Whilst nurses do a great job in making sure your hygiene and medication is taken care off they do not treat the person. In all my admissions and there were many there was only one young male nurse who acknowledged my mental health struggle on the general ward. He would check in on me each day and ask me how I was feeling and when I was struggling he took the time to listen. As for the Swanson Centre all I can say is the majority of staff do not engage with the patients. You can stand at the counter for 20 minutes before anyone even acknowledges you standing there to then say I will find your nurse. So you generally wait another 10 minutes. It leads to patients becoming aggrevated and annoyed at being disrespected. All in all my experience with the public mental health system was a negative one. The only good thing to come out of it was I was lucky enough to meet psychiatrist and received good ongoing therapy. I often believe had I admitted myself to the private psychiatric clinic my mental health journey may have been a much shorter one. All mental health workers need to listen to the patient, show empathy and not judgement when someone is in crisis. I get that it is a stressful environment but patients deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.