World Mental Health Day 2022

If you know me, you will know that there’s absolutely no chance that I could pass up sharing some of my thoughts on World Mental Health Day, especially in the current climate. Despite having received my referral for Psychological Therapies back in July with the wait for my initial assessment not being until March 2023, I started private therapy this year, so this seems like a good topic for today.

When I was diagnosed with Bipolar in 2018, things started to make a little bit more sense. I could recognise traits within myself after lots of research and I started some group therapy up in Durham, something which for someone like myself, I found exceptionally difficult, socially overwhelming, and of very little help. I tried to manage on just medication whilst I finished my second and third year at university which was much harder than I initially anticipated. This meant my mum had to go on a career break from work to help me cope, which eventually led to her leaving her profession in the NHS to care for me. After joining bipolar specific and general mental health support groups in recent years, I have come to realise just how many people have had to try to cope on just medication due to there not being enough accessible mental health care, as well as the extent of sacrifices families and individuals have to make in order to aid their own mental health journey.

As such, my mum leaving her job meant that my family were without a second income, the purse-strings had to be readjusted, tightened and adapted in order for us to deal with this as a family. Despite all this, because my address was registered up in Durham and my mum lived in Huddersfield, she wasn’t eligible for Carers' Allowance as we were having to handle my issues over distance with her visiting me in Durham, or me travelling back home to be ‘put back together’ in-between episodes.

This was our first real exposure to how financially difficult the lack of mental health provisions can be for individuals and families. Whilst we weren’t in debt or severely impacted, my mental health struggles financially impacted myself and the people around me in a way we hadn’t experienced before. This raises more issues about the lack of support available for parents and families who have to make financial sacrifices and huge overhauls of their lifestyles due to the lack of financial support available. For thousands of people like me who are regularly in the ’middle-ground’ for mental health services and their potential benefits due to being regarded as ‘high functioning (a term I detest, but seems fitting in regards to this) we are often in this grey area where mental health services can’t help you due to lack of service provision, meaning they have to, understandably, prioritise their service for those in extreme crisis.

Fast forward to July of this year, after I’d hassled my consultant psychiatrist for psychological therapies for several years, being rejected from IAPT for being ‘too complex’ a case despite being told to self-refer to them, I finally received my initial assessment appointment – for March 2023. At this stage I was beginning to reach a point of personal crisis: constant intrusive thoughts, low mood episodes spanning weeks and months, uncontrollable emotions, anxiety so crippling I had three short courses of Diazepam in order to leave the house. We made the decision as a family to investigate private therapy.

After a few weeks of contacting clinical psychologists who offer therapy for ‘complex’ cases like myself – basically therapists with extensive experience with bipolar and neurodiversity – I finally found a therapist that seemed the perfect fit. This wasn’t going to come cheap, with fifty-minute sessions costing £90 and we knew I would need these weekly. Fortunately, whilst we would need to readjust our finances and spending, between myself and Jordan and my mum and dad, we decided that my recovery, or journey, was worth it.

After receiving advice from a local mental health charity – Platform 1 – I applied for PIP back in August in order to help ease the financial impact of my severe mental health problems. Due to my extensive daily struggles and battles, I am only able to volunteer currently and this means that Jordan is the only one bringing an income into our household. I still haven’t heard back from PIP and this entire process can take from six months to several years, depending on whether I need to appeal the decision they make.

I am exceptionally fortunate that we can, as a family, afford private therapy. I have had roughly two months’ worth of sessions and I already feel the benefit, especially after pursing an Autism diagnosis which I formally received last week. My therapist spotted early on in our sessions that many of my anxieties, routines, and fear of change align with many ASD traits, and as such, they have used their experience of neurodiversity to cater my therapy to my specific needs from day one.

Starting private therapy and seeing the change it has already brought in such a short period of time has also caused strange feelings of guilt, as every time I send that £90 over to pay for my next step in recovery, I think about the hundreds of thousands of people that cannot afford to go private and will never receive the level of care they need and deserve. Whilst this hasn’t been an easy financial decision for us to take, at least we had the choice in the first place to even consider private therapy.

The waiting lists for initial assessments for mental health services are only getting longer, with many people even unable to get past being on hold with a receptionist or secretary. Assessments for psychological therapies and interventions are only getting longer too, with more and more people seeking mental health services in times of crisis – crisis’ that are only getting worse with the impact of cost of living. Mental health charities are strained, with more demand than they can provide supply to, people desperately seeking some kind of advice and support in times of urgent need.

I’m sure World Mental Health Day is meant to be a time for celebration – a time in which people can proudly declare their struggles and successes despite mental health problems –  but there’s something about this day that reminds me and others that mental health care in the UK is still a lottery. If you have the appropriate access and the disposable income, your chance of winning the lottery is higher, but mental healthcare shouldn’t be a lottery. People should be able to get the help they need in a swift, accurate, and positive way. But I have a feeling deep down that for World Mental Health Day 2023, we will still be discussing the lottery of healthcare – a lottery that is only going to become more exacerbated by the actions of our current government. I’m not here to talk politics, but the current political climate and mental health care aren’t without correlation.