After an overdose and hospital admission I'm under the most acute part of our local services - Crisis and Acute,. The next step down is Recovery and Community, and then another tier that does short term therapy and first line meds.
The three sections are not ALLOWED to overlap. So while I'm under Crisis, I can't be put onto a waiting list for long term therapy under Recovery, or for Mindfulness classes because that's under the basic level.
My recent crisis was caused in large part because my (private) therapy got so painful. Yesterday I commented to a nurse from Crisis that my T had said "We need to go slowly, because I have nowhere to admit you and keep you safe". I told her I wanted NHS therapy because of this, but she said that the same applies for them - all the therapists from Recovery can do is pass their patients across to Acute, and then they have to stop seeing them until they come back from Acute. She agreed that I wasn't the only person for whom this was a problem.
This is structural insanity.
I'm disregarding the fact that the services are all so short handed that no-one ever does what they commit to.. The system seems to have been set up for revolving-door patients with long term conditions that fluctuate and need intermittent control. But that very system works to ensure that conditions become long term. I still believe that good, trauma focussed treatment three years ago would have been effective enough to let me return to work and to my life instead of becoming isolated and unemployed.
Right now, in order to have hope, it appears I have to lie, and claim to be safer and more stable than I am, just to be allowed to join a waiting list. Yet it's the lack of hope that leads me to despair and desperate acts.
The three sections are not ALLOWED to overlap. So while I'm under Crisis, I can't be put onto a waiting list for long term therapy under Recovery, or for Mindfulness classes because that's under the basic level.
My recent crisis was caused in large part because my (private) therapy got so painful. Yesterday I commented to a nurse from Crisis that my T had said "We need to go slowly, because I have nowhere to admit you and keep you safe". I told her I wanted NHS therapy because of this, but she said that the same applies for them - all the therapists from Recovery can do is pass their patients across to Acute, and then they have to stop seeing them until they come back from Acute. She agreed that I wasn't the only person for whom this was a problem.
This is structural insanity.
I'm disregarding the fact that the services are all so short handed that no-one ever does what they commit to.. The system seems to have been set up for revolving-door patients with long term conditions that fluctuate and need intermittent control. But that very system works to ensure that conditions become long term. I still believe that good, trauma focussed treatment three years ago would have been effective enough to let me return to work and to my life instead of becoming isolated and unemployed.
Right now, in order to have hope, it appears I have to lie, and claim to be safer and more stable than I am, just to be allowed to join a waiting list. Yet it's the lack of hope that leads me to despair and desperate acts.