Butterflywings
Learning
I don't know what to do. I can't find any help that is free or cheap. I can't afford to spend half our weekly income on seeing a therapist when we can't even pay our electricity bill.
I've called lifeline and beyond blue multiple times, spoken to every other service they knew of, and basically after my online chat to beyond blue today they basically said I've exhausted every single resource they know of. I live in a major capital city (the capital of the whole stupid country actually) and there simply is no free services outside of community mental health who say they can't help me unless I'm on welfare benefits (which I'm not because I have a working husband. He has a pretty low income but just enough for me not to get any welfare assistance which also means I am paying a few hundred a week on medications and doctors - and that's the gap payments after government rebates for everything we can get rebates on).
I'm supposed to see a psychiatrist, but even after government rebates that's $240 a visit. I'm supposed to go see a trauma therapist but I can't access a government rebate for psychologists this year (because I already tried one and it hasn't worked out but can't access the government rebate even though I didn't use the ten visits the government gives a rebate towards because it's a different psychologist). Not that I have $75 to pay the gap after the rebate next year, and I certainly don't have the $190 per visit without the rebate this year. I can't afford the $200 a month for the third psych med I'm supposed to take (no government subsidy on it) when I'm already $60 a month for my two existing psych meds plus far more than that on all the medications I take for physical health problems.
I'm so alone, I keep having thoughts of self harm and suicide which I'm finding it so hard to fight every day, but going to hospital is not an option because 1. that's where I work and I'll lose my job, and we'd lose our home and going into winter I don't want to be living in a car with a baby and my teenage child and husband - we barely cope in the space of our tiny two bedroom townhouse. and 2. because I have PTSD now because I was hospitalised several times a decade ago because I had post natal and PTSD from the birth of my older child and in hospital I was psychologically tortured by a sick psychiatrist (made fun of me, made up lies to child protective services that we were bashing our baby because according to him "young women with thoughts of self harm don't deserve to have kids and I'll say whatever it takes to get her taken away", and what he did to my first husband was worse), I was sexually assaulted by another patient on one hospital, and on another I was physically assaulted by a nurse so badly I've had two operations to fix the damage and they have failed and just been told a week ago I need a knee replacement - I'm in my early 30s! I have knees worse than the old people I spent years looking after in aged care before moving into working in mental health. (second knee is stuffed from a decade of limping).
I thought I'd broken free of the depression and PTSD until I fell pregnant last year. My baby was very much planned, I was excited. I'd been depression and PTSD symptom free for over five years (Except for a brief period of about a month when I went through something tough two years ago), but being pregnant again and battling the hospital district where I was abused to get my obstetric records of my older child's birth so I could safely deliver my younger child has brought back all the horrific depression and PTSD symptoms.
I can't afford to lose my job - I've been out of aged care too long to be qualified to go back to it, and with all the mental health services here heavily linked, if I lose my job, I lose my career that I've worked so hard for. I'll be unemployable and we then lose our home. Also my abusive first husband would get custody of our daughter and he is a violent pervert who likes looking at kiddy porn. I found kiddy porn on our computer and before I could confront him about it (as he was out on a two day drug bender with his dealer) he came home and bashed our daughter which is why we separated. Unfortunately the family court here is messed up and even though he was convicted for bashing her, he wasn't convicted for the kiddy porn, and even convicted paedophiles here get shared custody. He's stopped seeing her, but if he finds out I've lost my job (especially if I lose my home), he'll try to get back into her life.
But yeah, I have enough trouble with panic attacks when I work in the acute mental health ward. There is no way I can handle being a patient. I would seriously flip out and I've seen what happens to people who do that. That would just traumatise me more and make me decide to actually go ahead and kill myself. So hospital isn't an option.
I don't know what to do. I'm not ok.and have nowhere to turn to. It's pretty sad when lifeline and beyond blue have no resources to help at all. Why does our state government assume everyone living here is either rich enough to pay the massive cost of private treatment here, or that everyone else is on welfare and can access free services.
I've called lifeline and beyond blue multiple times, spoken to every other service they knew of, and basically after my online chat to beyond blue today they basically said I've exhausted every single resource they know of. I live in a major capital city (the capital of the whole stupid country actually) and there simply is no free services outside of community mental health who say they can't help me unless I'm on welfare benefits (which I'm not because I have a working husband. He has a pretty low income but just enough for me not to get any welfare assistance which also means I am paying a few hundred a week on medications and doctors - and that's the gap payments after government rebates for everything we can get rebates on).
I'm supposed to see a psychiatrist, but even after government rebates that's $240 a visit. I'm supposed to go see a trauma therapist but I can't access a government rebate for psychologists this year (because I already tried one and it hasn't worked out but can't access the government rebate even though I didn't use the ten visits the government gives a rebate towards because it's a different psychologist). Not that I have $75 to pay the gap after the rebate next year, and I certainly don't have the $190 per visit without the rebate this year. I can't afford the $200 a month for the third psych med I'm supposed to take (no government subsidy on it) when I'm already $60 a month for my two existing psych meds plus far more than that on all the medications I take for physical health problems.
I'm so alone, I keep having thoughts of self harm and suicide which I'm finding it so hard to fight every day, but going to hospital is not an option because 1. that's where I work and I'll lose my job, and we'd lose our home and going into winter I don't want to be living in a car with a baby and my teenage child and husband - we barely cope in the space of our tiny two bedroom townhouse. and 2. because I have PTSD now because I was hospitalised several times a decade ago because I had post natal and PTSD from the birth of my older child and in hospital I was psychologically tortured by a sick psychiatrist (made fun of me, made up lies to child protective services that we were bashing our baby because according to him "young women with thoughts of self harm don't deserve to have kids and I'll say whatever it takes to get her taken away", and what he did to my first husband was worse), I was sexually assaulted by another patient on one hospital, and on another I was physically assaulted by a nurse so badly I've had two operations to fix the damage and they have failed and just been told a week ago I need a knee replacement - I'm in my early 30s! I have knees worse than the old people I spent years looking after in aged care before moving into working in mental health. (second knee is stuffed from a decade of limping).
I thought I'd broken free of the depression and PTSD until I fell pregnant last year. My baby was very much planned, I was excited. I'd been depression and PTSD symptom free for over five years (Except for a brief period of about a month when I went through something tough two years ago), but being pregnant again and battling the hospital district where I was abused to get my obstetric records of my older child's birth so I could safely deliver my younger child has brought back all the horrific depression and PTSD symptoms.
I can't afford to lose my job - I've been out of aged care too long to be qualified to go back to it, and with all the mental health services here heavily linked, if I lose my job, I lose my career that I've worked so hard for. I'll be unemployable and we then lose our home. Also my abusive first husband would get custody of our daughter and he is a violent pervert who likes looking at kiddy porn. I found kiddy porn on our computer and before I could confront him about it (as he was out on a two day drug bender with his dealer) he came home and bashed our daughter which is why we separated. Unfortunately the family court here is messed up and even though he was convicted for bashing her, he wasn't convicted for the kiddy porn, and even convicted paedophiles here get shared custody. He's stopped seeing her, but if he finds out I've lost my job (especially if I lose my home), he'll try to get back into her life.
But yeah, I have enough trouble with panic attacks when I work in the acute mental health ward. There is no way I can handle being a patient. I would seriously flip out and I've seen what happens to people who do that. That would just traumatise me more and make me decide to actually go ahead and kill myself. So hospital isn't an option.
I don't know what to do. I'm not ok.and have nowhere to turn to. It's pretty sad when lifeline and beyond blue have no resources to help at all. Why does our state government assume everyone living here is either rich enough to pay the massive cost of private treatment here, or that everyone else is on welfare and can access free services.