Today marks the start of Scottish Mental Health Week. As usual, whenever we reach an awareness day that applies to me, I feel annoyed that it’s still necessary. It’s 2013, aren’t we supposed to be sufficiently advanced and well-educated that we don’t make stupid judgements based on sex, age, orientation, race, whether you’ve ever had a physical or mental illness, or any other damn thing that people don’t have a choice in? Wasn’t this all supposed to be sorted out by now?
Maybe it was supposed to be. But it’s not, so for the present I will continue trying to reconcile my understanding of why we need these awareness exercises with my anger at the fact that they remain necessary.
I got involved with this year’s Scottish Mental Health Week unintentionally. I write ten minute plays for Jo Caulfield’s Speakeasy, and it just so happens that tomorrow’s Speakeasy is embracing the Mental Health theme. My play, Hawthorn & Candlelight, is not about mental health issues. It’s a comedy about a book of spells, so I suppose that if you were determined enough you could read it as an exploration of magical thinking and trace its roots in my own adventures in Schizotypal Personality Disorder, but that wasn’t my intention in writing it. I wrote it as a bit of pre-Hallowe’en fun and that’s about it. If my contribution fits the theme it’s not because of the play itself but because of what I am – mentally ill and “out”.
The fact that it’s Mental Health Week also makes me think it’s a good time for an update about my own situation and how things are going. Last time I wrote about this I was struggling to get access to the help I needed – most importantly, someone who could advise me on medication. I finally gave in and played another round of Russian Roulette with the meds, allowing myself to be put on fluoxetine to keep my serotonin levels in check. So far I’ve been fine – there’s none of the nausea I got from paroxetine or the memory loss and anxiety spikes that characterised my experience of sertraline. However, I’m still on a low dose just now. The real test happens in winter. At some point I usually tip from chronic dysthymia into a Major Depressive episode, and that’s when I have to increase my dosage and find out if my body can handle it.
I was also trying to find a suitable form of therapy to complement the drugs. I’ve been doing CBT on my own for over a decade and it’s a particularly useful weapon to have in my arsenal, but it’s not a magic bullet, and I have hit a point where either I need a different kind of therapy or help with expanding my CBT skills. As it stands, CBT helps me to combat depression and it was fantastic for dealing with OCD and StPD. Having got these things to a point where I can manage the symptoms, I now find myself dealing with issues that are more PTSD-related. I really want to get to a point where I don’t have nightmares, hypersomnia and a wide range of triggers that stimulate fearful, avoidant reactions. I want to be rid of the paralysing terror that accompanies the belief that everything I love dies.
Getting this kind of help is, as I have chronicled here, not easy. CBT with community psych nurses didn’t help me, because the CBT they were teaching was all stuff I’ve been doing on my own for over a decade. Eventually I lucked into an appointment with a GP who seemed to understand, and I made a particular effort to let the mask slip. I’ve been dismissed too many times for not appearing to be crazy enough because I can still do things like bathe, brush my hair, dress in a manner that makes me look pulled-together. I can still do these things until I am pretty far gone, because I have lots of practise.
During my first major depressive episode I learned that allowing myself to look depressed attracted attention. I didn’t want attention. I wanted people to stop noticing me, not ask me stupid questions about whether I was all right, to look the other way while I quietly got on with the task of destroying myself. So I wore make-up long after I stopped caring about my appearance. I wore my hair up to disguise the fact that it hadn’t been washed in days. The way I dressed didn’t change, because at 18 I wore a uniform of black velour trousers, black t-shirts and sweaters. There was no tell-tale day when I started wearing jogging bottoms all the time, because there was nothing in my wardrobe that would allow me to live the cliche. For several months, as I gradually stopped eating and talking and dropped out of one class after another, I still looked like my normal self. Eventually I lost the ability to keep it together and began to look gaunt and dishevelled in spite of my repertoire of tricks, but I held out for a long time. By the time I started to look depressed, I was too far gone to seek help of my own accord.
So now, when I know I will be talking to a GP about my mental health, I make a conscious effort not to conceal the effects of my mind on my body. No make-up. No dry shampoo. I try not to think about the appointment until I get there so that I haven’t prepared what I’m going to say and how I’m going to keep my voice level while I’m doing it. When the familiar feelings of pain and fear arise, I try to let them show. After more than a decade of training myself not to show those feelings, that’s no small task. It’s not easy to bring that stuff to the surface because I never trust that I’ll be able to get on top of it again. But if you look like you’re coping, they assume you’re coping, so it has to be done. After many years of trying to tell doctors how badly I was doing without having to come right out and say it, I finally did. I explained about my convoluted suicide attempts and self-destructive behaviour, told them that even now, when I’m happy and loved and things are going well, I’m also depressed and fearful and every winter I dread that this might be the one where I just can’t take it any more.
The message got through. At last, I got an appointment with a psychiatrist. By this point I had started on fluoxetine, and the psychiatrist advised me that it was probably my best bet just now, which was comforting (if a little on the late side). He referred me on to the psychotherapy department at the Royal Edinburgh, so I finally had to bite the bullet and get over my fear of going there. Previous experience led me to expect a 45 minute triage appointment, during which I would have to try to give a potted account of myself and what I was looking for. Fortunately, this was nothing like my previous experience…
I had three triage appointments in total, all with the same doctor. There was time to give a full explanation of all the previous diagnoses and experiences and life events. The doctor talked me through my options and made some suggestions, and between the two of us we figured out the next step. I’m now on a waiting list for individual therapy to help me work through the PTSD. The down side is that the waiting list is long, so it may well be next February before I start – but simply knowing that the wheels are in motion helps immensely. In the meantime, I know what my options are if things get too difficult around the anniversary of Mum’s death or over the winter. I feel much better informed. And because this is being done on the NHS, I’m not freaking out about how to afford it.
After so many false starts, getting this far is a massive relief. When people talk to me about their own battles with the system, it’s really nice to be able to say “don’t give up, it is actually possible to get help” rather than simply sharing their despair at getting nowhere.
Keep trying. And keep talking. I might not always have the energy to respond to the comments and private messages I get after these posts, but I always, always read them and I always care.
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