My Experience of Mental Health Crisis In The UK

Here in the UK, we have the NHS (National Health Service). This includes primary care services (which includes GP surgeries), and secondary care services (which includes the Community Mental Health Team for adults and Community Adolescent Mental Health Service for anyone under 18). There are also tertiary care services but for this post I will stick to the former two. Most of the time, in order to be in secondary care services, a person must be referred via the primary care service. This means that in order to be involved with the Community Mental Health Team, a person will be referred by their GP, who can also signpost them to counselling services or other therapy teams such as Talking Changes (North East).

Now, let's start with the NHS. It currently provides mostly free healthcare for the country, which is absolutely brilliant and I feel utmost grateful for, especially my constant usage of the service. However, the Conservative Government that is currently in charge want to privatise the NHS, meaning everyone in the country will have to pay for their healthcare. The government have made cuts to the service ever since 2010 when they were elected into power. Accident & Emergency  (A&E) services have been cut, teams have been merged, staff (and wages) have been cut, certain funding has been stopped and many mental health hospitals have been closed. It's rife. Just when there wasn't enough mental health services anyway, the sector has been cut to shreds. This affects a lot of people, including me, which is why I'm raising the issue.

In my almost three years with the Community Mental Health team, I have seen the ugly side to these government cuts and have witnessed the level of care in the community plummet from good/ok to downright crap. Different mental health teams have been merged, the amount of staff in teams have been majorly cut, and patients are slowly getting less and less care, especially in a crisis.

Here in my county if you're in a mental health crisis and you're not in with the Community Mental Health team, then the only option you really have is the police or A&E where a Crisis Team will give you a psychiatric assessment. If you're under the Community Mental Health team, then you will have that during the hours of 9am and 5pm weekdays, and the direct contact number for the Crisis Team after 5pm weekdays and all weekend. Before I get into the Crisis Team, I want to take some time to talk about mental health crisis and/or suicide attempt in A&E.

I have been taken to A&E four times for mental breakdowns and suicide attempts. What I can say is that, physically, the care is there to make sure you're not going into cardiac arrest and to keep an eye on your blood levels. However, mentally, there isn't much help besides a psychiatric assessment (which on one occasion I was still discharged even though I was extremely suicidal). I was taken into a room with a couch, and left there for hours before the crisis team could assess me. It's not a great place to be when you just want to end your life and at the same time, you're on a psychiatric hold and therefore cannot just get up and leave. If you do the police will find you and bring you back to hospital. So there's no point in even trying to leave.

The staff in A&E are hit and miss. I've experienced compassion, empathy and kindness and at the same time I've experienced coldness, rude remarks and spoken to as if it's my choice to be this way. This is totally wrong on all levels. No one asks for a mental crisis. I certainly didn't.

Now, onto the crisis team. I cannot speak for crisis teams outside of Durham & Darlington, because this is the only team I have been in contact with. However, what I do know is that nearly all the crisis teams across the UK have been severely cut by the government. This means someone in a crisis waiting up to 9 whole hours to be seen. If someone's suicidal or a danger to themselves/others, this long wait can be the difference between life and death, and that's if the team CAN actually come out to see the person needing help. If and when the crisis team do come out to your home or wherever you are, they assess you, asking questions about what's going on and how you feel. Their primary purpose is to keep people out of hospital, so there's a lot of generic suggestions. Last week I had a really bad psychotic episode and I got the usual "have a bath", which is ridiculous. I was hallucinating and hearing voices. I don't understand how a bath would at all help me. Other responses are "go for a walk" or "draw a picture". Essentially, they mean "distract yourself". Now, distraction sometimes does work for me personally, when I have anxiety or I'm feeling restless. However, when I'm psychotic, distraction techniques do not work whatsoever, so suggesting these things to me is not any help. The worst thing I've heard from my team is "there's nothing more we can do for you". If someone is suicidal, how is this going to help their situation in any way? It certainly didn't help mine. In fact it made me feel that little bit more invisible and insignificant. What frustrates me the most is the thousands (possibly millions) of others that this is happening to. On the other hand, it's understandable why this is happening. The government cuts have made it almost impossible for the crisis teams to cope with the amount of people needing them. In Durham & Darlington there is only two professionals on at any one time to cover the whole area. TWO. Now let's say that 20 people contact the crisis team in 3 hours, all from different parts of County Durham and/or Darlington. That's a lot of travel time for the crisis team to cover, never mind the fact that they may have to transport some people to various hospitals. They are seriously stretched in the amount of work they have to do and it's not even their fault. There have been instances where the crisis team literally haven't been able to come out and see me and I've had to wait until the next night, which has been incredibly difficult for me when I've felt suicidal or self destructive. 

In conclusion, there really is a huge elephant in the room when it comes to emergency and crisis services, and it's only going to get worse as the government privatise more and more of the NHS. It's actually a scary country we currently live in.

I want more awareness to be raised of the dire straits that mental health patients are in. So please, if you know anyone struggling, be there. Listen to them. Sometimes that's all that is needed of you. I know that in times I've felt alone and in crisis, all I really needed was an ear.