THE NHS IS IN MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS, & EVEN THE NURSES DONT CARE - (SV AB DA SS)

First, a "don't pull the trigger" warning!

Please be advised the following subjects are included: Domestic violence - Mental distress - Drug & alcohol abuse - Victium blaming - Suicide - Helplessness - Depression.

We all love it, right? An institution. Full of hardworking, caring people, underfunded but doing their job the best they can, and in difficult conditions. It’s overstretched, right, but it works!

NO. NOT AT ALL. At least not if your mind is in crisis.

Now, I am going to tell you the truth. In mental health, yes, the staff work hard in very difficult conditions with little or no support, but no, they are not doing a good job—that is two different things. Bang your pants all you like, but the system for mental health barely exists in ghost form, and what does is a thousand times more damaging for the victim or patient than the help offered.

So after experiencing agonizing pain one night, I called 111 as recommended online. You get essentially two options now: press one for physical pain or two for mental health. I picked number one, because that’s why I was calling. My abdomen had been burning in horrific pain all day and was getting worse. I also hadn’t urinated for over 24 hours.

I was put through to a call handler who did the usual checks and confirmed who I was, where I was, and asked about the problem. I explained the pain and then added, of course, ‘It might be something to do with the fact I tried to kill myself three times this weekend’.

Silence. Shock. Fear. She came back to confirm what I had said, then said something comforting, asking if it was OK to put me on hold. I said ‘of course’. From then on, she seemed concerned she was out of her depth and put me on hold a few times to ask for help from her supervisor. She was not out of her depth at all. She was a shining example of what is required.

That operator was truly human, a stranger who, after asking me what the pain was and understanding it was related to suicide, clearly felt out of her depth but then got me help and spent 40 minutes asking me about my life with sympathy and genuine care until the ambulance arrived. She told me of the struggles she’d faced, her faith in God, and her love of Bollywood and genuinely thanked me when I asked her, ‘What food reminds you of childhood?’ (We had 40 minutes to kill!). She said, ‘No one ever asked me, and now all I can think of is Saturdays with my brother and my (now dead) father eating kebabs. Thank you, she said. She was truly an angel sent to give me faith, and she did. It’s fucking hard to ask for help when you are so lost you can’t see tomorrow.

The paramedics arrived—two wonderful humans who listened, sympathized, and wanted above all else for me to not feel like this because, they also understood, they would have done the same if they had been through what I had. They said I needed to go to the hospital and reluctantly agreed because I knew what was going to happen, and I was right.

My tragic story of being so desperately heartbroken that I had tried to kill myself three times in a row, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, a long time already stuck in a dark place. I’d used two bottles of vodka each time and some pills and failed at that, all because I was feeling no one cared. Imagine repeating out loud your biggest failure and humiliation to strangers; I had already done this two times at this point.

Humiliating, embarrassing, and somehow hammering the experience of that trauma into my head further.

The ambulance men handed me over to A&E drop-off, who asked for the details that had been taken by them, and they were passed over. Then, the handover agent for the NHS said to me, "Yo clearly need mental health help, but first we need to make sure you have not damaged your liver, etc., so lets get that done first, ok?

I thanked her.

She then walked me one corridor to the A&E waiting room, which we entered through the back (reception across the room), and she just left me there, not saying a word. OK, do I need to do anything? Register? Do they know I am here?

A&E was packed. Every seat taken, no standing room, as loud as you can imagine, terrifying, scary, and I was alone and in pain. It was a Monday around 10:30pm—imagine this story at a weekend!

I timidly tried to move past people shouting and arguing and go to the back of the queue to reception. The woman working there was a foghorn on her legs—a brutal, harsh woman who had clearly had enough of this shit, and I don't blame her. The woman in front of me in the queue was meek and mild, short, and spoke in only a whisper. She was here because she had a headache!

I had to wait to be called forward, because heaven forbid I had any control over my own life, right?. When she hollered ‘NEXT!’ across the room, I timidly walked forward, ready-prepared, showing her my phone screen where I had typed my name and date of birth. Fisermanis is a nightmare in these situations! Expecting a nod of approval for me trying to help her, I was disappointed. “And what are you here for?’ she yelled at me. “I came in via ambulance,” I said. “I’d already called 111,” I added, expecting my name and DOB to be enough to connect these three agencies. NOPE. In a crowded A&E, I had to YELL my personal and shameful story for the third time to a stranger and a room full of strangers. Her response was ‘Take a seat!’.

I didn't; there were none.

I stood alone in pain and terrified for one hour forty minutes, until my name was called, Hurray, someone is going to help me now. I was taken to triage; basically, this means they want to know your weight, height, and blood pressure. THAT is all she did; she asked no questions but for one: "So what are you here for?”.

Fourth time I had to tell my humiliating story. Another hour back in the waiting room.

Called again, Come with me for an abdomen scan, said the friendliest nurse I met. That’s not really a compliment, but she was at least a ‘vanilla‘, in a world of ‘bland’ faces. Same question: 'What are you here for?’ same humiliating story I have to tell for the fifth time. After scanning me and telling me she couldn't find a bladder in there (what am I supposed to do with that information? ), I was returned to the hells waiting room.

Called again, a porter, who spoke not a word of English, motioned for me to follow him. We walked in silence (having no clue what was happening) across what seemed like the entire hospital until we entered a quiet ward. I don't know the time; I assume about 1 am. Three ‘nurses’ say behind a desk, two involved in their computers; the middle one takes the paper from the porter—no one tells me anything—where I am, why, nothing!

The man in the middle looks at the paper, then me, and asks, “So what's wrong with you?” (Sixth time).

Again, I have to tell him my story of humiliating circumstances. This time, I decide the only person who can protect me now is me, so I begin to let these people know it isn’t good enough.

“I tried to kill myself three times this weekend! Bet you wish you hadn’t asked now!” I snap.

He says NOTHING.

The woman next to him jumps up from her computer and is shocked. ‘Three times? This weekend? And you didn't seek any help at all? No one has seen you? No one?’

I nod.

She is alarmed, she is shocked, but she tells the porter only one thing: ‘He shouldn’t be here; we can't help,’ and I am walked back to the A&E room, left in the waiting room, and that is it for the next 10 hours. Ten hours alone in A&E, I was shaking, my head in my hands, my eyes closed, not saying a word; no one noticed; no one cared; I was sitting opposite a nurse.

At one point, a young man was bought in by the police. Two officers handed him over to the nurses, and he joined the waiting list to see someone. At this time, the current wait to see a doctor was 12 hours, 48 minutes! He was aggressive from the moment he arrived; he was rude to the nurses; he described the other people as dregs, should be shot, wasters. He stood over people in their space, then he did it to me!

No one in the system will be there for you, FACT. The only person there for you is you. As a victim, you need to die in there or survive by any means. The more he threatened people, the more they muttered their uncomfortableness, but no one did anything. At one point, unable to take it, I got up and went to the nurse opposite me. I told her (the first time in my life I’ve ever used this): “I am the victim of domestic violence; stop him behaving like this; it is triggering me." She tried to tackle it herself and said to him, ‘Please sit down; you are upsetting other patients." “No one here has a problem with me, bitch,” he replied. I stood up. “I have a fucking problem with you,” I said, “and if you don’t get out my fucking face, I'm going to make it your problem,” I replied. The anger was beginning to swirl around me.

“I could pop you off right now, old man,” he snapped back! ‘Fucking go for it,” I said, literally wishing he had a knife to do it.

It took 20 minutes for security to arrive. They took him outside, had a word, and then sat him back down—in the seat in front of me.

Two new ‘guests’ arrived. Checking in at reception, they announce their reason for visiting is “Well, we both got drunk and we hit each other, so you know, you need to do something.”.

“Just sit down,” said the barking desk operator.

They did, each one, either side of me, and continued their drunken, abusive argument over the top of me as I shook, cried, head in hands, directly opposite the nurse, who did or said nothing.

Not even a ‘Are you ok?’ Not once. Not one of those nurses cared one bit about anyone in that room, and I don't blame them one bit. But let's not pretend they did.

After 12 hours with no sleep, not a single second of peace, no help, no Dr., not even a kind world in A&E, I could take no more, and my head exploded as I realized the world does not care. I walked out, no one stopped me or asked me a thing, and I had a full-on mental breakdown in the car park for two hours, and not one person stopped to help. Surely some people walking past were staff? Surely someone noticed this 51-year-old man crying and screaming, his knuckles white from punching his own head, in the pouring rain? No one.

I left, and the NHS failed me entirely. They did not help; they made me a thousand times worse. Luckily, by then a friend had come to my aide in the car park, but they were very concerned about my health and mental state. I refused to go back in, and eventually they managed to get me home.

I tried to control myself, tried to think, but in all honesty I had no chance of doing so. The rage inside me had begun to burn, and the vodka was too tempting. I began heavily drinking yet again and found pills, which I placed upon the table in front of me. I stared at them alone (my friend had just taken the dog for a walk), and I thought to myself, ‘Now is the time; do it, say nothing, pretend to sleep; it will work’. I started to drink.

Luckily, a second friend arrived; having heard the news, I was in utter despair. The two of them tried desperately to calm my raging anger as it swelled and swelled yet again. They managed to ring the NHS CRISIS team, who ‘apparently’ deal with imminent suicide attempts. They put him on speaker, and he tried to calm me down. It did not work.

He then began to try to force me to go back to the same hospital. I refused point blank, and he, in my opinion, began to bully me into it. I became more and more angry at this person; they were not listening to what I had said about the previous night, and I refused. He suggested that maybe my GP could help and asked if I would take her call. I said yes, I was trying my best to be compliant, but I also knew what would tip me over the edge and would not allow myself to be bullied into it.

She called immediately; she spoke humanly, with care, calmly, and respectfully. She helped, but she didn't offer anything more than to remind me that my mental health might be failing, but we needed to check my abdomen as it could be very dangerous or painful if unchecked. I had hoped the reason he’d asked her to call was to offer to see me at the surgery; no such offer came.

I accepted her logic that I needed to be seen, and then the CRISIS man phoned back and began to bully me into returning to the same hospital again. I said absolutely not.

He asked why?

I mean, I had told him the whole story, me unattended for 12 hours, me absconding; he knew all that—why make me feel what I say is being ignored? He suggested a second hospital, one in the location where my previous ex-partner Gwyn lives—a man who had beaten and abused me for years. I made him aware of that, and he replied, ‘Well, he isn’t going to be in the room, is he?’.

When you have experienced domestic violence, the offender is always in every room you go in. You check every pub, shop, and cinema for him first before entering, even if you are miles away from home, and when I eventually entered this hospital after telling my awful shame-inducing story again to first reception (seventh time), the A&E receptionist asked my name, then said out loud, Is your next of kin, Gwyn? He was in the room after all, wasn’t he?

The friends with me were staggered, but secretly I was pleased she did it. I got to show people how easily and simply he still controls my life in such ways.

At the end of the call, the CRISIS man informed us he finished at 7:30 (we got home from the hospital around 11pm, having finally seen the ‘help’ around 10:30pm), and then he ended the call by saying, ‘Have a good day!’.

Have a good day.

Second hospital, second insanely busy A&E, I couldn't cope for more than three minutes and had to wait outside until they called me.

First stop: triage! Obviously, first question, ‘So what are you here for?’, EIGHTH TIME!

I again relived my misfortune to a stranger and in front of my two friends, who it began to traumatize. They must have felt they should have been there, should have known, felt awful. I was like that for that time; they care about me; you are traumatizing them too! Embarrassed, humiliated, traumatized over and over. Then followed the most bizarre question and answer session known to man! Even in my state of mind, it seemed the nurse was crazier than I was.

At one point she asked me to tell her what I had taken each night in detail. Two bottles of vodka, she then repeated it back to me whilst writing it down slower than a two-year-old, adding ‘what, a night?’, in shock, and with that look on her face you have when you don't believe someone. By night three of my description, when she asked about how many pills I took that night and I was unsure, she asked why. Sarcasm is the ultimate defense of the intelligent, and I might have been crazy-cuckoo-loony, but I still had the power to use worlds to slay. That kicked in, and I think I said something like, ‘After all that vodka, could you count your fingers, never mind some tiny fucking tablets??’ She didn’t find it funny; I am not sure if she was even aware of where she was; her eyes had completely glazed over from the start.

Now, the bit I thought I imagined in my insanity.

The previous hospital didn’t ask me to explain my fashion choices for my A&E visit.

By far the most baffling of all my experience then occurred as she asked, ‘What color is your top?’. We were sitting face to face, and it was white!!!! This was followed by, ‘And your trousers? Are they trousers?. They were joggers, and a debate about the difference between those and trousers took place. Even more bizarre. She then asked, ‘What color are they?’

She is looking at me and them with her own eyes in bright light. Red? Pink? I dunno, I said, they didn't come with a color chart! Sarcastically, and as she still seemed to be waiting for me to confirm the shade of color, I added, Let’s go with BLUSH ROSE. She looked and replied ‘no’.

For a final touch of utter madness, she again looked at me and said, ‘Blonde, I’ll put blonde’. I have very little hair on my head, and it was light brown when it used to be there, never blonde!

What the hell was that about, and why was the NHS most interested in that about me during the 24 hours we spent with each other? It evoked more questions and clarification from them than anything else I said. I’m surprised in hindsight that she didn’t ask about the vodka brands I’d selected to down!

Was it in case I absconded again and one of the few nurses there, who clearly had nothing else to do, could identify me as I ran? A blonde-haired man with blush rose joggers! Get him!

Then hours and hours of waiting, a brief scan of my abdomen (never got any results from it), and a blood test to check my liver.

Then called and taken to a small white square room with three seats. The room was in the middle of a busy ward, so it had two heavy doors, one on each side to access the ward. All around the room buzzed with people rushing about, giving help, or asking for it. We sat for hours; no one checked on us, asked us anything, nothing, until a man came in, sat down (so one of us had to stand), and said to me, ‘So, why are you in here? What happened?’. Ninth time now—embarrassing, humiliating, trauma-impacting—it’s not that difficult to understand.

The RAGE! I was now angry and frustrated; I’d given up on the system; I was claustrophobic, hemmed in, and so traumatized by repeatedly reliving my experience I couldn't speak, and my friend had to tell him what had happened to me. That was somehow worse because I had to listen to my dear friend's breakdown as he reminded me of my story of failure while I was able to hear the impact I’d made on him. I never looked at the nurse in the room—not once—I couldn’t! But as my friend relayed the story, all I heard him reply was "Wow,” "wow," and "wow." I think at one point I snapped back, “Yeah, fucking wow.”.

When the story was done, all he offered was, “Right, so we need to get you seen now and see what we can do to help." WHAT? What are you here for then? Torture or your own amusement?

So we waited as the anger grew, my voice raised, and the temperature in the room rose higher and higher! My friends tried to calm me as I began to prepare myself to leave another hospital; they were so desperate for help for me, they knew it would come soon. It didn't; it came about another hour and a half later.

A man with an attitude of absolute disinterest arrived. He immediately told (not asked) me to calm down and not be rude. I wasn’t rude; I was fucking furious! The first question he asked was,So, what happened?’ And also, ‘And what one event caused it?’. I EXPLODED.

THE TENTH TIME in 24 hours and still no help.

‘Can’t you people pass a piece of fucking paper to each other?' I roared out. ‘I have answered this question at least five times in this hospital alone today! Why are you making me relive this trauma over and over again, hammering it into my head? You're making me repeat my failures over and over and asking me what one event caused it. Loads of stuff caused it, and I don't have time to tell you that freaking story!’

He was unhappy being challenged; he defended the system; he asked me, ‘What do you want me to do?’ - not to be helpful, but to suggest it wasn’t his problem!

I tried to explain to this man that I could not be in the room any longer! 'Why?' he replied, 'The room was designed for this.'.

I was in an empty white box with heavy doors either side where the word existed but not for me; outside people were going about their business, and I had been shouting and screaming in that box for help and attention for hours, and NO ONE came to help. The box was the actual representation of how it feels to be suicidal, and you are making me go through my trauma over and over again and not doing anything! For fucks sake, is it that hard to understand????? The room is great for discussion, less so for abandoning suicidal people.

I made him aware one of my concerns was losing my home because I couldn't afford the next rent; he said, ‘But you're living there now, so what do you mean’. Eh?

I tried to educate this mental health professional, the one I had been in the system for 24 hours under crisis management waiting to see. I asked him this.

‘If I have tried to commit suicide three consecutive nights in a row without getting any medical attention, if I am complaining of pains and have been sent by the crisis team, after interacting with 111 services, taken by ambulance, absconded from another hospital without receiving care, and are generally behaving in a totally out of control way, does that not make me a priority to be seen, or is there someone here that has tried four nights in a row? Why have I been left so long?

You know what he said.

Paper, we write on the forms, and they go in a pile; you just take the next one.

WOW I was just the next one. The woman with the headache would have been the one in front of me.

At this point, he gave me the options on what he could help me with right now. They were forced into a stay in this hospital with zero treatment, but they wouldn’t let me kill myself, and I guess everything will be fine in the morning.

Or go home, but I have to promise not to kill myself.

He was utterly shocked. I didn’t fancy a stay!

Regarding my mental health, the best piece of advice he could offer was to go to the Citizens Advice Bureau. I am just going to repeat that. The best piece of advice he could offer was to go to the Citizens Advice Bureau.

No therapist was offered even though I asked, no begged, no discussion of what I needed to get through the next 24 hours (aside from a sleeping pill), nothing of any mental health assistance what so ever. He wasn’t even kind. The final insults under the name of crisis mental health management came as he suggested he would write to me next to tell me what help was available when he had researched it. And that he could offer a sleeping tablet, but only one.

I asked him, ‘So, am I ok, my abdomen??’. He had to go check, came back and didn't know, went away again, and came back saying yeah, ‘It's fine, they should have told you’. Actually, I shouldn’t have been allowed to see you before they told you that, but someone forgot.

That was it. Nothing more he could do. I went home with the tablet, promising I wouldn’t kill myself, and all was well. What an utter joke.

The next day, the NHS gave me the rest of the pills. Five very strong, knockout, sleeping tablets to a suicidal person.

They are humans; they may be nice and kind most of the time; they may work hard with no support and no funding; they are allowed to make mistakes. But don’t tell me any of these people cared; they didn't; they were doing a job that limits what they can achieve, but you can still care, and I never experienced a bit of it, only from my friends.

The final joke? They texted me the next day to ask how my experience of A&E was overall. I choose option 5, very poor. But you can't reply, can't text back—it just bounces right back undelivered. Whatever you do, however you try, it seems no one wants to know and no one seems to care.