Tag Archive for 'day hospital'

The Toad Is Back!! Gwuar!!

Published
by
thetoad
on 5 June 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Well, it has certainly been a while since I wrote on this blog. I haven’t forgotten about it – or you – my loyal reader audience – it has just been a difficult month and I have not felt much like writing. Alas, my muse left me for a while!

Things I have been battling with in the last month have been down to trying to get my mental health care sorted from the NHS down here on the south coast.

Each week I have been told something different by someone else – it seems I don’t need to see a psychiatrist about my medication when it has been over 12 months since it was last reviewed. This turns out to be something I alter myself or visit my GP for. This has been a big disappointment for me. When we had the first assessment – when TuT was present – the nurse conducting the assessment said, in front of TuT and to me, that a psychiatry appointment would be made. This has not happened.

The day hospital that the nurse was so positive about turned out to be another disappointment. After another gruelling assessment at the said day hospital, I was told that it ran groups, the groups are broken down into activity, support, and educational. I was not given a timetable and asked which groups I would like to attend or what I felt would be beneficial, I was told that they would have a meeting and decide which group would be suitable for me.

Nothing was heard from this assessment for over two weeks, until I got a phone call, saying that I was going to be put down for attending “The Holistic Group”; I am as much in the dark as you are reading this, as to what the said holistic group is and what it does.

This is a mystery that will remain unsolved for some time; the groups run in blocks and you can’t join a group that has already started. My window for joining the holistic group is not for another two months!

So I had all this going on with my medication, lack of psychiatry support and finding out the day hospital could do nothing for me for months. I am experiencing an increasing sense of loneliness and isolation with TuT out the door before 8am and not home until well after 6pm in the evening. It’s a long day with no friends or family.

In light of this, my CPN recommended that I get in touch with the local “Mind” centre. The mental health charity “mind” run a centre about 25minute walk from the flat that you can “drop-in” to. They cook a lunch and one night a week an evening meal, and you can get involved in helping to prepare that meal, or just have some company with people that may be in a similar situation to yourself. Just drop in for a cup of tea and a chat; whatever you feel like doing – there is no pressure, you can attend as often or as infrequently as you like.

I had made a few attendances at the mind centres in the north, so I went along for a look, then returned a week later for an interview. As it is an informal drop-in I didn’t think the interview would be too troublesome. It turned out to be another gruelling assessment of my life and experiences and mental health and medication that lasted over an hour and a half. I came out in floods of tears, and was told that I would have to wait for references from my GP and Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to come back to the centre before I could start attending.

This was another blow as by now I was frustrated that the day hospital had come to nothing and was becoming increasingly unhappy with my long empty days that I just wanted some company and social interaction to fill. I was falling into dangerous waters of spending my time watching rubbish on the tv, not getting showered or dressed until late in the afternoon, and not making any effort to go out and do anything because I was just so depressed. At one point I said to TuT

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed”

It was not a good time. I met with my CPN last Thursday and she told me to chase the mind centre because they had faxed off my reference to them.

This week I rang the mind centre on Monday and went along to see them late on Tuesday afternoon. After a chat it was agreed I can start attending the mind centre and will also be having scheduled “one-to-one” time with a member of their staff to work on confidence and just feeling better in myself.

It’s been a long slog to get to this stage, but having the support of the mind centre, and actually having somewhere to go, to be with some company, is just what is needed for me right now.

So things are looking up and I am more inclined to write about my experiences now – so keep checking the blog – THE TOAD IS BACK!! GWUAR!!

Psychiatric Assessment

Published
by
thetoad
on 16 April 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So, yesterday was different from my usual Tuesday – no Weight Watchers weigh-in, not out of choice, but after a good two months of waiting, I had my psychiatric assessment for the mental health team based in my new coastal location.

I was very anxious about it. With all the moving around TuT and I have done in the last twelve months we have had experience of four different NHS mental health services and it really is a post code lottery of what is on offer depending on which part of the country you are in.

Living in the north had different ideas of what was a good level of support, and the same is true of the south. The problem with these psychiatric assessments is that you have to go through everything; I have been involved over the years, with various mental health teams since I was 15. At 28 years old now that is over 10 years to go through to give an accurate background of my mental health.

So when the CPN (community psychiatric nurse) took TuT and I through to the little office to do the assessment I was very anxious, but reassured that she had my official looking file and had got some notes from Milton Keynes, where I lived for five months before moving here.

The seats were uncomfortable and I ended up sat on this rotating-retro square desk chair – I felt like the director! And so began the tale.

Beginning with the abuse that I can remember occurring from the ages of 10; to being taken to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic when I was 15 because the school told my mum I was acting strangely and that was why I was getting bullied; apparently I was bringing it on myself with my the way I was behaving.

Then through sixth form when I discovered self harming as a way of coping and perhaps enjoyed getting drunk and messy a little more than my friends.

Then from sixth form to university with the beginnings of my disordered eating, through the famous “breakfast/tea diet”.
Into university where I nearly ended up being admitted as an in-patient to the psychiatric ward in the north, but managed to persuade them not to as I wanted to finish my degree in Liverpool. The agreement to skirt my admission was that I would see a Psychologist.

So then into my third year at university I had to come home to the north every other weekend to see the Psychologist.
Then graduating, starting work in administrative roles, with the psychologist tagging along in the background whilst I ended up on anti-depressants and was struggling to get any sleep.

Then into 2003 when I made my first suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. The hot summer of 2003 when I spent most of my nights sat in my bedroom self harming and taking overdoses. Whilst getting angrier and angrier at my parents for allowing the abuse to happen when each night I was reliving terrifying flash backs and just felt completely unable to cope.

Days were spent in the psychiatric day hospital and nights were spent losing the plot and drinking with friends I’d made from the day hospital.

Things between my parents deteriorated to the extent that my new psycho-therapist placed me in supported housing for people with mental health problems.

I lived there for about a year before moving home and going back to work part-time as a legal secretary. Which went well for about two months then the solicitor I worked for took on defending a man accused of abusing his step-daughter. When having to photocopy daily his step-daughters statements, which I couldn’t help but read, but mirrored my own experiences of abuse, I knew the step-daughter couldn’t be lying, but we had to defend the step father.

By the autumn I was back in hospital as in-patient following another overdose. From there followed a cycle of returning to work, getting ill and stressed, getting admitted as an in-patient, going back to work etc.etc. and so on. Until my employers got sick of having to find cover for my secretarial role, and on discharge from my admission in August 2004 I came home to a letter sacking me and telling me not to return to work again.

At around this time I started seeing and soon moved in with, my ex-partner, who turned out to be a violent and abusive, manipulative alcoholic. Life was based around alcohol and was total chaos. I returned to my parents on a couple of occasions but he would always talk me round with promises to change and that life would be better.

I was totally unable to contemplate going back to work with how badly my mental health had deteriorated and couldn’t see any way out, any way to improve my life. So in January 2006 I started the year with a massive over-dose, my most serious and nearest I’d got to actually finishing the job and ending my life, and on recovery, another in-patient stay on the psychiatric ward.
My new psychiatrist had taken me off all my medication and I was just flying along through life, trying to keep things as normal as possible whilst living with a violent alcoholic. I started attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, which made me feel a bit better about things and improved my self-esteem. The improvement in my self esteem meant increases in the violence from my ex-partner.

Eventually in June 2006, wandering the streets at 4am after the ex had locked me out I decided to take control of my life and declared myself homeless. The ex went on holiday and trusted me with the flat keys to feed the fish and collect his post, I used the opportunity to clear the flat of all my belongings, re-housed my fish with my brother; and spent another hot summer, this time three years later, attending the day hospital and living in a bed and breakfast whilst I waited to be re-housed.

During this time I met TuT and after six weeks of being with him moved to South Yorkshire to live with him; I knew I loved him and wanted to be with him forever and I wanted a fresh start away from everything that had happened in North Yorkshire.
There’s been plenty more that has happened whilst I have been moving around the country for TuT’s work and we have been at the mercy of whichever mental health team we were living under.

I was pretty exhausted after covering all this history with the CPN conducting the assessment. There is a place fairly near to us that will be able to help me come to terms and deal with the abuse when I am ready. In the mean time she would like me to attend the local day hospital here. So I am now waiting to hear from them and am just hoping that I won’t have to go through another assessment at the day hospital and go through the whole story again!

I spent the rest of the day exhausted and feeling like I’d sat a couple of A-Level examinations.

Today the sun is shining and the weather is wonderful. I am going to a different Weight Watchers meeting at 10:30am to find out how the last week of tracking my points has gone – I am at the mercy of the scale-gods! Wish me luck and I will post my weigh-in result when I get home.