Today my care coordinator discharged me from the CMHRS, stating there wasn't anything else for them to offer me, she said although my weight is under what it should be it isn't of critical concern and that I still weigh too much to be able to access the therapies I feel would help me.
This came as quite a surprise after I saw her two weeks ago, when I said I felt I should discharge myself as the work her and I were doing wasn't helping me and she could not accept that I didn't want to treat my eating disorder as self harm. Her view was that we had to delve into my life to find what had happened to me in order for me to self harm by restricting food.
For me this isn't what my eating problem is about.
I know abuse and trauma are often key parts of why people become mentally unwell, but I also know that I am not suppressing abuse from my childhood or some traumatic event.
I told that if she didn't understand that and see it the way I do then I'm wasting their time. I said I would rather contact a private therapist who could work through issues with me and stop focusing on the eating being a form of self harm. Of course restricting food intake can be classed as a form of self harm, but I do not do it cause myself pain or to torture myself for some reason. It's quite the opposite, as not eating makes me feel good.
She told me I was due to get a new care coordinator today, as she was going to a new job, and she said hopefully the new care coordinator would have a different approach that I would take to better.
So today I turned up ready to meet my new care coordinator. Only to be told that they had discussed me after my last appointment and decided yes I could be discharged.
My care coordinator said that my consultant had said if I didn't want the clinical management work around self harm then there wasn't anything else they could offer.
This upsets me, not because I feel rejected from their service but because I have always backed up the NHS. Through it's constant criticism I have always believed that the NHS is a wonderful thing that we are lucky to have. In my job I've been on the receiving of a lot of criticism from patients and families, I always saw their side but also thought 'patients don't see how hard it is for staff, they don't see the lack of resources or the lack of staff, they don't understand that we are doing our best under immense pressure'.
Now, when I talk about the NHS I don't mean physical care. I've had a lot of physical health care hospital stays in my life and the care has always been amazing.
But the mental health side is lacking so much.
It isn't nurses fault that there isn't enough money in the NHS, but for nurses and doctors to state so bluntly that you just aren't thin enough for help is almost cruel? I could never even imagine being so blunt to a patient about something that is clearly such a huge issue for them. It left me feeling as if I wasn't taken seriously at all, and made me question if there's even anything wrong with me.
When I asked my consultant what help I could be given for my laxative addiction, she told me to 'just cut down on them'.. as if I hadn't ever thought of that?
People speak of an obesity epidemic that's hit the world, what about the mental health epidemic?
So much of the NHS is amazing and there are brilliant mental health services but they are so few and far between.
Having a mental health illness is like carrying a weight tied around your heart. Some people manage to drag themselves along with the weight, stumbling through life. Some, over time, learn to balance that weight and live a decent life. Others cannot lift that weight alone.
I've spent the last five years lifting those weights for people. That's what I want my career to be built around. If I can find a way to drag my own along and carry on.
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