"Mental health support"

After getting a diagnosis and starting my ADHD medication, all was going well. Unfortunately the medication started to make me very suicidal so I called up my mental health practitioner who advised me to stop taking them immediately and go to a&e for mental health crisis support.

I took the rest of the day off work and got on 2 buses to get to a&e. The wait wasn’t long which was great. However when I got seen, I realised that one of the people who would be doing this appointment (me still being unsure to what it entailed) was someone that I knew. The other was a staff member who I had previously put a complaint in about.

Already being at my lowest point, this startled me and I had to put a guard up. They did say I could wait 3+ hours for someone else but it wasn’t said like an option. It was very passive aggressive, like the rest of the appointment. I felt continuously belittled, with them saying that I was contradicting myself when I explained some of the issues I was facing. It made me feel stupid and small. It was already bad enough that I had to share my deepest darkest thoughts with someone who I knew, that was very different from myself.

At one point they’d mentioned the crisis line, to which I explained I didn’t have a great previous experience with, which lead to them bickering with me about the strain on the NHS (making me feel bad for explaining that the person on the crisis line actually made feel worse, like that was my fault?).

It’s been 2 days since that appointment and I’ve not been the same since. I’m very close to giving up with help. I left work that day feeling good that someone would see me and speak to me and make me feel okay or at least explain why I was feeling the way I was. Instead it was an interrogation which made me feel small and completely helpless.