"I feel I am not getting the correct treatment"

For 6 years I have been unable to work, cos I’m still waiting for the correct treatment. I've been stuck in the first stages of grief for the past 14 years, and no mental health professional has picked up on that. How can they not recognise grief, when I'm sitting there telling them what I've lost? They just treated me for depression, you know, pills and go home and forget your future. There is treatment out there but I can’t afford to go private. Whoever thought that the nodding dog treatment would actually help?

Even the local grief association can’t help me. They only deal with bereavement, not loss. If I had had the correct treatment I would have been back at work years ago. I’m gradually getting more and more angry with the health service and I am not alone in my anger. It has been the same in Northampton and Brighton; wherever I go it’s the same.

Now I’m suffering physical signs, well curling up on a sofa for years has to take its toll on the muscles etc. I find it painful just to reach up to a shelf but I can’t see the point having treatment for that. Appointments for MRI scans, smears, cancer screening, all have gone in the bin for a long time now. What’s the point of treating the body, if the mind don’t want to know?

I spend each and everyday angry cos I’m still alive, and angry cos I haven’t got the guts to throw myself off a multistory car park or overdose. Do I have to get physical to get attention? Do I need to get nasty? One thing I do know is that I’m not the only one who is getting very angry at the mental health services.