How the world has moved on. 20 years ago when I really needed a shrink, I'd been in the system for 7 months before my consultant even bothered to meet me. He didn't actually speak to me directly for another 7 months-he thought my key worker more important than me! He's one of the few I will never forgive.
When I moved to Hertfordshire 3 years ago, I thought it was prudent to make myself known to services; afterall at that stage I had had a consultant for 16 of the previous 17 years. 6 weeks after the referral was made, I spent an hour with very pleasant but confused Russian junior Doctor who asked me all sorts of familiar but irrelevant questions about voices and suicide. In her confusion she allowed me to meet the almighty consultant who told me I was too well to need them but to call his secretary if I went into crisis and he would see me. Yeah right! Like that is really going to happen! So ended my engagement with secondary services.
I do jest slightly because doing my job I do have some clout and connections. I needed a psychiatrist to see someone tomorrow-hey presto he will arrive 18 hours after I called. The world is of course different for those of us who live on the other side of the fence.
Perhaps that makes me lucky. I just find it so ironic how things have changed. Many of us feel nothing has changed but I would beg to differ on some issues. I wonder how different my world could have been back in 1993 when the shrinks acknowledged in their notes that I had psychotic symptoms but neither told me nor did anything about them. I wonder what Early Intervention in Psychosis would have made of me then.
More soon.
I Heard a Voice.
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