Misanthrope
Mage
- Oct 23, 2018
- 557
As a former advocate for people with mental health issues and learning difficulties, I have had a number of my clients enact suicide over the years. I have witnessed a lot that leaves me more than a little bitter and frustrated at the sheer stupidity and horror of it all. I somewhat use here to vent some of that shit. It is hard not to ruminate these days. Sickness leaves me with a lot of time to think despite my steam library.
Not enough is really done to meaningfully address chronic suffering in this world. It seems more is done to instead shift blame onto the victims of prolonged pain. Instead of the broken systems, or untouchable people that maintain these frankly absurd systems or are protected by them.
Pain is constantly trivialised. Just look at the word stress for instance. For most, it does not conjure much. It is not viewed as all that serious. However, you look at the science on it and its an absolute assault on mind and body with horrific statistics behind it. It worsens every condition in existence. Wipes out years of your life and quite literally causes brain damage. Causes kids to hang themselves from bedroom curtains because of exam stress. Workers to jump out of factory windows. On and on it goes. Why is this a correlation so ignored?
Various things are not even considered serious or even viewed as a kind of pain. Even though they have equally horrific statistics attached to them. Like chronic loneliness, that an emoji can never give you what you biologically need. Loneliness should be treated like an impending heart attack, but it isn't. I had elderly clients ringing me up just because they were lonely. It did not help that various means of social inclusion had been cut into non-existence. So I could provide them little practically. Often leaving them trapped in their own homes. Often times supported housing wasn't so supported. Loneliness literally drives people mad and is an often trivialised pain. Then all of a sudden, they are a smell under the door. "Oh no, how terrible." People will say. The vultures show up and suddenly care.
Anxiety is another often trivialised pain. Even though it robs a person of living a fulfilling life. Usually resulting in the two other states of not considered serious enough pain. Made all the worse because anxiety robs a person of the very thing they need to beat it. Since it gets so ignored it winds up entrenched and even harder to tackle later down the line.
Another state of pain that I rarely ever see explored, is disappointment and chronic dissatisfaction. I am fairly certain the way we live currently is entirely stupid and toxic. Does not help that many of us grow up told a pack of lies that get internalised. These are convenient lies for society to deny its own role. Instead, all fault lays solely with you and not the broken systems at work. Like we live in a vacuum and willpower is all you need.
Add in that we spend our best years in environments we may well hate. Surrounded by people you may well want to stab in the face regularly. Especially, when it comes to management syndrome. If you are in that state that leads right back to chronic stress. What sent one client over the edge was receiving an automated birthday card from the job that fired him. A job he had worked at for thirty-odd years.
Too many people live in a state of living a hollow non-authentic life, of going through the motions. Or living up to the standards of someone else. Losing themselves somewhere in that. So many of my clients made statements to that effect.
My observations of people caught up in the mental health system was that many of them were the ones who had approached the service in question. Only to be told they basically were not broken enough to qualify for help. With a warped catch 22 at work. If you were well enough to ask for help you were not sick enough to get it. Or were put on such a long waiting list that it beggars belief. When they do finally get that therapy it is a gamble on competence and the time frame is usually limited.
Imagine if we treated cancer this way!
"I am sorry, we can't help you yet, you are not close to terminal enough."
"Your cancer does not currently qualify."
"Is your cancer as serious as you think it is?"
"You are quite young, maybe your cancer is not cancer but just a phase?"
"Maybe you should stop smoking cannabis, clearly you don't want to help yourself. Come back when you have quit."
"I don't think you have cancer I think you just want attention."
"Are you malingering because you like people feeling sorry for you?"
"Sorry someone has more severe cancer than you, you should be grateful yours is not quite so bad. Here is a pamphlet on how you can better help yourself."
"Have you tried rethinking your cancer so it is not so cancerous?"
"You don't have cancer this is just a behaviour issue and we don't treat that."
"Unfortunately because of the specific cancer you have, you don't qualify for the treatment that would likely help you the most with your symptoms."
"Could you sign this, so if you do die of cancer we are not legally responsible and can gamble on your wellbeing to save money. As well as keep beds available."
"So you are coughing up blood and your stools are black. No, they are not, I am not you, but in this forty minute period, I know you better than you know yourself. Take these and come back in two weeks."
This delay meant it was not uncommon to see people worsen while holding out hope. Or have a bunch of old wounds opened and then the therapy suddenly ending. Unsurprisingly my client then was in even more of a mess than when they started and dropped into such heavy disappointment they wouldn't know what to do. I am convinced that this behaviour kills plenty.
Yet the core standard advice is to seek help... What help? Over the years I have just seen support services outside of the standard flawed mental health environment of drug em and turf em out. All cut to ribbons, or go under leaving nothing but a wasteland. Resulting in having drugs thrown at people by a GP you are hard-pressed to see, at a problem that may have environmental or physical causes that never get explored. It is so bad you have signposting services signposting to other signposting services and pretending that is helping. The corruption at work in charities is utterly depressing. In the meantime, It is like the system is playing pass the parcel with human lives! The beancounters probably happiest if no one existed but they still get paid.
It gets uglier. My clients who had the misfortune of being diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder were the most fobbed off demographic. There is an awful kind of judgmentalism towards them. Bigotry is certainly alive and well in the mental health sphere from the very people administering this infantilising system. Often it was insinuated they were attention-seeking. So fucking what if they are!? That is a sign of a problem in of itself, isn't it? What if they are not? You a mind reader, got X-men level powers I don't know about?
Oh look another person literally ignored to death... The hospital turning around and trotting out that well-worn phrase. "Lessons will be learned." What, like last time and the time before and before that?
I had one of my clients with this diagnosis told how much they were costing the NHS by a spiteful psychologist. They went on to self-harm to such an extent they damaged mobility in their hand...
I could write a fucking book over the shit I have witnessed but just too brain frazzled to deal with grammar, and what difference would it make anyway? The wasteland in this country is worsening and getting an insight into the states makes me horrified there is crueler legislation out there. An undercurrent of blaming the patient has crept in, to the extent it does not even hide itself any more. There is no accountability either. Efficiency savings and the mantra of doing more with less is responsible for people that wanted help to fall through the cracks and wind up sad statistics.
Or if they survive, then the system forces that 'help.' However, it comes at the point when that can only be viewed as an assault. Sometimes moving a person halfway across the country because there are no beds.
It should be obvious why minors should not be put into adult wards. Why mixed wards cause issues. Why police cells should not be considered a place of safety... I could go on, dangerous environments that can be overcrowded or falling into disrepair. Dangerous understaffing especially at night. Outdated systems that detract from patient care. Target culture blended with liability culture driving who is helped and who is sacrificed to bureaucratic criteria. Little follow up care. Next to nothing available outside of a hospital setting. Failure to listen to patients. Over drugging and downplaying the risks of these drugs. Useless crisis teams that tell people to have a bath and read a book. So useless in fact a common sentiment to hear was, "I would rather kill myself than talk the crisis team again." Secret blacklists of patients. Ridiculous caseloads. An incentive to downgrade severe mental disorders to lesser forms to get people off the books or deny them a CPN. Or maybe they are having to be so ruthless due being underfunded it just seems that way.
Society seems to have hardened as well. I mean can you imagine getting threats and abuse because you are helping people navigate social security systems? It is so crazy to see some of the most vulnerable demographics of people being vilified and denigrated for claiming what is theirs. What happened? I don't remember things being this hateful. I don't miss the trolls, bigots, or arseholes that have no grasp of poverty beyond a cartoon level of understanding.
Are things getting crueler? Is it all as bleak and hopeless as it seems? What can even be done any more when the status quo will readily disregard anything it does not agree with?
Sometimes I look forward to being dead so I don't have to look at this shit show any more. But, I am in one of those moods tonight it seems.
Not enough is really done to meaningfully address chronic suffering in this world. It seems more is done to instead shift blame onto the victims of prolonged pain. Instead of the broken systems, or untouchable people that maintain these frankly absurd systems or are protected by them.
Pain is constantly trivialised. Just look at the word stress for instance. For most, it does not conjure much. It is not viewed as all that serious. However, you look at the science on it and its an absolute assault on mind and body with horrific statistics behind it. It worsens every condition in existence. Wipes out years of your life and quite literally causes brain damage. Causes kids to hang themselves from bedroom curtains because of exam stress. Workers to jump out of factory windows. On and on it goes. Why is this a correlation so ignored?
Various things are not even considered serious or even viewed as a kind of pain. Even though they have equally horrific statistics attached to them. Like chronic loneliness, that an emoji can never give you what you biologically need. Loneliness should be treated like an impending heart attack, but it isn't. I had elderly clients ringing me up just because they were lonely. It did not help that various means of social inclusion had been cut into non-existence. So I could provide them little practically. Often leaving them trapped in their own homes. Often times supported housing wasn't so supported. Loneliness literally drives people mad and is an often trivialised pain. Then all of a sudden, they are a smell under the door. "Oh no, how terrible." People will say. The vultures show up and suddenly care.
Anxiety is another often trivialised pain. Even though it robs a person of living a fulfilling life. Usually resulting in the two other states of not considered serious enough pain. Made all the worse because anxiety robs a person of the very thing they need to beat it. Since it gets so ignored it winds up entrenched and even harder to tackle later down the line.
Another state of pain that I rarely ever see explored, is disappointment and chronic dissatisfaction. I am fairly certain the way we live currently is entirely stupid and toxic. Does not help that many of us grow up told a pack of lies that get internalised. These are convenient lies for society to deny its own role. Instead, all fault lays solely with you and not the broken systems at work. Like we live in a vacuum and willpower is all you need.
Add in that we spend our best years in environments we may well hate. Surrounded by people you may well want to stab in the face regularly. Especially, when it comes to management syndrome. If you are in that state that leads right back to chronic stress. What sent one client over the edge was receiving an automated birthday card from the job that fired him. A job he had worked at for thirty-odd years.
Too many people live in a state of living a hollow non-authentic life, of going through the motions. Or living up to the standards of someone else. Losing themselves somewhere in that. So many of my clients made statements to that effect.
My observations of people caught up in the mental health system was that many of them were the ones who had approached the service in question. Only to be told they basically were not broken enough to qualify for help. With a warped catch 22 at work. If you were well enough to ask for help you were not sick enough to get it. Or were put on such a long waiting list that it beggars belief. When they do finally get that therapy it is a gamble on competence and the time frame is usually limited.
Imagine if we treated cancer this way!
"I am sorry, we can't help you yet, you are not close to terminal enough."
"Your cancer does not currently qualify."
"Is your cancer as serious as you think it is?"
"You are quite young, maybe your cancer is not cancer but just a phase?"
"Maybe you should stop smoking cannabis, clearly you don't want to help yourself. Come back when you have quit."
"I don't think you have cancer I think you just want attention."
"Are you malingering because you like people feeling sorry for you?"
"Sorry someone has more severe cancer than you, you should be grateful yours is not quite so bad. Here is a pamphlet on how you can better help yourself."
"Have you tried rethinking your cancer so it is not so cancerous?"
"You don't have cancer this is just a behaviour issue and we don't treat that."
"Unfortunately because of the specific cancer you have, you don't qualify for the treatment that would likely help you the most with your symptoms."
"Could you sign this, so if you do die of cancer we are not legally responsible and can gamble on your wellbeing to save money. As well as keep beds available."
"So you are coughing up blood and your stools are black. No, they are not, I am not you, but in this forty minute period, I know you better than you know yourself. Take these and come back in two weeks."
This delay meant it was not uncommon to see people worsen while holding out hope. Or have a bunch of old wounds opened and then the therapy suddenly ending. Unsurprisingly my client then was in even more of a mess than when they started and dropped into such heavy disappointment they wouldn't know what to do. I am convinced that this behaviour kills plenty.
Yet the core standard advice is to seek help... What help? Over the years I have just seen support services outside of the standard flawed mental health environment of drug em and turf em out. All cut to ribbons, or go under leaving nothing but a wasteland. Resulting in having drugs thrown at people by a GP you are hard-pressed to see, at a problem that may have environmental or physical causes that never get explored. It is so bad you have signposting services signposting to other signposting services and pretending that is helping. The corruption at work in charities is utterly depressing. In the meantime, It is like the system is playing pass the parcel with human lives! The beancounters probably happiest if no one existed but they still get paid.
It gets uglier. My clients who had the misfortune of being diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder were the most fobbed off demographic. There is an awful kind of judgmentalism towards them. Bigotry is certainly alive and well in the mental health sphere from the very people administering this infantilising system. Often it was insinuated they were attention-seeking. So fucking what if they are!? That is a sign of a problem in of itself, isn't it? What if they are not? You a mind reader, got X-men level powers I don't know about?
Oh look another person literally ignored to death... The hospital turning around and trotting out that well-worn phrase. "Lessons will be learned." What, like last time and the time before and before that?
I had one of my clients with this diagnosis told how much they were costing the NHS by a spiteful psychologist. They went on to self-harm to such an extent they damaged mobility in their hand...
I could write a fucking book over the shit I have witnessed but just too brain frazzled to deal with grammar, and what difference would it make anyway? The wasteland in this country is worsening and getting an insight into the states makes me horrified there is crueler legislation out there. An undercurrent of blaming the patient has crept in, to the extent it does not even hide itself any more. There is no accountability either. Efficiency savings and the mantra of doing more with less is responsible for people that wanted help to fall through the cracks and wind up sad statistics.
Or if they survive, then the system forces that 'help.' However, it comes at the point when that can only be viewed as an assault. Sometimes moving a person halfway across the country because there are no beds.
It should be obvious why minors should not be put into adult wards. Why mixed wards cause issues. Why police cells should not be considered a place of safety... I could go on, dangerous environments that can be overcrowded or falling into disrepair. Dangerous understaffing especially at night. Outdated systems that detract from patient care. Target culture blended with liability culture driving who is helped and who is sacrificed to bureaucratic criteria. Little follow up care. Next to nothing available outside of a hospital setting. Failure to listen to patients. Over drugging and downplaying the risks of these drugs. Useless crisis teams that tell people to have a bath and read a book. So useless in fact a common sentiment to hear was, "I would rather kill myself than talk the crisis team again." Secret blacklists of patients. Ridiculous caseloads. An incentive to downgrade severe mental disorders to lesser forms to get people off the books or deny them a CPN. Or maybe they are having to be so ruthless due being underfunded it just seems that way.
Society seems to have hardened as well. I mean can you imagine getting threats and abuse because you are helping people navigate social security systems? It is so crazy to see some of the most vulnerable demographics of people being vilified and denigrated for claiming what is theirs. What happened? I don't remember things being this hateful. I don't miss the trolls, bigots, or arseholes that have no grasp of poverty beyond a cartoon level of understanding.
Are things getting crueler? Is it all as bleak and hopeless as it seems? What can even be done any more when the status quo will readily disregard anything it does not agree with?
Sometimes I look forward to being dead so I don't have to look at this shit show any more. But, I am in one of those moods tonight it seems.
