Re: Going to GP

jackdaw <jackdaw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:13bdg42rjdfi18e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Tuesday, what do I tell him and what can he do for me?

I'm worried I am heading toward a breakdown and that scares the ***
out of me. I don't want to go into hospital. I'm waiting for an
appointment from the Community Mental Health Team but they are
dragging their feet so I'm going to ring them today as well. I am
getting no support from my family.

I saw the most useless GP I've ever spoken to yesterday. I went in about
a symptom that wasn't a problem in itself, but which I was worried could
be a sign of something else. He just gave me some pills to treat the
symptom (insisting they were better for the job than the ones I already
take for it, which for me, they're not - I've tried both, and I'm on the
one I'm on for a reason) and that was it - I was in there for three
minutes at the most.

I don't think they'll put you in hospital unless you're truly nuts - if
either you have a long history of hospitalisations, or they think you're
very likely to top yourself. There aren't enough beds in mental wards
for all the people who need them. If this was beds in cardiac wards,
people would say it was a bad thing, but the public are told that the
fewer psychiatric beds, the better, and that everyone ought to be
treated in the community, no matter how ill they are. I've been told
plenty of stories about people like that - psychotic, suicidal,
pregnant, at extremely high risk, but no free psychiatric beds within a
100 mile radius.

Good luck with your consultation. I hope you're able to say everything
you want to say. Be as honest as possible, I'd say - if you don't want to
go to hospital, they can't make you unless they section you, and you have
to be pretty ill for them to be able to do that - besides, sometimes
there are no beds available anyway, so they'd have nowhere to put you if
they did section you.

Rosemary
.