Depression and low mood (young people)

I’m really happy that I made the step that I did because the first step really is the hardest part. Waiting to go in into the doctors to say, can I have a referral, or therapy or, or even going to your first therapy session, you’re stood outside you know, you know you stand and chain smoking you know, you might just stand there and like be a nervous wreck beforehand, but as soon as you get in you sit down, the first words that come out of your mouth are just tumbling, it’s so easy and after that it’s you’re not falling anymore, you’ve stopped yourself. And you can climb back up and stand up and say well, I’ve got through this and it’s a nice feeling once you’ve made the first step. ‘Cos you realise that you can change, that you’re not alone, that there are people out there who do genuinely wanna help you. It’s definitely the hardest step though, the first.

 

But you know it only gets, it gets harder but it gets easier again you know, you have your moments when like, you’ve talked about things in the past and they’ll hurt, and then afterwards you’ll feel so much, so much lighter you could like, you know you feel like you could float off into space, it’s nice. It’s good, it’s good to make that first step and everybody should do it, if you’ve got a problem definitely just not sit alone.

And I was just very, very hopeful about it all, and I thought….

 

What if I, what if I have a panic attack there and then? You know I’ve got no medication or anything like that.”

 

And you know I spoke to this lady then and they were so helpful and a lot of people would just think, oh they’ll just say they’ll just, I hate this horrible, you know this teenage view that sometimes going to a GP isn’t helpful, they’ll just give you medication, turn you into a zombie, or… But there are non-medication ways of doing it, and it is so useful going to the GP and of course if you get in within their schedule and everything like that, but you know it’s, I just remember that just feeling of just feeling so good coming out of there and walking down the hall and just thinking, “This is the start of a new life really.”

She [GP] was great. She reassured me, she gave me a cuddle, she let me cry, she was just fantastic with me. I mean there aren’t many GPs out there that would hug you when you walk in to their office and hug you when you walk out. And she’s been like that with me for the past few years. And, you know, that’s fantastic. Most GPs want you in and out, you know, write out a prescription off you go. She’s not like that.

I am, I’m very, and I think you know again, it’s Karma, it’s fate. I was meant to have her as my GP and I’m fortunate enough to have her as my GP, and I could say, and I have said to her, if she wasn’t my GP I probably really wouldn’t be here now. And so for me she was my support. And still distant from it because I know she’s a GP and she’s there to do a job, but she was my support looking back.

Sian' Some things do help. Some things don’t help. It’s about getting used to them really. It’s about getting, sometimes you do get that special person in the authorities that will make it happen for you.

 

Mandy' Or go that extra mile to make sure that you’re safe.

 

Sian' And when that’s there you do feel safer, and you feel a lot better for it.

 

Mandy' Yeah I know that someone is going to take the time to you know bend the rules and…

 

Sian' Yeah definitely.

 

Mandy' And break them occasionally just to make sure that you know, you’re safe. That they actually do care, rather than it’s not just a job, and…

 

Sian' Not just for a job.

 

Mandy' Not just a 9 to 5. You know that they’ll work with you and not talk at you, that you know, it’s respect I think, respecting that you’re a person and not an illness.

 

Sian' Yeah.

 

Mandy' ‘Cos what we find is a few people I think that they see past that, and that’s all that anybody ever wants is to be treated as a person and not a number or an illness.

Mandy' That they’ll [professionals] take the time to stop and go, “Well, this might help. But you know I want you to try it,” not, “This will help, go away and do this.” type thing. ‘Cos I found that even with the good ones to begin with. He gave me this thing of, he wrote it up, a sort of a care plan of what I’d do if I felt really, really bad, and I didn’t even, I didn’t do any of it really, I was you know, “I’m not doing what you tell me to. You know I’ve only just met you, I walk in and you give me this. You’re having a laugh.” But then you, he re-did it, and he re-did it with me, and he involved me in the process of it, and like I was a lot more open to actually using it then, which I found was helpful. So being involved I think helped. And you know since I’ve been a lot more involved in my care I’ve come a lot further.

 

Sian' Definitely. I think if they involve you in the meetings rather than talk behind your back, you feel. I mean, they haven’t been, they have like big case meetings and things about you and it’s all done behind your back and it’s all hush, hush. And you’re not allowed to know anything about it basically. That, that’s not good but when they do start thinking well, yeah, let her come in, let her sit down, have her opinion, and, but that’s what helps really, letting you, letting you have own opinion.

 

Mandy' And it helps you learn to trust yourself again. That you can make decisions, that you’ve got some control. Which is what a lot of people with the depression and sort of the similar illnesses feel they don’t have, they feel they’ve lost that.

 

Sian' Control, yeah.

 

Mandy' It makes you sort of, if you’re involved in trying to fix your life really, ‘cos that’s what it is, then you’ve got the opportunity to build a better one, you’ve got the opportunity to actually wanna live.

I think the best form of help is telling you there’s help there, them telling me I can go to them, rather than them telling me, “Oh we want you to do this now,” or “We want you to take this medication. You’re going to be in hospital at this time.” Because now like I’ve got, before the care plan which has been made up for me, but now they include me in making like a care plan like they’ll say, “What do you want to do if you feel depressed? Do you want us to take you to the hospital? Do you want to talk to your, is there a specific person you want to talk to, not just a professional? Do you want to talk to a stranger? Do you want to talk to someone you know?” And sort of just including the person in the care that they’re receiving, is the best thing, rather than just telling them.

And they then decided to refer me up to the hospital. Went up there saw a doctor, who examined me; I had my stick at that point. Told me that she couldn’t find anything wrong with my reflexes, my muscle strength, anything like that, and when she found out I had depression, she decided it was all in my head. That was really difficult, that was the closest I had felt to suicide in years hearing that because I felt like she was actually telling me I was insane.

 

She took my stick away from me because she said I didn’t need it and told me I had to walk without it. That was humiliating. Because I walk awfully without my stick and I walk around inside without it because it’s just my family or my close friends that will see and that’s okay, but I was in a children’s hospital, and she made me walk around without my stick.

 

She then, and I was saying to her I have had the depression for ages, I have had this for such a long time I have had the headaches side of it, I have had the psychosomatic side of depression, I have had the headaches, I have had the nausea, I’ve also had the feeling of I don’t want to get out of bed and face the world today, but this isn’t, “I can’t, I don’t want to get up and face the world today,” this is, “I cannot get out of bed today.” It’s completely different, and she wouldn’t listen. So then I saw the psychiatrist, the psychologist and the social worker, got discharged.

 

I went for a meeting in [place name] with another psychiatrist who changed my medication, and then I ended up at [hospital name], the week after that and they doubled my dosage of antidepressants. And it was only there that one of the psychiatrists actually started to take me seriously. Because this was a bunch of mental health specialists that couldn’t understand why I was there really. ‘Cos I mean it was obvious that I’ve got depression and everything, but this was different. And, oh, it drove me mad, it was horrible and I sat there and I would cry myself to sleep each night thinking, “Shit what if I’m wrong, what if this is, is actually all in my head.”

I was supposed to be on the, the government thing of the Care Programme Approach, CPA, which is supposed to be done when you’re, when you move over to that. I’ve actually never had one, I’ve got one, but it was never signed because it was never agreeable because they wouldn’t change it. The way that I was spoken to I was treated like a child. Appointment dates were arranged around them and not me. I had messages continually left on my home phone, “The dates I’m free are,” when again they were aware of my physical health and it leaves me back to you can’t have both, you just can’t have both because they do not take into consideration that because of my seizures are regular I can’t, each day’s different. I could be fine today; I could be really rubbish tomorrow. I was rubbish last night, I’m okay this morning. So, things are so unpredictable you just don’t know.

 

And that’s also the same how depression works. You know it’s a complete cycle, which they don’t, they didn’t understand that. And it was making me more and more stressed and more and more depressed and more and more anxiety, you know my anxiety was going through the roof.

 

And I asked to change case workers, ‘cos I checked with my social worker if I’m entitled to do that and she said, “Of course you are.” She said, “Any, any professional, you’re allowed to change GP, you’re allowed to change consultant, you’re allowed to change hospitals, you can change anything.” She said in her line of work, she said that you know, it all ranges, you know if you don’t get on with your social worker you can change. It doesn’t you know, it works like that, that’s how it is.

 

They refused it. They would not let me move. And they, we, I had it in writing, I asked in writing three times, I asked nicely twice, I even sweet talked to them on the phone, nope, it was refused. I then had it in letter, letter form refusal, in a really nasty kind of way, and that was the last straw. That was it. But I can’t deal with it anymore. If I can’t work with my case worker how am I gonna recover, I can’t, they had the cheek to turn round to me and say, “Well why don’t you talk to us?” Well how can I talk to you if I can’t talk to the person I’m supposed to be working with.

 

It doesn’t, it makes no sense to me at all. And the issue was a big care meeting was called, over my care because I kicked off, I literally kicked off.

I think I was about 15 and I went and I said I’ve been feeling really low and I think it’s depression. And he sort of, I can’t say he laughed in my face but he sort of chuckled and said, “Oh you’re too young to be depressed.” Just like completely ignored what I said, brushed it off and then just said “Come back if you still feel like it.” So that’s all that happened, I was in there for two seconds and I was out.

 

 

Yeah, I didn’t tell my parents that I was going.

 

 

Yeah.

 

 

Yes. I think I was getting quite desperate and I was wanting help so I went.

 

 

No [laughs].

 

 

No.

 

 

I think I went home and cried. but I, I sort of left it and just sort of struggled on.

There was a nurse at the psychiatric unit and I, they were supposed to be going out on a walk and we’d gone out on one the week before, and they’d told me there wasn’t much walking, but I was actually stuck in bed for the next three days. So obviously when they said we’re going on another walk, I refused to go, which I thought was actually perfectly logical because I didn’t particularly want to be stuck in bed for the next few days. They tried to persuade me to go, and watch other people walking around. I was like, “Yes, because I love watching other people doing what I can’t do.” I got quite upset, understandably I think. I ended up staying. They sent me to sit in the lounge. I was crying by this point, and the nurse they sent in to see me was, is, rather cruel anyway.

 

No-one liked her. And it wasn’t just because she’d make the anorexics finish their food, or she told the depressives they had to laugh sometimes, it was because she was genuinely nasty. She told someone with an eating disorder they should just roll into the lounge. And she sat down opposite me flicking through paper work and said to me, “So what is actually physically wrong with you Erika?” I went, “Well they think it’s Chronic Fatigue.” She was like, “Well is it in tune with your mood?” She was like flicking through a magazine at this point while she was asking me these really personal questions. And I said, “No it’s not psychosomatic, if that’s what you mean?” She said “Did those words leave my mouth?” “Okay then.” When I’m in a mood where I feel quite low, but not completely down, I can usually cheer myself up, but I’d prefer to be left alone because then I can just think quietly and think about the stupid little things, and make myself feel okay. But she said to me, “You know if you don’t talk to me you’re not gonna get better.” “And not being funny but when I’m in this kind of mood I’d rather just be left along please.” She got up and slammed this magazine back down on the table, and said, “Well when you feel like actually doing something about your health, you can walk and come and find me can’t you?” just to give an example, and that’s not right. I don’t think that’s fair that someone who is being, ‘cos that’s just malicious, that someone who’s gonna react like that should actually be allowed to interact with teenagers who have got serious problems. Because we’re, we’re at a tier 4 status, so we’re like supposed to be the most crazy of the crazy lot. And yet she’s allowed to, I don’t think that’s right. She’s actually left now. We’ve put in a couple of official complaints.