Antidepressants

In terms of psychiatrists and medical professionals they’ve all been wonderfully kind, supportive, helpful I really, you know, can’t thank them enough because they have, they've been very good. The things that I feel that, where there have been shortfalls is that I feel that GP’s I don’t think know enough about how to support someone with mental health even those with the best of their intentions and so I think that appropriate referrals maybe in the past for me were not made quickly enough and in terms of medication again I think, I don’t know what the answers are for this but the GP’s just get their generic training on what they’re told the latest things are. But I actually feel that the best support that I’ve had and I’ve got has been when I have been referred to a psychiatrist and that’s when we can have in-depth conversations, that’s when I really can find out more about things.

The psychiatrist will ask about your symptoms and he’ll then look in his book and see what tablets he can send you away with. I mean I’ve even had where it’s got to quite heated discussions with them, you know, and them trying to do a deal with me like well can we at least put down that if, you will go to the GP and have these, if you feel worse.
 
Do you feel that that’s the sort of, there’s a joint decision making process going on between you and, when you see a psychiatrist or is it more like it’s being done to you?
 
It’s more like being done to me particularly with the psychiatrist because it’s a bit like that thing with consultants in a hospital or whatever, you know, he or she, I’ve always had ‘he’ psychiatrists that you know they’re the sort of the God on high, the head of the tier of the hierarchy and you know just the whole atmosphere. I mean it might, I may be a little biased because I have yet to have a psychiatrist tell me anything that I have found particularly useful in getting better. And that might sound rather arrogant but it’s not, it’s ….I respond much better to people who let me tell them ‘this is how I feel’ it might not go into a little box, some things do I mean obviously there’s but some things are just about how, how you feel and it’s really.
 
It’s very individual isn’t it?
 
Yes and it’s very presumptuous of somebody else, you can have all the training in the world but you’ve got to be able to, instead of trying to fit everybody into a neat little box and, you know and there’s time restrains and everything else they’ve got so many people to see in a certain time and, you know, I get that but there’s not always the time to give people the individual attention that perhaps they’d need.

Well, you see, it’s just the luck of the draw which psychiatrist you get for a start and some people have got bad ones and some have got good ones and there’s also, until you get a consultant you get the oh what do you all them the, the junior psychiatrists before they become consultants and they change every six months and I think they were thinking of changing them to every three months, so every time you go you have to tell your whole story all over again and I’d like to see them kept on longer for perhaps a year seeing people.
 
More continuity then?
 
Because every time you see a new one you have to establish a relationship with them, you have to tell your whole story again which is painful because they don't seem to read their notes, you have to tell your whole story every time. And by the time you’ve told your story your sessions almost finished and by the time you’ve got friends with them, where you feel you can trust them or you’ve sussed them out whether you don’t trust them, they’ve gone and you’ve got somebody else. So either people ought to have a longer time to get to consultants earlier and perhaps the other one sitting in but I think there ought to be longer term seeing people, you need time to open up to them, it’s not easy talking about things to people.
 
So one of the things that you would recommend would be its good for people to see the same person?
 
Yes.
 
Continuously.
 
Yeah, yeah once you get a consultant you do that until they’re better or something which I think it’s a lot better but again they, some, as I was saying some psychiatrists just say how are you, I’m feeling alright, you sure you’re alright, still taking those tablets, tablets alright, sleeping, okay, yes, appetite’s alright, okay. I mean you could say okay whether you are or not and they say right see you next week that’s five minutes and you’re gone. And others will say, and some of them won’t even look at you or they’re looking at their watch or just looking at the thing on the screen without even looking at you. Some have got terrible personal skills, interpersonal skills but some are great, some will sit and talk to you and when they say how are you they talk about it and tell me how you feel and how is this. And the ones that remember, you know, how’s your cat getting on or something like that, or has your wife done this or how is your, they’re, they’re the winners ain’t they. But it’s just the luck of the draw.
 
And would you say that over the years then you’ve felt better or worse depending on which kind you’ve seen?
 
Yeah. I mean I had a bad one that lasted for 12 years. Yeah I couldn’t tell him anything, if I said I was ill, he’d up my pills, if I said I was suicidal he’d have put me in hospital, so I just said alright, fine, okay and he said right see you. Or if I said, also he used to say, although sometimes I’d say yes alright, I’m fine and then he’d sometimes say well I think you ought to stay off work, go and see your GP and get a certificate to stay off work, and I’d say alright, no you ought to stay off and so I would but it was hopeless really, he never listened to me never, no conversation all short sharp.

I would have liked a proper psychiatric consultation because it was literally within ten minutes he told me I was bipolar. And in fact to say that is a little bit like taking the rug from under your feet because you’re basically saying I think you’re loopy, you know. And I think that’s appalling I think you couldn’t just suddenly say to someone you’re got cancer, you couldn’t suddenly just say, you know, and he didn’t have a check list or anything that he was going through in a methodical manner, it was just purely on my behaviour. Now if he said look I’m going to be judging your behaviour I would have gone in and I could have been as nice as pie and then he would have had no behaviour to judge whatsoever, I just went in very relaxed and myself and a bit over the top probably.
 
And he couldn’t make anything of it so?
 
And he just thought you’re wild… wild equals bipolar, bipolar equal’s olanzapine and lithium.
 
So really within ten minutes or so of speaking to him he was offering you lithium?
 
Yes.
 
Without any other tests or diagnosis?
 
Yes, yes.