“I Work in Mental Health But Colleagues Don’t Understand My Depression”

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In The Guardian, an anonymous mental health nurse describes how struggling with her own depression has given her new insights into the state of mental health care and the attitudes of her own professional colleagues.

“These days I have to ensure that I’m booked to be seen at my GP practice and worry that my online records will be viewed by others,” the nurse writes. “During my last, and worst, breakdown I had several appointments at a hospital where I’d been a service manager. I’d made it clear that I didn’t want to be seen there but felt so wretched and desperate for help that I went. It was a demoralising and dehumanising experience. A constant flow of staff who I’d worked with walked past me. Those who saw me looked uncomfortable and didn’t acknowledge me. Having to shout through a glass screen because the receptionist couldn’t hear me left me feeling at worst like a criminal and at best like I’d hit rock bottom.”

I work in mental health but colleagues don’t understand my depression (The Guardian, May 11, 2015)

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3 COMMENTS

  1. “A confidential support group or network for clinicians and some clear policy guidance that protects confidentiality and the right to have local care without compromise would be a huge help and is unlikely to have many cost implications.”

    I’m quite certain there should not be separate confidentiality guidelines for clinicians, if these are not also provided to those who did not choose medicine as a profession. It does strike me as inappropriate that all people’s medical histories are so readily available to all insurance companies and doctors, even when a person politely chooses NOT to sign a HIPPA form.

    Since there actually are psychopathic doctors (google V R Kuchipudi and his partners, some of whom have now been arrested by the FBI) who fraudulently list kind organs donors they were unable to kill the first time they had them medically unnecessarily shipped to them, as patients at hospitals these people have never been to. And this results in kind, but die hard, organ donors not being able to get health insurance for themselves and their children. And it also results in the kind hearted organ donors being repeatedly, medically unnecessarily, shipped back to the same psychopathic doctors.

    Perhaps, medical records shouldn’t be so readily available? Maybe all medical records should be taken offline? Since the medical community at large is not ethical enough to abide by the HIPPA laws.

    • Yeah. It’s funny that they see how damaging and humiliating the system is but they only want to exclude themselves from it. Even when they develop some empathy for others because they get hit over the head with reality it still is too much to ask to extend it beyond your own limited social circle. I wonder where the problem comes from…

      People who work in these places are usually the last ones who should ever be in such positions.

  2. “People who work in these places are usually the last ones who should ever be in such positions.”

    That is so true. I believe a majority of the people who get into the mental health profession are either completely heartless or if they do have a heart in the beginning, it’s trained out of them. I know for me going to these assholes for help was one of the most dehumanizing experiences I ever had. And trying to debate with them is completely pointless, maybe not all but most of them have a heart of stone.