Comments by Robin Edwards

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  • Circle 10. You are not the only one to feel bitter, disillusioned, and disappointed. That is your right to feel that way. But we all deserve to be respected, and make the choices we feel are the best for us and lead us to success. We are survivors. Maybe you have someone you cared about very closely, that did not get any respect, or any proper care. I hope you did not tell them they did not deserve it, which would’ve made things much worse. We all need support from our circle of my loved ones.

    I do feel bad for anyone who struggles with depression. I have major depressive disorder, resistant major depressive disorder. I have tried just about everything under the sun. I have finally found a treatment that works. I have struggled with the monster for 10 years, and for the first time since then I can carry on a conversation, and feel “normal”. It was a very long dark 10 years. But I survived. My intent now is to help others, not throw stumbling blocks in their way

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  • Circle 10, once again I am flabbergasted by your statement. You say we don’t really deserve to be treated with care in a psychiatric or medical environment?! Of course we do! The stigma of not deserving care, is the very reason “Mad in America”magazine exists. They are trying to fight the stigma that we don’t deserve care, and here you are condoning it.

    If you want to go through life thinking YOU don’t deserve care, which basically says you don’t think you deserve respect either, because respect and care go hand-in-hand, if that works for you, great! Because if you condone the lack of care for others, then you don’t deserve it either. And that may be cool with you. It means you basically don’t deserve care no matter where you go..what a sad outlook. Because you can’t limit it to just a psychiatric or medical environment, because people are people no matter where they work, and if you condone an uncaring attitude in those environments, you condone it anywhere.

    I for one, know I deserve care, and respect, it is the basic thread of our personalities that holds society together. If we all just walked around and acted like people don’t deserve care, what a horrible world it would be. Because again, if we don’t deserve it, or anticipate care in the most serious environment where it is needed the most, then according to you we should not expect it anywhere, much less deserve it.

    I will continue to fight for myself and others, that’s called caring…oops, I forgot, they probably don’t deserve it….according to you anyway. Because you can’t say we don’t deserve it in one setting, but deserve it in another. Caring is not a card people pull out of their pocket to clock in with. Most people have a measure of compassion, which leads to caring, even in the simplest of environments. How sad to go through life without that common thread

    Even though I have met with uncaring professionals in the mental health system, I have often met with very caring and compassionate people. You’re going to meet with uncaring people no matter where you go.

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  • Thank you. I wrote a poem about how the system’. “Rules”, can cause us harm. Instead of trying to come up with an alternative plan of care, they read you a “rule”, then dismiss you.

    Blind Ego

    You left me to surely die
    because you say that you “care”
    but you really have to cover your ass
    buried in your rules somewhere
    You left me to just scrap by
    barely able to survive
    while you read from an article
    amongst your arsenal of archives
    You sat on your pious throne
    carved from your arrogant learned ego
    and sentenced me to a dark death
    just for a circus show
    To show that you can read?
    to show that you can talk?
    but you’ll never understand the show
    because you’ve never walked the walk
    You’ve never had death claw at you
    in the darkness of your mind
    and rip your very soul apart
    because your ego makes you blind
    Blind to the terror in my eyes
    blind to my tears and frantic pleas
    blind to the dying breath I gasp on
    just to prove that you can read

    I wrote this after I was dismissed from the program that literally was saving my life. Just dismiss me, never said “let’s have a plan of care to see what else we can do, let’s keep in touch through video therapy on a daily basis to see how you’re doing, we will further research this so we don’t leave you hanging”. But that never happened. I had to beg, cry, literally plea for my life, my vey existence. I was falling down the rabbit hole, and nobody cared because of their rules. The director was very dismissive, and the only reason he even allowed a meeting with me was to just further their agenda of disallowing me further treatment. There was no compassion, no empathy, nothing. I only begin treatment again because I refused to accept their decision.

    I felt like a bug stuck on its back, no matter how I tried to “right myself”, I just could not do it. People would walk past me, and watch me struggling to survive, and just throw out a feigned empathetic response. I explained that I would not survive, unless I could receive treatment. But no one seemed to care to try help me. If I hadn’t fought, with all my heart, I wouldn’t have received treatment again.

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  • Circle 10, I was not sure how to respond to your comment. I had to do a few deep breath’s. Your comment suggests “we” just innocently offered ourselves up for sacrifice to the mental health machine. Most of us were thrust into it involuntarily, or by “well meaning” family members. Most people do not have a supportive barrier to falling victim to “the machine”.

    Just like when you go to the doctor, or a “specialist”, you expect, AND DESERVE, a measure of anticipated care. The story you just read, was my first experience in the mental health system. Obviously it didn’t go well. But it was through no fault of my own, and to try to ambiguously “blame” us for “using” the system, is arrogantly ignorant, and harmful.

    Not only do we have to try and survive a “machine” that is designed to help us, and survive the stigma society places on us, now we have to survive the condemnation of trying to survive by any means….even if that means “trying again” out of sheer hopelessness.

    Have you ever almost drowned, gasping for breath, and felt your life slipping away? You are so tired, it would be so easy just to let yourself go, but instinctively you struggle to survive. That’s why people allow themselves to be in and out of a system you find unacceptable. Because it’s our only option, our only “life raft”. Don’t chastise us for trying to survive. Would you rather us wander around aimlessly, with no direction at all as to what to do? It may take a while, but eventually we stumble on a “solution” within the system. It is like a very long battle of struggling to get a gasp of life saving air. Don’t discourage people from hanging on

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