Big Decision

I have always dreamt of having access to this medication. Enough medication to easily kill me. Faced with this opportunity I am now scared. I have spent many hours and days daydreaming about suicide in my life. Sometimes I have felt like making a dramatic exit such as throwing myself from the Humber Bridge. This has always been a dream of mine and I have toyed with the idea on many occasions. I have indeed been removed by the police on two occasions. But I think deep down I have always wanted an easier way out such as an overdose. I have taken a few overdoses in the half-hearted suicide attempt way, really just wanting to stop the pain and not truly wanting to die. I have dreamt of having access to lots of medication, taking them all and not waking up. I have never had that opportunity before.  But now I do. I have always wanted this, always. Now faced with this opportunity I am unsure if I want to die. I have my bad times, they come and go. I feel suicidal at times, it comes and goes. History has a way of repeating itself and on that basis I know I will have bad times and feel suicidal not just once more but on many occasions in the future. Do I just put an end to all that now while I have the chance?

I’ve not been having the best time lately but I’ve not been at my worst. I have had suicidal thoughts however, only last night while laying in bed pre-sleep I decided I was going home today to kill myself. Well I couldn’t go home and now I am back at my sisters where I am being confronted with this opportunity. Maybe fate has brought me to this opportunity. Maybe these circumstances are a way of the world telling me it is my time to go. Maybe it is fate that took my sister in to hospital and she got given all these medications. Maybe it is fate that my bathroom isn’t completed yet and I’ve had to come back to my sisters for the weekend. Maybe its fate that is taking my sister and the kids away for the night tomorrow so I will be left alone for the night with all this medication.  There are a lot of things there that fall into place perfectly for me to commit suicide. I am sure someone or something somewhere is saying that suicide is what I should do. I don’t normally believe in destiny but maybe to kill myself tomorrow is my destiny.

I have no life and I do not see a life for myself anymore. I definitely feel a high degree of hopelessness.  I am unsure if I can continue living like this when I know that the future holds more turmoil. If I do not kill myself tomorrow will I only end up killing myself in the future? If that is the case then why do I just not save myself the agony of living a few more years and do it tomorrow? I do not see the prognosis for me as being good. I have such a strong hate towards myself that I doubt I can overcome it. I have no real reason for being like this, no dark secret that if I talk about it I will feel better and recover. All this is my own fault and perhaps I do not deserve life. Sometimes I wish I could bottle up life. I wish I could take the life I had in me and give it to someone who deserves it. Somebody who will make better use of this so called “gift” of life.

I suppose it is a case of will I or won’t I. Part of me really wants to but part of me is scared too. I am not going to make a rash impulsive decision. Ending your life should be thought through carefully. Here is one of my favourite quotes from the girl, interrupted book “Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”  For the first time in my life I have the means and the opportunity but perhaps the motive is lacking slightly. Usually all I have is a strong motive. There is a motive there though and for once it isn’t a really intense and short lasting motive. It is more of a rational, thought about motive that I have come about after weighing up my life and my possible outcomes. I am unsure if the motive is strong enough at the moment. I really have some thinking to do over the next 24 hour period.

Brokemind

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Self-Harm Poem

I just wrote this poem. It is basically how i feel about my self-harm. What do you think?

I was innocent until I was thirteen.

Then my arms became unclean.

Maybe picking up that razor was a big mistake

But on the inside I was beginning to break.

Things got harder as I got older

I was left on each shoulder a heavy boulder.

The hills got steeper

And I cut deeper.

The scars got prominent

Self harm became dominant.

Now it’s too late

I have sealed my fate.

The blade is too much of a friend

One on which I may always depend.

Brokenmind

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My Experiences of the Crisis Team

Everyone has different experiences of the crisis team that varies from area to area. I’ve had experiences with two crisis teams. One better than the other. My first experience of the crisis team was in the city where I studied at university. I had been arrested for criminal damage but because I had also self harmed I was taken to hospital where I was bailed under the agreement I see the crisis team. After treatment for my self-harm I was sent to the day ward to wait for the crisis team. I waited from roughly 7-8am until gone 5pm in the evening. The only reason I didn’t leave was because I didn’t know the way out of the hospital as I had never been there before. I just sat there all that time without being offered food or water while being really scared to leave. When this nurse from the crisis team finally came she asked me a few questions for about 10 minutes and that was it. I was sent home. My second experience was back in my hometown after being forced to leave university. I had taken an overdose and after getting discharged from hospital I saw the crisis team for 2 nights before being discharged from their care after seeing the psychiatrist. It was a neutral experience really, not particularly helpful but not especially negative.

My third experience of the crisis team was back in the city where I studied at university after restarting my degree the following year. It was absolutely shocking! I went to an appointment with my student counsellor who was concerned about me. After she couldn’t contact my CPN she got an emergency GP appointment and took me there herself for the GP to to phone the crisis team who said they would be in touch within two hours. My counsellor took me back to the office so she could keep an eye on me and we waited. In the end she couldn’t wait with me any longer and contacted the crisis team. The crisis team told my counsellor they were busy and that someone would see me before 10pm. It was now about 5pm. My counsellor reluctantly sent me home and I waited at home. I think it was about midnight when they finally came. My GP had referred me around 3pm.

                When they finally came it was pointless. I think they stayed around 10-15 minutes and were exceptionally unhelpful. The day after they came again, again only staying around 15 minutes in which time they laughed and joked with each other and told me I would feel better if I had a job. I was struggling to manage with university as it was, so getting a job was the last thing I should/could’ve done. After this unhelpful and anger provoking experience I told my CPN I would never see them again. After sometime and me being stubborn in the fact I would not see the crisis team my CPN at the time made an agreement that in times of distress I could contact the A&E liaison team (a.k.a the self-harm team) which operated separately from the crisis team. Their job was to basically see people in A&E after an episode of self-harm and make the necessary referrals. I had a much better experiences with them and had built up relationships with some of the nurses due to my frequent attendance at A&E.

                The following year things got way too much for me. My CPN who I had developed major attachment issues with was on annual leave. One night my head was such a mess and the only people available were the crisis team. I phoned them as I was desperate. What followed was my worst experience of the crisis team. It started off ok but then they just bluntly started asking really personal and triggering questions. Questions that were very sensitive and shouldn’t be asked  over the phone. I hung up and took it out on myself. What resulted was my worst ever episode of self harm. I went to hospital via ambulance and while there had to be looked after by police I was so messed up mentally. At one point I ended up being restrained by the police because i was so distressed. I was transferred from hospital to another hospital with a plastic surgery unit. From there I was admitted informally to a psychiatric unit. I still rightly or wrongly blame this on the crisis team and how they handled me that evening. Never in my life will I use the crisis team in that city again. I still have a strong hate for them over 2 years later.

                That hospital admission lead to me being sectioned for two years. Afterwards I moved back to my hometown. After being out of hospital a week and a half one of my CPNs said she wanted me to see the crisis team for extra support. Well now they had rebranded themselves to the intensive home based treatment team, I still refer to them as the crisis team because that is what they essentially are. I was apprehensive to say the least. I was not impressed to start with but their care became better and in the end I built up a good relationship with two of the workers over a three-four week period. The other nurses were not brilliant however and I found their visits pretty pointless and unhelpful.

                Again last week I was referred back to the crisis team. Again my experiences with those two workers has been good but not with the others. Last Friday when they came out to see me they told me they would call at 10am the next day. They didn’t and I ended up being stressed out all day waiting for their call. It finally came at 4.30ish and when they came out to see me it was pretty pointless. Today I met with one of the good workers and I had a really positive meeting. I feel she is the only person that understands me at the moment. I actually wish that she and the other worker were part of my regular care team.

                So experiences with the crisis team can be good but they can also be disastrously bad. I have heard so many times from people in different areas of the country of how bad crisis teams are. They do repeatedly let people down which is really quite bad as crisis teams are there to help people when they are at their worst and in most need. Quite often crisis teams can make things worse but on some occasions they can be helpful. It is all very hit and miss. I guess as a service any crisis team will never be perfect. I guess it is the nature of their service. What are your experiences of the crisis team?

Brokenmind

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Low Points Of My Life Due To My Mental Health

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog post for a while and I thought I would do it now seen as though I feel crap and I need to distract. Maybe the subject is not the best thing to write about but maybe writing about bad times in the past will distract away from the current bad time I am going through.

So this blog is going to be about my 5 all time low experiences because of my mental health. They are not in a particular order as I don’t think you should rank things like these.

1.       Seclusion

The first time I was in seclusion was horrible. I was a patient on a PICU and I can’t even remember what I had done but they decided to put me in seclusion. I remember being dragged in whilst in restraint. They laid me on the mat and ran out closing this huge metal door behind them.  The room was bare except this big purple mat. I cried and cried and cried. It was a massive shock as I had never been locked in a cell or anything similar before. I wasn’t in long as I think they could tell it was distressing me significantly. It was about half an hour but it did feel like a lifetime at the time. I came out still crying and a nurse even offered to hug me I was so upset but then another one jumped in and said he couldn’t. I was in seclusion numerous times after that, my longest stint being over 24 hours. It still upset me for a while but after the 10^th or so time I had become desensitised to it. The first few times were horrid and the feelings you get from being locked up in seclusion are indescribable. You are utterly powerless. As a criminal locked in police cells and the like you have rights. As a mental health patient in seclusion you have none. No right to see a solicitor or to challenge being locked up. You can be in there for an unlimited time; it’s up to the doctors when they let you out. You feel total and utter powerlessness. I wouldn’t wish the experience of seclusion on my worst enemy. I wrote this poem after a period in seclusion once.

 There is a room with nothing there

Just a great big door and walls that are bare.

The only thing that fills the space

Is my broken mind and the tears that rush down my face.

Anger fuelled by torment and distress

The walls begin to move and my mind they compress.

With no way out it’s hard to cope

So once again in life you begin to lose hope.

With thoughts racing it’s hard to know what to feel

Someone please save me this cannot be real.

I pray that this is all an illusion

But as my head hits the wall, I know it’s real...

...I know this is seclusion

May I also add that one evening I was secluded in somebody else’s filth for a few hours. This guy had seriously assaulted a nurse and smashed his jaw to pieces and therefore had been placed in seclusion for over a week until a bed was found at a more secure hospital. That morning he had been moved. I was secluded in the evening and they hadn’t cleaned the seclusion room. As I was being dragged in other nurses were clearing out all the rubbish. When I was locked in it stank and there were bits of food everywhere. Not to mention the invisible dirt that was no doubt in there like sweat and urine. It was disgusting. How can they lock you up in somebody elses filth? Very degrading.

2.       A&E

One time I was in A&E after an episode of self harm. I was accompanied by the police. I remember getting agitated by the way the A&E staff were treating me as well as the police. I decided to leave. I went to walk through the door and the police grabbed me. There was a struggle. I ended up in handcuffs and leg restraints and laid on this mat on the floor the nurses had brought in. I was laid on this mat and all my bandages had come off in the struggle. I was left in handcuffs and leg restraints lying in my own blood for a good while. I was crying. Would they have left an animal lying in their own blood like that? It makes me feel sad when I think about this. It was a very low point in my life. They had also during the struggle placed me under section 136. Afterwards they just took that away and said I could go if I saw crisis team. So was all that even necessary? No it fucking wasn’t.

3.       Transfer from hospital

Again this incident involves the police. Surprised? I had been an inpatient for a about a week and a half. I’d just been transferred from the assessment unit to an open treatment unit. I had been there a few days and I was very mentally unstable. Another patient had destroyed something I had been working on all day in the craft room so I went and found her and threw a jug of water over her in the dining room. An argument followed and then I went to my room. About an hour later 2 nurses came into my room and told me to pack my things. I asked why and they told me I was moving back to the hospital I’d just moved from. I was confused and asked them why I was moving back to the assessment unit and they said I wasn’t. The other unit there was the PICU and I had previously been told that is where violent people go. I was scared and said I didn’t want to go there so I got out of bed and walked out of my room. 2 police officers were waiting for me and they threw me into the wall. I banged my head and I was then wrestled to the floor and cuffed. By this stage I was hysterically crying from the shock and brutality of it. All I had done was walk out my room. I hadn’t been violent or anything. The hospital was on lock down so they must have been prepared for it for some reason. I was dragged through the hospital down the stairs and thrown into the back of a police van. By the time I reached the PICU I was in a right state. I was placed in open seclusion (the outer bit and not the locked cell) and given medication to calm me down. I will never forget this experience ever. I am still shocked and angry about how they treated me. I was a mental health patient not a criminal.

4.       Being “line of sight”

After being in hospital a year I became significantly unwell again. After an incident of restraint and me stabling myself with a pen I was placed on 2:1 observations. For the first time I was placed on “line of sight” in the bathroom. This means the 2 nurses on my observations had to watch me in the bathroom basically. It was horrid. They watched me on the toilet and I think you’ll agree having a poo is a private thing so having not one but two people watching you is very degrading. It was a fairly distressing thing to do too. I really didn’t want to but I suppose when you got to go you got to go. Having my first shower on “line of sight” was an unpleasant experience too. I am very self conscious about my body and having two people watch you fully naked is not an enjoyable thing. Being in hospital kind of makes you desensitise to exposing your body, you definitely lose your dignity when unwell.

5.       Being IM’d in public

I was in restraint one day in the PICU and I was really distressed and struggling back. I was in the corridor of the communal area which was for both male and female patients of the ward. They dropped me on the floor and continued restraining me. Everyone was watching me including male patients when they pulled my pants down and injected me. Surely this should have been a private event. Its bad enough being IM’d without others seeing it happen to you and seeing your bare arse. How did this make me feel when I had calmed down? Embarrassed, ashamed and feeling like a total twat. Afterwards people were like “oh H that was good, you are crazy” blah blah blah. It wasn’t good, it was awful. Any occasion of being IM’d is an unpleasant experience but this was the worst.

There are other bad experiences i've had due to my mental health, but these are the ones that have made me feel the worse. alot of them when i think about them make me feel sad and angry.

Brokenmind

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Psychologist's Assessment

I wasn’t expecting much from this psychology assessment I had today. All I really expected was for me to give my life history, he tell me I need therapy and then he further tell me the waiting list is 12-18 months. Well surprisingly it was much better than that. I came away happy and I felt like I had actually got somewhere with services for a change.

                I was anxious before I went in, I was sat in the waiting room nervous but I kind of had figured how it was going to pan out. Maybe that’s what made me nervous. I’ve had six assessments by psychologists in the past. Two in the community before hospital and four in hospital, why would the seventh be any different? You talk about yourself, its hard and then you come away feeling dejected and more often than not feeling worse than you did before. I thought I would have an issue with him being male but I didn’t. I would have before hospital but being in hospital you get used to all the male nurses and doctors and I think I learnt I could get along with males.

                He started off asking me how I’ve been since hospital. I said I’d had difficulties at the start with self-harm and overdosing but that now I am managing that but I suffer with my mood still. We moved onto when I first started experiencing difficulties and I told him it was when I was 13 and described what they were. He asked if anything had happened around that age. At first I said no but then remembered something little. I told him what it was in little detail. I dismissed it as nothing much but he thought it was big. He said it was an attempted rape but I denied that. He asked me if I was to accept that it was an attempted rape, how would that make me feel. I said I don’t know because it wasn’t. We moved on through my life explaining how I was and various incidents that occurred. We discussed my old CPN V and what lead up to me being sectioned. We talked about family relationships and other relationships. We discussed how I felt about myself. We also talked about other stuff too but I cannot remember.

                He then said the session was coming to a close. He told me what he thought which was the first time a psychologist had ever done that. He told me that I have dismissed all the things that have happened to me in my life. I see them as unimportant. It then leaves me confused about why I feel and behave like I do. This makes me angry at myself and I think I am bad. I get trapped in a cycle of shame and guilt which further leads me to behave like I do. As a consequence I punish myself. He then goes on to say that services have also then further punished me by labelling and locking me up without getting to the bottom of why I feel and behave like I do. He said he has read lots of reports about me and that only one had a little something written in about what he classes as the attempted rape. He says there is lots of blame on me.

                When I heard this I was surprised. I felt a sense of relief that someone had finally explained something to me about me.  Also surprised that perhaps he understood me well. . It made me feel sad because if it were the truth it is a very sad situation. It kind of made me want to hug this person he was talking about and tell them everything would be ok. I felt sorry for this person he was talking about but I don’t know if I could accept that it’s me. Maybe it is me but I do find it hard to accept. I suppose it just felt good that he attempted to understand me and actually tell me what he thought at the end. Nobody has ever done that before. He said he was going to speak to a colleague about me who specialises in a type of therapy that is based on relationships. He didn’t tell me the name of it. He said he would get back to me. I hope its good news.

Brokenmind

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