Too Healthy For Help: The Personal Impact of Mental Health Eligibility
The no-mans-life of being too healthy for support, but too ill without it …
“Yoga, walking, exercise, yep. I’ve been ticking off that prescription for coming up 10 years. I get a sinking feeling whenever the doctor starts to ask it. Can you keep your home in order? Can you manage working? Do you keep up with laundry and personal hygiene? Yes, yes, yes, and suddenly I’m looking at the door, wanting to run out of it but knowing there’s no point, the ‘it was nice to meet you’ will be coming next and I’ll soon be waiting for my Uber hating myself for every breathing exercise and home remedy that’s now made me too good to be helped.
For anxiety attacks, I get printed off leaflets for breathing exercises. For my depression, I get told to see friends, treat attachment issues with trying dating apps, stress less about food by exercising. And my platter of nothingness is served to me straight, when two weeks ago my doctor says ‘You’ve been too good at looking after yourself’.
It started when I was 13, when by the time I reached the top of the 6-month waitlist, a mix of self-motivation and family support had helped me stop self-harming. Upon hearing this, CAHMS decided I no longer needed any counselling. No longer an active risk to myself, I felt like I’d wasted everyone’s time, a feeling that so many young women carry around with them when it comes to any level of healthcare. Left to relapse and recover with no diagnosis or support, I brushed off my mental health, beating it down with the thought that there was always someone worse, someone more worthy, someone who actually needed help while I should keep floating on unsupervised. I could get out of bed, I did well at school, and so I couldn’t be depressed, at least not enough to need help.
And when you get old it keeps happening, but this time with the addition of medication. Sat in front of a doctor who has nothing to offer me but a semi-diagnosis of ‘yeah it sounds like you might have BPD but your case for an assessment will likely be rejected’, he scans my medical history of medication before asking if I’d like more, a main course with no sides or extras of the support I actually came looking for. And if it’s not pills, I get links to mindfulness apps, or simply a compliment; ‘You’re such a pretty girl and you have so much going for you, try to focus on that.’
But I understand. This year more than ever, the NHS is overrun and underfunded, flooded with people trying to access support during the pandemic. But in 2020, mental health referrals from GPs to specialist services are down, and have been going down since 2018. While everyone understands the need for the most at-risk patients to gain support quickly and be prioritised to keep them safe, it feels like high-functioning mental health sufferers or people who are simply doing everything they can to stay stable, are getting lost or overlooked in the system. More and more people are being left on the precipice of help, teased with telephone consultations and assessments that continually come to nothing but a prescription to go off and keep helping yourself, you’ve managed up until now.
“Already toxic enough, mental health should’ve feel like a competition. We shouldn’t be competing to impress doctors like judges with our pain, feeling like we need to clamber to the top spot to get to the next round of support. ”
And they’re right I have managed, but I have to tell myself that deserve better than scraping by, waking up each day and getting on with it while my head goes 100 miles an hour, or falls into the overwhelming numbness of a big foggy bout of depression, we all deserve better than that. Doctors ticking off lists of questions about my ability to look after my flat or shower every morning means nothing but perpetuate a one-size fits all image of mental illness that keeps so many people silently struggling unsupported. Mental illness doesn’t have to look like weeks in bed, untidy rooms and unwashed clothes to be worthy of support, it doesn’t have to be imminent, active danger to yourself to be important, and no one should be made to feel like a time-waster for walking into the doctor’s looking put-together while their head is still a mess. And more than that, no one should be made to feel like they need to let themselves get worse, before anyone will help them feel better.
When my doctors said those words; ‘You’ve been too good at looking after yourself’, I cursed myself for every effort I’d made to feel better. A voice in my head told me to chuck out all my journals, stop trying to feel better, let myself spiral and maybe then they’d help me. And I shouldn’t been put in a position where an attempt to gain help from a healthcare professional, made me feel like I needed to give it all up and spiral, try again later and comeback when I needed immediate support for my safety, pray that someone would deem me bad enough then.
I feel bad for even thinking it. I’m lucky to be where I am, clean and safe, in a place where my brain lets me look after and support myself. I’m proud of myself for the mental health progress I’ve made, and the effort I’ve put in to get better outside of the healthcare system. I’m glad that I’m healthy, that I’m not an active risk to myself anymore. But the position of being too healthy for the system but still too ill to not need support is a no-mans-land that too many people are finding themselves in, struggling along quietly, attempting to access dregs of help only for them to run dry, doing our yoga and feeling like too much of a burden to call the doctor again.
Already toxic enough, mental health shouldn’t feel like a competition. We shouldn’t be competing to impress doctors like judges with our pain, feeling like we need to clamber to the top spot to get to the next round of support. All I want is for a doctor to listen to me, see the efforts I’ve been making, see how it still isn’t enough, and help. I don’t want a compliment, or a pat on the back to send me back on my way into the wilderness again where thousands are left riding out the ups and downs of our mental illness solo, feeling punished for trying our best.”
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To see more from Lucy, you can find her on Instagram at @lucyharbron_ or via her website: www.lucyharbron.co.uk.