Note- this post actually remained unfinished due to sudden severity of immediate discharge by dr akin of Avondale Miranda house after he discharge me today despite begging and begging for help.

Here is what I had chance to write down to help me in the ‘decisions meeting’, which he did not even give me chance to finish reading out to him. ‘Please, I have to see other patients, there is not enough time for this.’ Direct quote, witnessed by Emma my Renew worker, Sarah from Hull DAP, staff nurse Sam Q during this meeting.

Dr who discharged a suicidal patient begging for help and to be heard l: Dr Akin Fadahunsi, consultant psychiatrist at Miranda house.

By the time anyone sees or reads this post, I will be gone, and my soul will have flown far afield- the body which it borrowed everything I fought so hard to avoid becoming- another statistic, another preventable death, another name which time shall erase, a person who genuinely, furiously and avidly fought to be helped, so I could help others like I once did.

Tears are in my eyes as I write this goodbye, and mourn for that (now heartbreakingly obsolete) vigour of being a soul as passionate, hard working and true as my Mum was.

‘Well then why end your life if you are so sad and sorrowful to do so, with that belief in yourself that you could have been so capable and determined to get through, and be what you knew you could be? – You may very reasonably ask.

It is a good question, and within this post, I will explain to anyone reading this, my answer: Why?

So, let me begin a post about an end. Paradoxical indeed.

So…

I guess you will get to experience reading a post from a ghost.

I can’t promise it won’t be haunting, either.

It is haunting.

Very much so.

Because I am not the only one at all, neither are any of you- because mental illness affects us all, in more ways than one.

And mental health funding, services, accessibility to the appropriate and timely care, is not an issue that is showing any signs of improving…

It worsens, as government, local authorities, and exhausted professionals working in the field of helping people, within the sphere of health as a whole- and mental health is most certainly about health. It should be obvious.

So why is this crisis in the UK getting less attention and action from those with the power to address it, than other issues such as the legal age of smoking, why is this crisis which is affecting not only the region of Hull, but the entire UK, not being addressed?

Mental illness, and the emptiness inside the words we hear public figures and policy makers speak, of ‘mental health’, as they periodically address the issue, as if obliged by the script to their grand ‘play’ of political parody, stealing and shrinking the magnitude of which this subject desperately demands.

Because, paradoxical as it sounds, I’d actually realised I DID want to live, desperately, but as a person who was put in the Earth to help others and fulfil a meaningful purpose, I cannot complete this journey, because, try as I damn well have, many times, in many different ways, for many many years.

Sometimes, the mental health act had to be enacted, in order to to aid my memory of a reason to live, manage flashbacks and manic to depressive calamities within a safe space, then begin to become well enough to do so myself.

Many more times, the reaching out, the self referring, reliance on GPs to be interested enough to refer me to the right mental health services I needed, trying to keep the faith, in the services I knew from experience were failing, the mental health crisis was snowballing, even both staff snd the patients were now driven further to the brink…

Some staff did help, some often listened, despite not always being in a position to ‘do anything’, about the problems people faced, coming to different faces each day to re-tell the same traumatic story, for a stranger who needed context, to hell them truly understand the matter at hand.

Indoctrinated into conformity, people behind to loose the lassitude once had.

All the while, sat certain GPS and disenfranchised staff, in their swivel chairs, staring into the labyrinth that is ‘Lorenzo’ (A system used by NHS providers to sum you up in a box, small enough to pass for an excel spreadsheet), as they insist: ‘trust me, within a week you will have definitely heard back from a Psychiatrist.’

I’ll send an email… is a favourite statement they say, like a robot or some personalised voicemail, the email option for some metaphorical band aid. This is such a common response to your heartfelt plea for your actual assigned worker to answer your calls, leaving months in between their visits to ‘help’.

I am so sick of hearing mental health services preach sending an email, or ‘adding notes’ to pretend they’re actually helping you or hearing you.

I have overcome so much, including the challenge of walking oneself to a place of safety, to unleash and speak the honest truth to professionals, about the deepest, most terrifying realities about how you REALLY are.

The likes of which, year after year, you have subconsciously tightened the chains concealing their presence, in a desperate bid to pretend your way out of their haunt, lingering inside you with silent, indecipherable weight, of unspent static.

Yet even to this day, although reports and history, and the legacy of spoken words, passed along human to human, embedding the idea, that things have improved for mental health, so much more than it may actually be the case. ‘Oh it mental health was never a thing back in the day. People just kept things quiet and got on with it…’ claim the generations who drink heavily every day, or self medicate using both legal and illegal narcotics to function…

Sure, I don’t personally feel afraid or embarrassed (anymore) to speak out and talk about my own mental health journey, because eventually, the suffering- trapped by silence, which smothers as it covers- becomes simply too excruciating to keep concealed.

Rock bottom with its many surprise cellars, has a way of enticing you to ‘what could be worse’ beckoning, questions which I express now with fiercely serious warning, you need not only to look up from the descent of these cellars, compelling you to seek suffering further, and instead avert your gaze to the want to look above, for a way out… But this first stage does require the helping hands of not only just one saviour, but often multiple hands, reaching down to help pull up to the height of the well when the ladder out begins, and then, you are enabled to climb your own way out.

This is my metaphorical means of explaining how and why a person in mental health crisis and/or severe deterioration, can begin to look to save themselves at any point, but the reality is, that you need assistance to help pull you out of the depths you have reached, first.

This is why mental health services are crucial, however, across the UK, the services as they stand today, are in crisis to the point of turning these ‘helping hands’ into the crushing detriment of a ton of bricks, landing upon you, instead.

So here I am now, telling you my story, and sharing the painful truth, that even me- the most fiercely determined and stubbornly defiant human, wanting too live through this pain to become who I was meant to be- the Ellie who helps people with mental health and all of its diverse complications which affect each of us differently… Well now, even I have realised that, since I cannot get the right help, which I desperately need, I can’t do it anymore.

How am I supposed to carry on and manage to help others, like I can, and I have, when I am so unwell myself, still, and in order to become who I was meant to be, helping and advocating, refusing to believe that I cannot make and become the change… I can’t do this if I do (did) not get the help I needed to become well enough to even start?

And believe me, have I tried.

I’ve been medicated, hypnotised, sent away and sectioned (inside psychiatric hospitals so shit and hindered by poorly trained staff, that they may as well just be there to help you tie a good noose) I have pursued, researched and tried all the limited therapeutic options, through the only route I can afford, within the NHS, I’ve begged for referrals, I’ve ‘utilized’ the so called ‘support’, which staff within mental health services l, are constrained by their company’s contract, to only be funded or allowed to do so much, or coerced by managers tofka the I have admitted myself into hospitals informally several times within the past year,?

This ranges from inpatient wards, community teams, ‘diagnosis specific services’, crisis team phone operators, who take hours to even answer your desperate calls…. Only to answer your pleas for help, last resort survival by suggesting you save yourselves with cups of tea, breathing, sleeping, having ‘nice baths’, or ‘crisis team managed’ home visit staff, who step in to visit you at home for about 20 minutes every few days (they don’t), to check you are still alive.

Inadequacy of ‘crisis management’ is the crux of what I must also stress.

Taking up to five hours to return your phone call to the crisis line, is a recipe for disaster.

One who is already in a state of crisis so extreme, that they inflict the anxiety, frustration and lack of faith upon themselves by making the call to begin with, is generally calling because the only alternative is to submit to the impending urges and likelihood that the noose which hangs ready and waiting for your neck, or the windows you are a first away from smashing to pieces, are already a reality seconds away from materialising.

So waiting four hours for the initial crisis call to be picked up, generally succumbs to the crisis which initiated the call, and by the time you’re answering the phone, you’re already inches deep into the skin, wildly losing control each second, tearing away more flesh, despite the paradox of answering the long awaited call back.

The distress does get picked up by the receiver, and often this leads to an ambulance rapidly arriving at your door. Which, in fairness, by this stage, is needed.

‘Coping techniques’ handed to the suicidal, manic, depressed of severely delusional patient, by these crisis teams, are literally sheets of paper, with lists of patronising and undermining, pathetic ideas for a ‘technique.’

You end up reading it and feeling even worse, through sheer despair, and almost comically insulting exposure to how others perceive your crisis is so far past the point of ‘having a warm bath’, that you’re wondering why the hell they didn’t just assume first wrote the advice ‘coping skill’ of teabags to soothe and tortured, manic chaos of the crisis afflicting minds, was and sing the praises of ‘thine hallowed cups of tea’ as their few words of ‘advice’, most of the time coming into your home as strangers to ‘explain yourself to’, every occasion, as ‘assigned’ to you that day.

I say ‘assigned’, not just because they tell you that ‘you are their assignment for their duties of the day’ themselves, but also because the majority of these differing faces you see, are TERRIBLE at acting as though they even care at all.

Rushing to scribble down about 5% of the words you use to describe how you are, what are you able to do each day, what you ‘have planned’ for the rest of the day, and ‘what your circumstances are’ (vague as a question itself, and painstakingly repetitive to repeat time and time again to different staff, who haven’t met you, read your notes properly, or earned any drop of trust from you, to then be expected to ease you into divulging the ‘entire story’ of recent, recurring, past or present trauma, intimate and personal details of how you are struggling, and let’s face it- you’re under a mental health crisis team, how hard is it to hazard a guess about your ‘circumstances’!?

Often, the staff can be so astonishingly clueless about mental health itself, that you end up having to ‘train them’ in how to understand the complexities of various illnesses and disorders.

This tires you out, as does the monotony of even answering the door to yet another stranger, who thinks ‘you can’t be in crisis because you’re acting fine’, or: ‘you obviously don’t really want to die, otherwise you’d have done it by now…’ Believe me, the number of times I’ve closed that front door behind them, feeling ten times more suicidal, outraged, hopeless and extinguished entirely by their amazing capacity to fuck your head up even further, I could not even count using all fingers on both hands.

The staff who discharged me from the desperate hospital admission I experienced at Mill View, infuriated and actually, managed to devastate me to the point of tears.

To start with, they were ‘running late’, so my meeting which was due to start at 3pm, didn’t allow me in until 10 to 4pm, leaving me just 10 minutes to speak and express what I wanted to say.

Again, I’d been up for hours writing down a detailed and comprehensive set of notes, the previous night, to ensure that I could be able to express my reasons for wanting to remain in hospital for even just one more week (because, truthfully, they are just that desperate for beds, that it’s not even about what’s right for the patient anymore, it’s about subtracting you from their listed numbers of spaces)

Once again, despite desperate pleas for better structured, transitional, safety planned and adequately listened to discussions whereby if you feel you need slightly more time to stabilise, reintegrate to the community, with the support and encouragement from staff, adjust medications and make sure they are benefitting you, ensure you have an immediate safe, secure, risk assessed and appropriate ‘home’ to get sent to that same day, yet prove all of your justifiable pessimistic outlook right, by rushing the most honestly insightful, yet terrified patients.

This isn’t just a failure to fulfil a duty to safeguard and support patients in need, it extends further, and is attributable to many subsequent deaths by suicide, serious self harm, drug and alcohol relapse, harm to others… Hull cannot afford to be killing people off like this, it is not safe and it is not okay.

I thought I’d found safety when I unearthed that realisation, that as my late mother’s daughter, I could truly make a difference to people, in the same way that she did- not only as a mother, wife, artist, friend, talented, interesting and brilliant inspiration that she was, but also, as the highly regarded and influential Art Teacher that she dedicated her career and her calling to.

I began to dream…

Maybe I could do what I myself was put in this Earth to do too.

Maybe, I could revive that part of me which I had long since believed had died, post many a trauma and a continuous decay, which smothered away my being, my personality, my passion, my smile, will to live, and dedication to help myself through mental illness, again and again, despite how weighty and grim a ‘mass’ it could inflict each and every time my illness shook me hard with relapse…

All these failings, these shortfalls, the diabolical and devastating loss of lives, through the people lost to suicide, following the completely inadequate, underfunded and poorly capable mental health services, there to treat, stabilize, support, protect and to save you…

It stuns me to the core, that Government, MPs, professionals and executives, with the power to enact change, services themselves, most part of the UK’s supposedly ‘free and accessible’ healthcare system for all, the NHS, are not screaming from the rooftops (dark humour requirement- the rooftops that we, the Suicidal and unwell, are so ready to jump off), demanding the debate, attention and awareness, crucial action- whatever it takes- to address this insurmountable mental health crisis in the UK.

I’ve not heard one MP recently, talk about the urgent matter of mental health, except for the complete tool who recently called for ‘an end to mental health culture’, in order to get people back to work, rather than in need of benefits due to the illness which he portrayed as if it was some kind of generational ‘trend’.

People are out of work due to mental illness, no doubt about that.

Can there be any more of a ridiculous assumption that this is for fun, some matter of ‘culture’ which celebrates illness, through the ‘trending’ influence of social pressure to ‘be like the rest of us, and call in sick, flaunt your antidepressant prescriptions or your antipsychotics to the world, then go have some jolly old time incapacitated by either the medication, the underlying illness, or both, and waste away in bed until you die.

Some people (my own experience included), are so unwell that they can’t even manage to face walking into another room, to find the lethal tools which will enable this whole process to end much sooner- wanting nothing but to die, yet so fucking catatonic and absent that it’s too much effort to even tie the noose you keep fantasising about.

I have begged and begged for help for too long now, only to be failed by the mental health services I truly needed in Hull, who I engaged with and spoke honestly with about how imperative, terrifying, and close my suicide, and at least, drug relapse, self harm, dissociative states including flashbacks so severe that I have afflicted stab wounds to walls, while totally trapped inside a memory of trying to fight off a rapist.

I had to find out about this when I had the capacity again, for my own Dad to have to show me what I’d done, what he had witnessed, how he knew which perpetrator I was fighting off, and how my dissociated actions were undoubtedly a flashback induced event.

I’ve even brought myself to share such information to the crisis team and staff who come to assess you, when you turn up at Miranda House, usually following the assistance and urgent advice, or matter of duty, following opening up about just how dire things are, at Mind’s Crisis Pad, which is the only mental health support service I have experienced in Hull my entire life, who actually help you, listen to you, have the compassion and the competence of staff and volunteers who support you there.

On this note, it is highly important for me to highlight that Hull and East Yorkshire’s Mind, who have a service for people who are referred or self refer for a space at the ‘crisis pad’- A Sanctuary there to turn to, when you are in mental health crisis, meaning of course being on the verge of suicide or other imminent danger.

The staff at the crisis pad, which is accessible to the lucky four referrals they have the capacity to offer a place, from 7pm-1am, have saved my life so many times.

They are all so dedicated, compassionate, kind and supportive, and I have come out of a ‘one to one’ period of talking to staff alone, for support, advice, and just a need for someone to hear you, feeling so much better than prior hours of suffering have inflicted upon me all day, that I can wholeheartedly conclude that my experience shows me that the team here are so much more knowledgeable, seemingly well trained, caring and empathetic, than any other staff I have dealt with from the ‘official’ NHS mental health services in Hull.

I can’t compare any part of any NHS (non contracted, charitable service) mental health experiences with staff and the entirety of a mess that sums up the likes of the Crisis Team, Home Based Treatment Team, Avondale Ward, of Miranda House, to the skill and effectiveness of the staff and entire environment of Mind’s Crisis Pad.

All I can do is extend my pure gratitude to all of them, and stress the significance of how they have been able to help me climb higher from the pit of a mental health rock bottom, like this team have done for me, and others.

They deserve recognition and awards, at least, for how amazing they are.

The only problem is that they can only offer a mere four spaces to people in crisis, despite how many referrals they receive daily, from equally desperate people, failed yet again by the alternative mental health professionals in Hull, which is due to lack of funding, limited and bound by the contractual provisions of the Humber NHS services which dictate what, and how much they can provide.

Take anything from this- please applaud and fundraise for them, campaign and recognise for all they do.

As for Miranda House, where as I finally write this same repeated story for a last time of being capable, for the fourth time this week I’ve been sent or gone there forever my own safety and to seek serious support- which is so direly needed that I need to be hospitalised, for my own safety, but as always, I express while still able, then get turned away and unheard, sent home (to danger) in a taxi, regardless of admitting that I am at imminent risk to myself or others.

When I expressed exactly what this entailed in terms of likely plans carried out successfully, or due to the loss of control I am suddenly consumed by, the staff member assessing me there tonight/this morning, around 3am, told me to ‘just be positive’, to ‘wait for a support call later in the day’, ‘don’t think like that’, ‘just don’t act on anything and go to sleep at home.’

That should never have happened.

A duty of care to myself and others, the priority of safety and being taken seriously, when a desperately manic, despairing and frightened patient should be paramount.

Not left to happen.

That’s why and how we lose people.

That’s why justice and immediate change MUST occur, because too many of us have already died.