Trigger Warning - mention of suicide attempt
After I moved to live with my partner in another county, I ended up launching a lengthy complaint against the NHS. Before this point in my life I had never complained about anything. I felt that I should be grateful for the care I was receiving. After all there are other countries where I’d have to pay hundreds of thousands for what I needed. I had only moved about 2 hours away by car, but the two NHS trusts handling my care seemed completely unable to communicate this with each other. I went from having a care coordinator and being under a community mental health team, to having no care available to me.
For months after, I spent countless hours on the phone to both trusts, attempting to find out where all my data had been sent. The old trust were completely clueless and the new trust refused to treat me until they had received my information. As you can imagine this went on for months, as I gradually got more and more unwell. To cut a long story short, I ended up making some attempts on my own life and being admitted to psychiatric ward for a few days. Even after all of that, the local team simply shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do.
So, with the support of my family, I decided to write a complaint. I’ve always been a very passive person who tends to avoid conflict, even if that means I miss out or suffer. For me it wasn’t easy deciding what I wanted to do. It was however, the first time I understood that if I wanted to get the help I needed, I would have to fight for it. Using my knowledge of previous services in the place I grew up and also my experience training as a mental health nurse, I tried to work out what sort of basic care I was entitled to. I knew that my care should have been easily transferred to another community team within a few weeks. I knew that I should have been assessed by a psychiatrist, who would look at whether or not my medication needed to change. I researched the teams and their referral processes. By finding out what they should have done, but hadn’t, I was able to formulate my complaint.
The aim of the complaint was not just to have a moan at the NHS. I wanted them to realise that I had slipped through the net and for them take action to rectify the situation. Making a complaint wasn’t just to help my individual case. I hoped that it would help others in my situation in the future. If the NHS know what they are doing wrong, in some cases they can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Of course many issues may actually be due to funding these days, but there are other ways for you to take action. Get involved with your local mind charity. They run all sorts of campaigns and events aimed at making the government take notice of mental health.
So what came of the complaint in the end? Well actually way more than I could have imagined. My current trust acknowledged the hardship I had been put through and arranged for me to be assessed by one of their community teams. They sent me a full apology signed by the director of services. As a result of actually being listened to, I was referred to the complex needs and personality disorder service. In the end I was under that team for 3 years. They put me through some pretty intensive therapy and honestly it did me so much good. Back then I couldn’t have imagined how far I would come. I certainly never thought I would be working a full time job, enjoy my relationships and take part in blogging and other forms of activism. In a way you could say that making that complaint changed my life.
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