I* sometimes leave my job very angry because of the conditions we must sometimes work in. Let me explain.
We accompany people with complex life paths and who usually cumulate several major mental health issues.
They often tell us that they have been ill-treated in previous hospital admissions and that they have very bad memories of observation and forced medication. As a result, they are particularly suspicious of hospitals and psychiatry in general.
If after months of discussion, after years of work to build a bond and trust, we manage to get them to a first appointment with a psychiatrist, our patients and we honestly expect a lot from that appointment.
But often we get disappointed.
Disappointed by hospitals that work on an assembly line and have no more than thirty minutes left to screen someone who for years had nothing to do with psychiatry.
Disappointed by the overload of services, the waiting times, the complexity of registration and the requirement to be able to submit a "clear application".
Disappointed by some psychiatrists who do not want to treat our patients because, to quote them, "their case is too difficult" and "here we don’t do observation".
A mental health professional who says something like that to patients after they explain to him that no one has ever taken them seriously, may not realize the damage those words do. When multiple psychiatrists repeatedly refuse to treat our patients, when the hospital doors remain closed, when the mobile teams do not want to follow our patients because they are either "too deep in a crisis" or "not deep enough", we feel alone in the face of the misery of the people we accompany.
I do not want to throw stones at this sector. There is clearly a lack of money, and they cannot but set priorities as best they can. But applying for help is already a tremendously difficult step for our patients and it is deeply sad when they are then rejected. Because it will certainly be months before we can try again to get psychiatric treatment for them.
And in the meantime, their suffering is palpable.
*Story from Eileen, social assistant in Housing First