Time to Change 2018: A Letter to our Secretary of Health, Jeremy Hunt
12:47
Dear Mr Hunt,
I’m one of thousands, probably hundreds of
thousands, caught in a failing system, failed by the system. I am not an anomaly. I am not a rarity. And that’s
what saddens me most: I am one of thousands dependent on a system that is costing
me my life.
I’m 22, I graduated from a Russell Group University
with a degree in English Literature. I’m doing an MA. I’m smiley, polite, and
well-dressed. On the surface of things, I’m functioning and doing okay…I’m a
productive member of society and you’d probably tell me the world is my oyster.
I’m also suffering from anorexia, depression, and anxiety. I’m struggling, and
I’m slipping through the system, time and time again.
The truth is I don’t know at what point I
became trapped, not in my own head, but in the desperate – and trust me, I am
desperate – search for something that may help me. But, you see, on the surface
of things, I’m not sick enough. I’m not thin enough, or bedridden ...I’m “functioning”,
and thus I’m one of thousands who, as far as the mental health system is
concerned, is easily dismissed as part of a convenient, penny saving initiative.
It would be ingenious, if so many lives
weren’t the price being paid. You’re failing those who need the most support,
and you’re capitalizing on it: our weakness, physically, mentally,
geographically, economically, as pawns in your chess game, is entirely your
gain. And of course, not only is the system failing those who are really, and
it’s taken me a while to admit this, actually quite unwell, not only is it
manipulating that situation to its sole-advantage, those at its mercy are
totally powerless to the powers that be.
As a child I remember being taught that
education is the solution to everything, and the sky is the limit. Stay in
education, they say. Stay in education (we need doctors and nurses and lawyers
and people who can save us from a failing economy and teachers who can teach us
to follow the rules, and scientists because we so desperately need a cure for
cancer, and we need to work on our renewable energy, and reducing our carbon
footprint and we need to replenish our workforce with a whole generation indoctrinated
by the necessity of labour). We’re taught to function and education is the way
we do it. We’re taught that there is not time to be unwell, and gosh, God
forbid we demand “more”. We’re fueling the economy on personal denial. Yet, I
wear society’s prescribed disguise of a functioning, well-educated, versatile
human being so, so well…so well that it is killing me.
I could be anything. Yet, my health is the
hurdle I cannot jump alone – I never learnt to high jump and I never learnt to
land. That doesn’t mean I won’t jump and that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to bounce
back from the landing. It means that I need a safety mat, a mat my illness will
not allow me to provide for myself. On a recent trip to A&E, as I cried
into a shallow bowl of vegetable soup, a nurse said something that interrupted
my apologies: “you’re the only one on this ward who will leave here and be no
better, and I so wish there was something we could do. It’s so wrong”. The NHS,
and those that work for it, are glimmers of light in a selfish world – we
cannot diminish their efforts, or risk losing their potential. They are true
stars. Blame cannot, does not, and should not lie with those at the forefront. But,
the point stands: this isn’t like a broken leg where everyone rallies round,
and you have crutches to make life just a bit easier, and pain relief to make
life just a little bit more doable. This isn’t like a broken leg, where friends
and family gather to sign the cast, because nothing is more important than
“functioning” and there isn’t time to be unwell, and mental illness is messy
and stigmatized and silenced and, well, “you’re too bright to be doing
something so silly as starving yourself to death”. This isn’t like a broken
leg, I wheeled my drip stand around on my own, in silence, shame, hopelessness,
and numbness. This isn’t like a broken leg where every single cell of your body
is working with you to recover; mental illness doesn’t work that way. Anorexia,
especially, doesn’t work like that. Anorexia wants to claim my life and it will
do whatever it can to ensure that it achieves its goal, like I did whatever it
would take to achieve academically –
see, even my illness fits perfectly into the notion of “functioning” and a
productive work force. Anorexia will not let me pull in my own safety mat and
my god, anorexia cut the safety harness years ago.
I need a health system that will catch me,
because I’ve fallen through too many cracks. I need a health system that will
not discriminate me, or negate my struggles, simply because I function. I
function because I’ve never had the option not to. I function because I
perfectly epitomise the notion of “head down and carry on”. My “functioning” is
keeping me ill; my “functioning” is anorexia’s disguise. My “functioning” is my
illness. I need a health system that will hear me. I need a health system that
will truly listen. I need a health system that will let me be anything, a
health system that will give me the opportunity to really try living.
The sad truth is, I no longer believe in my
own recovery. I do not believe I am savable – by others, or, more importantly,
capable of saving myself. I’m not asking for a miracle – really, I’m not. And
I’m not asking for anything for myself, I’m saying this not for my own
recovery. I’m saying this because I know that many more people, like me, will
continue to fall through the cracks. They’ll continue to fall because they
“function”, because from an early age, all they ever knew was to “function” and
their functioning will kill them. I’m saying this because I know, and I’m
saying this because I don’t think there is all that much wriggle room for cuts
in the mental health system. You can’t cut a system that is, pardon the pun, on
its knees, skin and bones – there’s nothing left to lose. Too many lives have
been lost, too much potential has been lost. I could have been anything, but
right now I’m struggling to even keep myself alive.
I strongly believe that early-intervention,
early specialist intervention is the
key here. Teach people how to save themselves before they become so lost,
disillusioned and controlled by illness that they no longer have the energy to
fight. Teach children that mental illness is valid and stop brainwashing the
next generation into thinking that “functioning = success”. Don’t wait for
someone to get sicker before treating them – this wastes your time as much as
it does ours. Don’t use old-fashioned, patriarchal, tick box means of
diagnosis. We are NOT statistics. We are real life people, with real life needs
in a real life world. We are not pawns in a game of chess. Our lives are not a
game. Do not use our sickness to make us putty in your hands. We’re vulnerable
and you know it. Don’t use my illness to manipulate me. I don’t need your help
in my self-destruction - I need help in stopping it.
Please, please, don’t snatch a life-raft
from those who are most vulnerable. We know how to swim – we can be anything –
but the health system is watching us drown, the health system IS drowning us.
It’s a slow and painful death. I’m flailing my arms around and the lifeguard
can see me…trouble is, and I’ve seen in excess of 60 professionals, there’s
nothing more dangerous than when you’re begging for help and the lifeguards
turn their back once more. Listen. Hear us. I could have been anything, but the
mental health system has failed me.
I’m one of thousands, hundreds of
thousands…I’m not an anomaly.
Yours faithfully (because despite it all,
I’m a very complying member of society),
One
of many who’s slipping through the net, time and time again.
Someone whose
“surface functioning” is a neatly disguised illness.
Someone who really, truly,
desperately wants to be better.
Someone whose time it is to talk.
Someone whose
time it is to be heard.
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