The Waiting Room

#DancingWithTearsInMyEyes In 2016 I was in a 'relation' for 6 months with someone who had done self mutilations for years. Relation in between parentheses: for the first few weeks I knew nothing, after 5 weeks I knew everything, plus "that this wasn't going to be it." Another factor, she had been adopted from a distant country around 1980 when she was 10 and joined a 'white' family. She soon developed obstinate and rebellious behavior. Her parents never hurt her, at the most, they didn't know what to do with the behavior. She was admitted at a closed ward from the age of 16 to 21. In the medical world we say that 'someone can become institutionalized'. This also applies to people who have been in prison too often or too long. In plain language: As soon as you step outside, you immediately miss the familiar fluorescent lighting and want to go back inside. She was later admitted a number of times, for periods from a few months to 2 years. After the age of 20, she also developed a serious gambling addiction. A hard core gambler sometimes think about suicide several times per week. This is because thousands of euros are wasted, sometimes per night and so people can lose their homes. And think about, how do they get all that money ?. When I got to know her, she was living on cake, cookies, sleeping during daytime and playing slots at night. She had not had contact with her GP, municipal medical service or mental health service for 7 years. She was also exploited by a man to work in the kitchen of the restaurant and.. in bed. The man then ensured that the gambling debts were also covered. In those first 5 weeks I had turned around her day/night rhythm. She wanted to go to the doctor - if I came along - and she hadn't been gambling once again. In the 5th week, she started arguing and disappeared on my radar for days. With the help of a friend and her father, we made sure that she came to live independently. I hung around, to make sure her life got some normal rhythm and she didn't go back to this restaurant owner. Once she did.. and spent all day behind his slot machines. The next day I went to the man and said "I was so angry, I wanted to come over with a piece of wood and smash those machines to pieces". She was never allowed to come again. She did cut herself off from me,.. further and further. Argued with me to go gamble or disappeared without a trace for days. While I was having coffee with her in the morning, she 'argued' that I had to leave. I hadn't left the street yet or my phone was already full of A4-sized messages about how sorry she was, and if I didn't want to come back. No, I went straight at home. When I arrived there, I had already received a complete book of messages and 10 phone calls. In the 6th month, she started swearing. I pulled my hands off and cut off the contact. For five weeks I got an average of 20/30 messages and 10/20 phone calls per day, before it stopped. It took a year for the helpless feeling in me to disappear and I was no longer shocked when my phone went.

30 years ago I was trained as rescuer in the military and 'not to take it home'. Whether you are bleeding to dead or just want to talk, I help. I have been talking online for 10 years with all kinds of patients; Youngest was 23 when she died of a brain tumor in 2014. I am not blind or totally convinced that I always can help anyone or save lives online. But that doesn't mean you have to give up. And there is, I think, the problem, thinking back to all patients I spoke to in the past 30 years. I still clean up the mess that doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists leave behind. Programs on Dutch television confirm what I have been thinking and seeing for years. The recent television shows 'Tygo In Psychiatry', and Pointer's 'Young and Psychologically in trouble' (Dutch: Jong en Psychisch In De Knel): Last year, 60% more crisis reports compared to 2019 *. Some problems in mental healthcare have existed for at least 20, 30 years: A long time ago we had a doctor and a nurse, now there are (care) managers everywhere. Doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists differ among each other about protocols, treatments and diagnoses. A fight, at the expense of the patient. You wonder if they really care about people or only about legal consequences for themselves. We have seen people who: 1) Are on the waiting lists for 6 to 12 months - if you indicate that you want to commit suicide, or 2) Get a new counselor every few months, and you can tell your story over and over again, or 3) Sometimes within a few years, got 5 to 16 different diagnoses (partly due to the previous problem) and with associated treatments and/or medicines. Which in themselves, can also have various side effects. Where side effects can be written down again, as symptoms of a patient, or 4) Care providers who only see their client for 1 hour per week, or 5) And then I do not even want to start, about Victim Support - voluntary organization and Victim counter of Public Prosecution Service (Dutch; Slachtofferloket OM) both of which forget to come and look behind your front door, to see, how you actually are doing after a violent- or vice-crime. While perpetrators do take an expensive lawyer, at the expense of our common funds, to eventually get away with community service. Someone asked me how I felt about paying more attention to victims: Whatever you do, it means that politics might change the laws, then force the biggest government-approved agencies to deliver better quality and they get more money again, to reach even fewer people really reach.

I myself am seriously physically ill, in addition to c-ptsd. But I'd rather get a lawyer than a doctor. Because I already knew 30 years ago that in the future (that is now) the insurance companies would be in charge. And once it is known that you are seriously and/or chronically ill, you can lose your job and no longer receive a loan or mortgage. Choose your own path, stay on route. Do you really need help: knock on the door of the relevant counselor or agency every day, instead of shouting it from the rooftops. The help will not come to you, even if you wait patiently at home. Be careful with what you post on the internet, do not submit your story to too many different agencies or institutions. And keep medical information where it belongs, at the doctor. Your information can also be used against you. Not everyone who says they want to help, really helps or is actually a care provider. What happened in the past belongs there. If you have driven through the red light in the past, it would be very strange, that now you are stopped at every traffic light cause of a mistake from the past.

* Source data from dutch tv show Pointer + GGZ Mental Health Care Nederland

Pointer - Season 6 Afl. 13 "Young and psychologically in trouble" 25 minutes.

https://www.npostart.nl/pointer/05-04-2021/KN_1725041