Jeder dritte Briten wird aufgrund des Stigmas keine Unterstützung für psychische Gesundheit anstreben – wobei Gen Z am stärksten betroffen ist

With the government loudly proclaiming that most of us are just making it up as an excuse not to be productive and „do our duty“ to make our masters more money, who the hell can blame them?

Wait, what year is this???!! I thought we got over that shit in the last 10-20 years, or at least making good progress?

I talked to my “doctor” once about having anxiety at times “we all get it, no one notices” cheers bud

Most brits won’t seek mental health support because the first time they mention they’re told there’s a 4 year wait.

Stigma is real. You’d be surprised how many people are ‘pro mental well being’ however secretly are totally afraid of the mentally ill and would prefer if they were not to exist.

Support is lacking and people don’t give a shit especially in workplaces.

Mental Health helpers are basically gossips who’ve got a certificate after being a day course. They aren’t qualified for shit.

I’ve been using the NHS mental health services for a decade now, and you really need to keep pushing and fighting your corner to get anywhere with it.

One of my GPs wouldn’t refer me for a BPD diagnosis because I’d smoked a joint 3 months prior.

7 years ago I had 6-weekly meetings with a mental health team where I’d see a different person every time, fill out the same questionnaire, then chat for 15 minutes. Obviously that was just spent catching them up with my situation.

I’ve been misdiagnosed with conditions a number of times because the GP was happy enough to give me antidepressants for 6 months and leave it at that.

The CBT i was offered was a group course in a classroom setting, basically telling you what CBT is for 3 weeks. Basically information you can find online without an opportunity to speak about your experience or put it to work.

I was told that I don’t „seem depressed“ a number of times.

They weren’t prepared to diagnose me with BPD because – despite my personality meeting many of the traits in a strong way- I have a job, stable relationship, and my life isn’t falling apart.

I did and now life insurance, mortgage protection, critical illness cover, all that sort of thing, are very hard to get hold of.

They say that it doesn’t effect your application but I didn’t even reach the stage of medication or other treatment and all the major providers still reject my applications.

It often not that we won’t. It’s that it’s nearly impossible to get on the NHS without a lot of fighting for it. Which if you are feeling low or embarrassed about the situation just makes it 1000x worse.

Also the NHS usually has extremely poor provision so you might only be offered 6 sessions at which point you have barely scraped the surface of what is needed. If everyone was entitled to easy mental health access and it was free for all required sessions. I’m sure more people would be seeking it.

But as it stands it’s expensive and most people barely have enough food.

Yeah, it does rather suck to present with severe mental health issues and then be told to get over it after waiting a year for 6 sessions of CBT. and then be told you aren’t trying hard enough if you ask for help again because weirdly enough, trying to get over it doesn’t work. That kind of mental health system breeds stigma. The only way to counteract that is to take people seriously and offer appropriate support.

I imagine the government and media constantly portraying us as lazy layabouts who are just trying to scam the benefit system doesn’t help.

Definitely a massive stigma. Unlike a broken leg or some other phyiscal issue, imagine telling your boss or even HR that you suffer from depression, or are bipolar, extreme anxiety, let alone ADHD.

Sure there are some nice employers – i’ve seen a lot of people dealing openly with these issues in local government – but if you’re trying to go for jobs that in the UK pay the highest e.g. finance, tech etc – see what happens if you reveal you have issues which might impact your performance…

I’m not sure how we’d even go about trying to change this.

I’ve seen some riduclous ‚we care about mental health‘ talks in corporate settings where they find some chump who ‚admits‘ that during lockdown, he got depressed, and he took lots of walks and told his colleagues he was down and then got better, so it’s ok to talk about mental health’… what nonsense. As if anyone trying to climb the ladder would say yes i’m suffering from mental illness x and I need my colleagues support on my client facing role etc.

You know where most of the stigma came from for me? The fucking doctor.

I got enough courage to talk about my mental health struggles and he said to me(With no questions mind you):

„You seem fine to me, if I helped you I’d have to help everyone.“

I don’t seek it because it’s crap. ‚Have some antidepressants and we’ll call in 3 months‘

I would have said I’d never reach out for support until the point I did. I contacted the NHS in January this year and since have received six 30 mins CBT sessions.

It’s obviously not perfect but it has helped – I have found it useful and I’m glad I reached out for support.

In terms of stigma, the only people who know are people I’ve told. You don’t need to tell anyone

Last experience of mental health support was a person basically telling me to change my mindset as if it would fix the problems I have that I can’t fix

I’m a psychiatrist and reading many comments here saying there is no mental health help. I’m curious if people can tell me what help they wish they had? In my opinion here is a shortage of secondary care services for the severely mentally ill and a lot of that resource is used managing mod-severe personality disorders with little benefit to the patient. There is also an issue with long waits for ADHD assessments. ASD assessments in functional adults don’t seem to be a good use of NHS resource to me personally but that’s up for debate depending on your perspective.

For the functional milder depressions, anxieties or functioning adult ASD and ADHD (already diagnosed). What do people want from services? (bearing in mind that offering people dozens of sessions of therapy or a CPN is not cost effective and these would likely go to the already underserved severely mentally ill population. If medication hasn’t worked at a suitable dose or you’ve experienced many side effects we will generally see you in clinic after a GP referral or provide specialist advice.

I’ve given some of my opinions but I’m genuinely interested in exactly what provision people think is missing and how we can facilitate that if possible?

They misspelled “it being woefully lacking on the NHS and prohibitively expensive privately”.

I’m an (older) gen z. I spoke to my doctor about my depression and suicidal urges once, around 2019 aged 22.

I explained my suicidal urges and terror at leaving the house to my doctor. He told me he cant provide anything to make the university give me special circumstances. I wasnt seeking that, I hadnt even mentioned university. I was asking for help because i was scared i was going to kill myself. On the walk to the doctors alone I had been tempted to step out into a busy road to end the shame, all that stopped me was the thought that it wasnt fair to whoever hit me.

I left that appointment feeling disgusted with myself, I felt like as a doctor he must be right and I was ’not ill enough‘ and just looking for excuses for my laziness. It reinforced every piece of stigma I’d seen about mental health.

After a long talk with my psychology student friend I was convinced I had experienced a poor show of medical professionalism and sought a second appointment, asking to specifically see another doctor.

I walked into the appointment terrified and slightly hopeful. However not only was this new doctor my previous ones *wife* she had also been told I had asked not to see her husband *and was enraged by this*. My appointment was spent being berated for being melodramatic, interrogated why I didnt feel comfortable talking to her husband about my mental health and given some breathing exercises to help my ‚anxiety‘.

I almost killed myself that night. I will never not appreciate how my friends unknowingly prevented me comitting suicide that day by just being around.

5 years later I’m still here, Ive never spoken to another professional about my mental health despite still battling depressive phases.

I would under no uncertain terms seek mental health support from the NHS again. In the UK mental healthcare is the privilege of those wealthy enough to afford it. The rest of us are left to play lottery in our must vulnerable moments to get actual compassionate care.

As a note I dont believe NHS mental health professionals are bad at their jobs nor are not committed to their roles. I am more than aware the uphill battle they face in the system and how hard they themselves have fought to be where they are. They are doing the best to deliver care with what they have, however often they are unable to provide the most appropriate treatments or the length of treatment needed for each patient. Often patients can’t even reach specialist mental health services at all due to wait lists and referral limits.

What a negative spin. How about „two thirds of people in a country that once locked up the mentally ill in asylums now say that stigma would not prevent them from seeking mental healthcare“?

Sounds to me like we’re doing pretty well. And of course gen Z are the most worried about stigma, half of them are still teenagers.