Each month we focus on a particular theme, and encourage the community to share short comments about their experiences, to go alongside the longer stories. Here, Sheffielders share their stories of mental health services.
Our theme for May was ‘Your experiences of mental health services’, and despite warnings of ‘opening the floodgates’, the responses were actually quite mixed. Here’s what a few Sheffielders had to say.
One of the first comments came from Amy, who said that although she’s now doing well, she felt let down when she was at her worst:
“For me I haven’t really had any experiences and I think I should have. I ended up critically ill in hospital because of my depression and drinking, but nobody followed it up in a MH way. In hospital they asked if I was depressed, I said yes, and that was it!” – Amy
Catherine told us that her experiences have been varied, but being encouraged to have her say has been invaluable:
“My experiences of MH services have been a varied one, having been given the opportunity and encouragement to speak about what I want and need and how I feel has empowered me. Having a wonderful,therapeutic relationship with my CMHT enables me to continue to recover too.” – Catherine
Sarah talked about the benefits of trying new things:
“I think that services are too slow but we all know that. I think what’s great about @ShefFlourish is that you think outside the box & try different things. Hoping to get to an art class in the future x” – Sarah
And we had a lovely post from Thisgirlcan, who also liked being able to steer the ship in terms of her support:
“Getting access was hard but once you start mines been great. I now have 1 monthly meets with IAPT to stretch my treatment time as I am re triggered a lot (ex DV) being able to control my therapy and me leading my therapy rather than overwhelmed with CBT homework.” – Thisgirlcan
Does anyone else have any stories they’d like to share in the comments below?
