"My experiences with mental health support"

Hello.

At the point of me going through this situation, I had severe panic disorder, agoraphobia, monophobia, eating disorder, health disorder and severe vomit phobia.

In the health system, the doctors I've seen havn't seemed to have a clue what to do with people with agoraphobia. I have a condition where I needed a doctor to see me and because of my health disorder, I was very very distressed as I thought I had cancer. Yet the doctor wouldn't come out to see me and basically told me to man up. They told me to get a grip, after my parents complaining and fighting my corner a doctor did finally come out to see me, but this is only the start of my story.

I got referred to Archways (the only adult mental health service that I know of who don't do home visits - great for people like myself with agoraphobia....). I was in such a bad way at this point, I got scared when it started to rain, I couldn't be in the house on my own...

Finally after around 3 months of having constant thoughts of ending my life, I got a phone-counselling session. As the phone rang the morning of my phone appointment, I went into severe panic attack and couldn't bring myself to talk on the phone for the first minute, my girlfriend was explaining to them that I was in a serious panic attack.

Instead of talking through breathing techniques and so on they said that if I couldn't answer the phone, they were going to refer me back to my GP.

These are the people who were supposed to help me?

If I could have ended my life that day I would have. I had lost my job, my life, everything because of this nasty disorder and the people that are apparently there to help me turned their back on my in my opinion.

If I was that bad at that point not to answer the phone, I think they should have spoken through breathing techniques/sectioning or something, and I'm absolutely disgusted.

After my mum the next say looked into things on the internet, she discovered there was a service for people like me which the doctor didn't even suggest, so without my mother (not a health professional) I would have had no one helping me.

I am now getting home visits from a lovely psychologist and I've made loads of progress, all I have now is a bit of agoraphobia and panic disorder, but over-coming it. Thanks!