A young person's story..
Life hasn't always been easy. Throughout school I was bullied because of my appearance, and my mental health deteriorated.
I started working in my first full time job in 2015 and all was great to start with.
My mental health deteriorated and led me to be off sick. After suffering with anxiety and depression for a while, I sought support from Health in Mind.
Support that did not help me
Now, most of my experiences with Health in Mind were fantastic, but there was one time when I felt really let down. The support they offered was phone conversations to help me plan actions into my day.
This was based around a CBT model. It meant I would be keeping myself busy, setting 2 weekly goals and focusing on myself. However, after a while I found that this was not working for me and asked if I could have an alternative. This request seemed to be thrown to one side and they carried on calling me every 2 weeks as normal.
This really upset me as I've never been able to stand up for myself or speak up, and this is why.
I guess I was always scared of a negative outcome and unfortunately this is what I got. The unexpected phone calls didn't help my anxiety and made me feel worse.
I tried to speak up by saying it wasn’t working and I didn't feel listened to. It got to the point where I had to ignore the phone calls.
This upset me even more as I felt like I was wasting their time but at the same time they hadn't listened to me.
Improvement
Eventually they offered alternative support. But at the time I felt I needed to be listened to and I didn't feel this had happened. This was in 2016. I feel maybe if I'd been more assertive and spoken up more, something might have happened sooner rather than later.
I would always say to someone if you feel like something isn’t right to speak up, as hard as it is, or things will never change. I'm grateful for the support from Health in Mind and other agencies I've worked with. It has led me to maintain employment for over a year and half now. I just wish I'd been listened to in the first instance...