Dear Mental Health Services England (NHS)

I am writing to you as I have lost the will to fight for my life and am using my last amount of strength to share my desperate situation with you.

I suffer from: complex post traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, psychotic depression, generalised anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, adult attention deficit disorder, diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, arthritis and chronic erythema nodosum.  

For the past 9 months or so I have been left untreated and unsupported by my GP surgery – which is Baffins Surgery Portsmouth and Solent NHS Trust as well as other departments. I used to have a family member who was able to take me to the many medical appointments a person like myself has, but unfortunately I no longer have this family member in my life and since then have been unable to access any care, appointments and clinics. This is because the NHS does not deem people like myself (mentally ill) to be housebound – even when they have conditions which specifically challenge their freedom to leave the house, to interact with people, to use the phone and lead independent lives. This is discrimination and against my human rights to access care.

I have asked my GP and Solent NHS Trust to help me again and again, it is not until I tweeted them in crisis (I am having a breakdown) that they have responded, and still now they keep offering me appointments which I can not get to.

Due to my conditions (which my surgery is well aware of as I have been in the mental health services since I was 12) I am unable to leave the house on my own (I have not done so for 10 years), a lot of the time I can not leave the house at all, I can not use the phone to call out or receive calls due to my disorders, my husband is my only family and he works during my GP’s surgery hours for appointments and telephone calls. When accompanied outside by a safe person,  I can not order my own food, ask strangers for help or cross the road on my own. As well as this I experience sensory overload when outside, loud noises cause me physical pain, I am on high alert and most of the time can only deal with basic communication.

I have been told that people with mental illness can not qualify as being housebound, even though my conditions cause me to be this way, I was told there is nothing that can be done!

I do NOT accept this!

Since this happened I have been unable to continue my diabetic treatments, clinics and check ups as my surgery will not do home visits and all blood test clinics are in the morning when my husband is not available. So my diabetes could be getting worse I would have no way of knowing, until too late.

I am also unable to have fertility treatment as I am unable to get the help I need to qualify as I have PCOS and am now infertile.

I have something called chronic erythema nodosum which needs to be checked often to make sure I do not have any other illnesses associated with it.

I have arthritis and it is getting worse I need help as sometimes I can not move due to the sever pain in my ankles, knees and wrists, I now have a walking cane.

As for my mental health, well this is the area I have been failed in since I was first in the adolescent mental health services at 12. I have endured mistreatment from many practitioners, including victim blaming, sexual assault in a psychiatric facility at 15, by two male in patients, I have been told I am “too intelligent” to receive care, “too high functioning” and I have been stigmatised for having borderline personality disorder by many practitioners who have deemed me manipulative or attention seeking, when in fact I was in crisis. I have been left with no help or they have tried to section me, there is no in between. I was put on anti-psychotics at 15 years old and was like a zombie for most of my late teens and early twenties. I have been offered treatments which I can not get to, or things which would cause my other conditions to be triggered. I have had no treatment for my C-PTSD except for a un-completed 6 week session of reliving therapy (as my therapist left) which has left me open and more unwell than before, causing my psychotic depression to flair up and experience psychosis regularly. I was put on anti-anxiety medication as I have so many anxiety disorders and then due to not being able to be seen by a GP, the surgery put my medication up for review even though I could not attend an appointment, which meant my medication was stopped abruptly, giving me side affects to withdrawal – which has left me in constant fight or flight and suicidal. These conditions are chronic and serious and cause me to lead a very limited life.

I only have this energy because I decided to give this one last go – one last fight – before I give up. My husband has to deal with this on his own, he is terrified of what will happen to me, where is his support also?

I have been a victim to so much in my life, I suffered neglect and child abuse, a violent rape at 15, and being sexually assaulted by two male in-patients on separate occasions within the NHS Woodside psychiatric adolescent unit in Epsom in 1999 and these are just the worst events, I have suffered much more. But I survived these ordeals even though I am affected by them every day, especially living with C-PTSD, however I survived, all I ask is the chance to live, to have basic human rights, that the duty of care you have is observed when treating me and that I am not left to die!

I also know I am not alone, there are so many of us that are being failed and left to die, you don’t hear them because they have no voice, I also stand for them as I too have been silenced by this ableism, this marginalisation, this stigma and appalling treatment. The only reason I am able to fight is because I have a platform, so I am screaming as loud as I can with the hope you will hear me and help me, and furthermore with the hope you do not continue this lack of care with others, even though I am sure this will not change anything, maybe it will break the silence.

“…if you are ill or injured, there will be a national health service there to help; and access to it will be based on need and need alone – not on your ability to pay, or on who your GP happens to be or on where you live.” – The New NHS: Modern, Dependable – Government White Paper, December 1997.

“If the right to health is considered as a fundamental human right, significant differences in access to health care and the health status of individuals must be seen as violations of the principle of equality” – Implications of a Right to Health – Virginia A. Leary, 1993.

For more information: The Human Rights Act 1998 and Access to NHS Treatments and Services: A Practical Guide

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