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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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IME, psychiatry is absolute trash. The only reason I've kept going back is because if I'm not in some type of mental health treatment, they use it as another excuse to make me fail my disability benefit assessments/appeals. You would think being in cancer treatment, recovering from a stroke, being partially sighted and all my other physical shit would be enough to qualify for disability benefits, but nope. If I'm not receiving mental health treatment too, I will lose the appeal.
Firstly what is the point? Therapy wouldn't cure my problems even if it was good therapy. But as it happens, NHS therapy is shit. I've been on the waiting list for up to 5 years at a time for treatment, and then I get some shit like DBT, which consisted of a silly little girl just out of college telling me to make lists of why I shouldn't feel suicidal, depressed and anxious, and whenever I do feel depressed, suicidal and anxious, just read the lists and then I will feel fine! Surprisingly this ground-breaking therapy did not work.
I had one therapy, just after making a suicide attempt, which consisted of an NHS hippie therapist, dressed in long flowing purple robes, telling me to buy a copy of the New Age book The Secret, about the law of attraction, and use it to attract whatever I want into my life. Then I won't be depressed any more. Again, didn't work, and is this really suitable therapy for someone who's just got out of intensive care after a suicide attempt?
My most recent therapist apparently does EDMR, and I asked for that. She refused to give it on the grounds that I'm still in a bad life situation and EDMR is only for people who aren't in that situation any more. So she spent my sessions doing a shitty guided meditation and making me draw pictures of how I feel each week. Utterly useless trash. Literally just box-checking so she can get her paycheque and I can use the fact I'm in therapy as grounds for my benefit appeal. And when I told her her therapy wasn't helping me and I wanted to quit, she said (in fear of losing her paycheque) that if I quit she would inform the DWP so I would fail my benefit appeal. I pointed out that that would leave me permanently destitute and I'd end up homeless, and she didn't care at all. She said she'd just give me a leaflet for a homeless shelter. Just an evil person.
i'm sorry to hear that you've had such horrible experiences with mental health professionals. my experiences with that have ranged very widely, from actively bad to life-changingly good, although the latter still had a lot of limitations given the liberal framework through which the therapy occurred. i've also have the privilege of being (mostly) physically able throughout my life and having material and social support systems to back me up through difficult times. hoping for the best for you, comrade
Thank you but I have totally given up hoping for anything better. It's such a struggle to get any kind of help in the UK - my disability is worsening over time rather than improving because the NHS is so crap, my physiotherapy sessions are so few and far between. It's got to the stage that I've had two bad falls in the past two months, couldn't get up, struggle to get dressed and put my own shoes on, my weak left side is always riddled with injuries and inflammation that makes it difficult to walk, my cancer treatment has left me exhausted and with all sorts of problems and I'll spend the rest of my life constantly being reassessed for benefits and fighting benefit appeals. Nothing will ever get better. But having some sessions with a silly person telling me to write lists and draw pictures is supposed to cure this.
it's really hard for me to experientially know where you're coming from, and so i don't exactly know what to say other than even if you've given up hope, i will still be hoping for you and thinking of you. i've definitely dealt with horrible medical care before, whether mental or physical, and especially when i was younger it all served to give me the impression that my health wasn't valuable to society and, by extension, that my own life wasn't valuable to society. but, even though i don't know you i think you're valuable and worth hoping for, even if the present and future look bleak.