My daughter Ims’ story
“Multiple trips to the GP, but we were just put on a waiting list and told to wait weeks or months.”
This story is presented as written. As such, views expressed below are the personal opinion of the author. Health systems are complex places to navigate for everyone working and existing within them; stories are presented to help find ways forward – and to reduce shame, not shift it.
Author wishes to remain anonymous
My daughter suffered extreme health anxiety, and got to the stage of limiting her food, not attending school, and just sitting on the sofa as that was “safe”. She lost some weight and spent most of the time in an anxious/emotional state.
This affected her schooling, my employment and our whole lives were impacted.
The GP was not very helpful at all, would not prescribe medication, wouldn’t see my daughter as it wasn’t classed as an emergency and generally didn’t seem worried. They referred us for counselling but explained there was a waiting list. They did refer CAMHS but with the same explanation.
I believe she would have been seen far sooner if she was not disabled
I believe that with her level of illness she would have been seen far sooner if she was not disabled, for two reasons. Firstly, the way she was presenting was assumed to be linked to her disability, despite us assuring the doctors that this was not the case. Secondly, she was not assessed to be an immediate risk to her own or others’ life because we were able to contain and protect her.
It took us about 3 months of severe episodes and two trips to A&E before we were seen by her paediatrician (who we’d not seen for years) who immediately realised how profoundly ill she was.
Once we had the CAMHS psychiatrist on board and started anti-anxiety medication and therapy she improved quickly. However, despite the clearly hormonal cycles he announced “I don’t do hormones”, so we had to seek out our own private advice to work out the best type of mood-balancing contraceptive pill to add into the mix. I was surprised that a psychiatrist would not take account of the impact of hormones on a young teenage girl.
We’ve had another episode recently, having been stable for 5 years or so, but this time the GP can prescribe anti-anxiety meds so the situation was quicker to address. There was good treatment once we got it, and helpful psychotherapy, but there’s also a massive need to consider the social model of disability and root out discrimination.
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