Physical Health

I volunteer at a prestigious mental health charity in Bristol. I phone people on a Friday morning and give them a welfare check. It means letting them know how long they have left before they receive a support worker and asking if I can provide any support whilst I'm on the phone. On Friday, I spoke to a woman who had also experienced psychosis. She had a concern about her physical health and was quite distressed about it; she had also been discriminated against and felt less than. She had visited several healthcare providers, including a walk-in centre, with the intention of having a very intimate area of her body examined. Both the walk-in centre and the healthcare centre treated her like she was having a psychotic episode. At the healthcare centre, they didn't even examine her and proceeded to ask her if she was taking her medication as they entered the room. I'm drawing your attention to this because there is a common bias in the physical health community where if you have a mental health diagnosis, you will receive less care for your physical ailments than someone who does not have a mental health experience. I am disgusted by this. This person left the healthcare environment feeling like she was less than and questioning her mental health state. I had spoken to her on the phone and saw no examples of her slipping into psychosis. How long will we allow the physical health community to discriminate against us so we receive less adequate care than someone who is not? In essence, this stigma of mental health means that innocent people die of their physical health ailments because of a lack of care. It's time we said no to this. I recommend complaining vehemently if you have experienced this. Regardless of if you are having a mental health experience or not, we deserve to be treated equally; we matter!