Using Bipolar for good

Today I had a very negative experience with a Charity helping people with bipolar disorder.

I won’t name the charity, because together we managed to find a way to resolve it in a way where naming and shaming them would be really unfair.

I had booked an appointment with their employment consultant for next week, then received an email from her in which she told me the service had now moved to a volunteer service that would be opening in April.

I called up and spoke to a Manager, and we were able to have a constructive and protracted (45min) conversation in which I was able to express my views, both from having worked for a charity that had to be closed due to government cuts and from being a service user. I explained that a dedicated employment officer, even part time, could provide a service to someone with complex needs* like myself in a way a volunteer couldn’t, and she was receptive to that.

She asked me how I would change the service, and I expressed a wish to see a charity have a website that is objective and accessible to service users, politicians, mental health professionals and the general public. I explained that issues like taking a medication, seeing a psychiatrist and holding a job – there’s two sides to it. I was diagnosed in 2008, and I used to see GPs before then who couldn’t spot my condition but would be able to now. This means that the research is there to help make an effective change. On the other hand, it won’t be solved just be an app, a newspaper article, a website or a volunteer. I do understand how difficult underfunding has been for charities, but the new NHS mental health service will go down the Jeremy Hunt NHS path unless someone can find a clearer way to help people now.

She offered me volunteering opportunities, or to talk to the new peer review team but I asked that I could email her and address it to the company director, make it eloquent and brief and see if we could engage in some kind of constructive dialogue first.

I would love to one day tour schools with a psychiatrist, and try and explain how they can help people and how people can help themselves.

JRo

*in and out of employment, strange behaviour traits, issues with anger, family history, mistreatment in the past, CV full of zero hour contract jobs and empty spells inbetween