So apparently, mental health practitioners are at a very high risk of mental illness and suicide. This is going to sound really f****d up, but I sort of take comfort in this.
I have a history of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, anger managment issues - well...I have "issues", and one of the most frustrating things about it is the total lack of empathy others have for your problems. Even worse is when the person who is supposed to be helping you seems to be infantilizing and patronizing you. I guess for me, personally, I felt more at ease talking about my mental health problems to somebody who also had mental health issues.
For example, I had a lecturer in college who suffered from a cluster-fuck of mental health problems and was on a cocktail of various psychiatric medications. Being a disabled student, there was a lot of correspondence with him and the disability services, so he was very aware of my problems. He was very open about his condition(s) to the students and I'm glad he was. I respected the fact that, despite living like this on a daily basis, he got on with his life.
In contrast, I had a CPN who, as nice and well meaning as she was, didn't get it. Maybe she did and she was just pretending she didn't, but I'm guessing she actually didn't get it. Oh, she understood it from an academic level, but it all felt very artificial. Maybe that's the point of psychiatric care - maybe it's not supposed to feel "real" or whatever (or maybe she was just safeguarding herself, which is completely understandable).
Any thoughts?
