‘I’ve always been a worrier, back into my teens,” said Helen Convery, 43, a radiographer from Epsom who has seen the best and the worst of the NHS’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme.
Her most recent mental health problems emerged, as in so many cases, when she was engulfed by a pile-up of problems in her life. Last summer, her husband’s illness had returned, her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she herself had been diagnosed with health problems.
“All three things happened in the space of a couple of months,” she said. “I had a breakdown.”
The crunch point came when she could not cope with the routine chore of washing clothes any more.
“I was so anxious I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I felt like I was losing my mind. I found myself worrying about things outside of my control, climate change, everything. My first thought when I woke in the morning was, ‘What am I going to worry about today?’
“It could be completely random. I got completely obsessed about silly little things like the weather, what I was going to wear. I felt nauseous all the time, I had panic attacks, I would feel breathless and lacking in energy even though I had adrenaline running through my body all the time.”
Her first brush with depression had been in 2006, before IAPT existed. But then in 2012 an illness her husband suffered and relationship issues caused her serious anxiety. She was tearful, tired and kept cancelling social engagements at the last minute. Her GP put her on antidepressants and warned her there would be a long wait for the IAPT consultation that was supposed to give her access to talking therapies on the NHS.
“I didn’t hear anything for three months,” she said. “I thought I had fallen through the system.”
Attempts to make an appointment turned into phone tag.
“The person I needed to speak to was never in and they said they couldn’t email me with an appointment. It ended up stressing me out more than the problems the treatment was supposed to be solving. I couldn’t help thinking this wouldn’t happen within any other illness. I felt cheated and let down. It was almost like I didn’t count, I didn’t matter.”
Such experiences are common. In 2014, a survey of 2,000 people who tried to access talking therapies, including non-IAPT, was carried out by a coalition of charities called We Need to Talk. Half waited more than three months and one in 10 waited more than a year for an assessment. While waiting, 67% became more mentally unwell, 40% harmed themselves and one in six attempted to take their own life.
Convery’s attempts to get treatment went on for six months and were never successful. She became so frustrated she sought private therapy, going on a mindfulness course, and she found some stability.
Then, as is common for sufferers of mental health problems, she had a relapse this summer. This time her referral to IAPT went a lot better. The wait was just 10 days and she was offered a course of six 50-minute counselling sessions.
“I felt totally valued and totally included in my choices of care,” she said. “I felt like a patient, not a nuisance, and I felt that I was being treated seriously and I was ill and did deserve this treatment.
“Mental illness needs more resources, training and staff who want to do it. The first time round, the people I spoke to sounded like they were in a call centre. They didn’t have any empathy. It was a tick-box system.”
Convery works in cancer treatment, which she said contrasted sharply with mental health services. “Cancer care is so geared up to get the treatment started, get things going and to support the patient throughout. That’s what mental health treatment should aim for. At the moment, a lot of people don’t know what to do with you.”
