Sitting outside my GP’s office I feel I am about to die. My heart is beating uncontrollably, my palms are sweating and the thoughts that circle my head are enough to drain my last morsel of energy.
In truth I should know better by now. I’m 23 and have been dealing with anxiety for the past ten years. Years of counselling, days of torment, and I find myself back in this very spot pondering the same elusive question, ‘How did I get here?’
The receptionist calls my name and I make my way to my college doctor. There’s something warm in her tone that endears me to her. So, I just launch straight in and tell her I’m suffering from panic attacks. She seems unfazed, as if I just told her that I had the flu. She asks pedantic questions in an uninterested tone that cause me to feel agitated. Some of them are as follows:
- Have you tired medication?
- Are you unusually stressed as of late?
- Can you describe what you’re feeling?
These are all normal questions. I know the doctor must ask them and yet they cause me to feel totally alienated. Her questions feel sterile and that warm tone that once endeared me to her fades away as we begin to discuss my mental health. It becomes obvious to me that she’s heard this many times before and has almost gone on autopilot in the robotic way she responds to my illness.
I tell her I’ve been on Lexapro for depression but have never taken meds for my anxiety. I tell her that I am very stressed of late and nearly fainted in town the other day whist getting my haircut. I tell her that the only way to describe what I’m feeling is that I feel out of control. But I know she has stopped listening and my heart is crushed.
I really felt like this was going to work out. I thought she would come up with a solution and we’d work together to combat my anxiety. But instead she writes me a prescription for Xanax (to be used only when necessary) and hands me a list of free counselling services. I leave her office feeling alone and unheard and it’s a crushing blow to my self-esteem.
The experience has left me wondering about others in my situation. I don’t have a lot of money right now, and went to my college GP as it’s the most inexpensive option. I’m currently on a waiting list to see a counsellor, and have been on it for almost four weeks. If I were suicidal I might have taken my own life by now. I couldn’t have waited around for four weeks while the college tries its best to get me an appointment.
The counselling service I attended is part of a University service based in Dublin and it is very limited. They can only offer a certain amount of appointments as there are too many students and too little counsellors. It’s a topic that needs to be addressed even more, as there is such a demand on the service. I really don’t know what the answer is but I have some ideas.
The first is that when a student comes to a doctor you need to take them seriously. I was in a very bad space that day and my doctor failed me. She gave me a prescription but didn’t offer me a practical, sustainable solution. She should have looked me in the eye, instead of typing on her computer screen. There, she would have seen the seriousness of my situation written all over my face. She could have let me meet with a counsellor that week, just for 10 minutes to assess me. She could have offered a list of support groups, instead of the free counselling services, the nearest of which was located an hour away from me. Most of all she could have shown me her humanity, and just listened to me for five minutes. I swear to God if one person just listened to me that day and told me they understood, my burden would have been lifted.
Instead I left her office a broken man. I luckily was not suicidal but what about those who are? There needs to be a plan set in place for those who are falling through the cracks of the college health system. No doubt officials will say that those plans are in effect, I mean they have a counselling service, isn’t that enough?
Well, I don’t think it is and the next time you go to your GP, make sure you are listened to and that your health concern is fully understood. Write a list of questions that you have for them. Bring along facts and figures and show them that you know what you’re talking about. When they offer medication, ask what the long term effects of that medication are. Get them to offer alternatives to medication and if you are suicidal demand to see a counsellor.
If I have a broken arm, which I have had in the past, my whole family offers me their support. They insist I see a doctor, that I get a cast, and wait the appropriate time before returning to work. ‘There’s no point going back when you’re not fully recovered, you’ll just injure yourself again’, they say. Well it’s the exact same for mental illness, you are injured but not broken. Your doctor needs to build you a cast; a set of practical solutions that will bring about your recovery.
Ultimately the total lack of compassion and human connection was the worst aspect of my visit to the college GP, particularly when it took so much courage to make the appointment. Perhaps doctors are overwhelmed with the numbers of students presenting with depression, anxiety or different mental health challenges and if this is the case, they need to do something urgently to deal with the increasing numbers so people are met with greater care.
Perhaps doctors also need to be taught and helped to cultivate compassion in their practice as well as offering medication or lists of counselling services. Making a genuine connection to somebody who needs help would be a good place to start.
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