Late on Saturday March 12th, I had a dissociative episode, and worrying that it would get worse and I would hurt myself, I called the circled number. Due to my anxiety,and especially compounded when dissociating, I am not great on the phone. The person who answered it (I can’t remember if they gave a name, but they were female) kept mishearing me or misunderstanding me, which made my dissociation worse (at one point she seemed to think I had children, and asked if they were safe). After a frustrating attempt to describe dissociative symptoms while dissociating, during which I was accused of not cooperating because I said I wasn’t feeling anything, I asked to see someone from the crisis team. It was then I learnt, for the first time, that in order to actually see one of the team, a “service user” must be pre-referred for community support, so all I could have was the phone call, which was making me feel worse. (In the end I hung up because I was scared it would push me past being able to recover that night.)

My complaint is that at no time before I needed to use the Home Treatment Team was I told that I needed to be pre-referred before I would qualify for home visits. Since a “service user” is unlikely to call a crisis number unless they are actually in acute crisis, this seems like a very risky policy. In my case, it made my acute mental health crisis worse to find that out after being further agitated by invasive questioning and allegations during the phone call.

I feel rather silly complaining two months after the event, but also feel much better for having sent it. The kicker is, I have another really quite serious complaint to make about the same CMHT which I’m going to address in person at the start of next month. Two complaints already and therapy doesn’t even start until June…

[edit – sorry, no idea what’s happened with the formatting]