There lay unspoken grief in my smile. The voices in my head made friends with the monsters under my bed while the pain surrounding my space wreaked havoc on my inner peace. I found myself searching for all the wrong answers to my unhealthy behaviors. I was falling.
The very backbone that held me up was snapping in half. I turned within myself, listened to this familiar path I was embarking on from the past, and sought out more help at a mental health partial hospitalization program. At the time, I hoped I had 'fixed' myself and returned to reality all too quickly.
I couldn't function in the reality of crippling PTSD that I had returned to all too quickly. Knowing where to turn when the chamber is half-cocked, I re-entered the broken mental health system again, the emergency room at a hospital. Still lurking in the darkness, the monsters under my bed became my friends inward and outwardly.
I was frightened and hopeless. I sat on the gurney in my stringless green jumpsuit, feeling like an animal rattling in a cage. The entire emergency room hallways were filled with other people of the like. We were ignored, treated like savages, and as if we were the "problem." We were all pleading for the mental health system to save us.
As I struggled, I utilized my last breath of inner strength of advocacy and expertise in healthcare in my favor to help me get to where I needed. I stayed for way too long in an emergency room for over 48 hours, but little did I know the average stay was over two weeks before being transferred to an in-patient psychiatric hospital. How could that be the case? Again, "the system" was failing not only those seeking help but everyone struggling to seek help, not knowing where to turn, and having limited access to care. Words cannot explain the unjust justice that was surrounding me.
Just when you think you get a glimmer of hope of finding access to care, you wait for the agonizing health insurance coverage approval for a treatment program or in-patient hospitalization. Although laws were passed to decrease the disparities among mental health insurance companies, it remains a lengthy, arduous process. Mental health insurance companies monopolize the length of stay and where you can seek treatment. Unfortunately, they dictate and play a significant role in your future mental health stability and recovery. I have often seen the system fail those with health insurance and those with limited or lack health insurance.
As you struggle to keep your head afloat and work on your mental health, there's an influx of overwhelmingly high hospital-specific and physician-specific service fees. Also, health insurance companies fail to update you that the services will likely be only partially paid because of low reimbursement rates and plan deductibles by health insurance. It is genuinely an outrageous system that is shattered.
The shattering in the system continues with an overdemand and lack of professional help. The overstressed system lacks a proper amount of providers and staffing in mental health. So what is the most significant overall problem? Who is responsible? Unfortunately, it is a system as a whole. Awareness of the systemic crisis and bringing mental health to the forefront versus a shameful entity will help break down barriers and disparities in the system. If you or a loved one are struggling, do not give up hope. The system can help; it is a battle to keep advocating and fighting for life sometimes, but life is worth it.
- A.N.T.
"You don't have to be an Olympian to create change for yourself and others. Each of us can bet on ourselves."
- Allyson Felix.
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