Mental Illness? Forget It, You’re Poor!
A lot of extremely unfortunate and downright ridiculous things have happened with the Finnish healthcare system in the last six months. Looking at the state of this country and how it continues to neglect its most vulnerable is becoming more and more painful by the day: I struggle to recognize this place as the beautiful country I have grown to know and love. It genuinely feels like the welfare system is being torn apart right in front of our eyes by the greedy right-wing politicians who only care about making the richer under the guise of “fixing the national economy”.
assessment.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been frustrated and unhappy with the system for a very long time, starting from the time in my childhood I first started to notice things weren’t going well and something had to be done about the bullying. But this frustration has exploded into sheer desperation over the last year or so, especially since I was all so suddenly kicked out of the specialized healthcare unit in January this year. Ever since then, my treatment has dragged and dragged, nothing has been done about the worsening state of my dissociative disorder, and my physical health has barely even been mentioned in medical meetings offhandedly. But even then, nothing has been as worse as what ended up happening in September as I entered another severe depressive episode.
Nothing could have prepared me for the shock I was about to experience. Until then, I had been hospitalized every single time I had asked for it, simply to protect me from killing myself and to fix my medication. So I thought this year was no different, and I went to the emergency reception, describing my deteriorating mental state. When the doctor finally let me in and told me that the psychiatrist at the ward would not be taking me in, I was in shock. What do you mean you’re not taking an acutely suicidal person into an inpatient treatment period? What do you mean this is not a situation in dire need of medical intervention?
Nothing was happening, absolutely nothing, not even medication changes. I was desperate, and my girlfriend who had just recently moved to the country was growing more and more worried for me and my safety, so we did the only thing we could do. We tried to get me in again. And again. Three times I was rushed to the emergency unit in the county hospital, and three times I was sent back home. It was the third time when I was finally taken in to the ward for a treatment evaluation. I thought this was an obvious gateway for me to be hospitalized, but it ended up not being that after all. Not even the team at the ward saw my situation as one in need of intensive treatment.
When I got the chance to speak to the phyciatrist herself, I explained my situation: I had recently been denied of my disability pension, two separate times within the timespan of a month. The financial situation was extremely dire, I had no source of income, and me and my girlfriend were in deep shit, to be quite honest. All of this and the lack of treatment I had experienced starting from May this year has escalated into me seeing no way out of the situation than suicide. It is a commonly known fact that financial struggles are a major contributor to self-destructive behavior and suicidal ideation. You unfortunately kind of need money to survive in this world, and if you don’t have it, well then, you’re fucked.
But that was not how the ward team saw my situation. The psychiatrist listened to me go on a stupidly long tangent on how ridiculous and unfair the social security system was treating me, and this was her response.
“We are asking you to put your depression and suicidal thoughts at the back burner until you have resolved the situation with your financies.”
Yes, because that is totally possible! What the fuck?
I was asked by the doctor to focus on solving the issues with money first, then I could think about being depressed and dying. I even threw her a slightly petty question, asking, “so what you’re telling me that you’re just going to hope that I don’t kill myself back at home before all of this bullshit with money is fixed?”. Her response was a jumbled mess of stuttered words, trying to convince me that was not what they were doing. Sure thing.
The way the medical system in this country functions now is basically “you take care of yourself unless you’re literally about to die right at this very second, and even then, it can’t be through your own hand”. The conversations I had with all of the countless medical professionals back in September were all filled with legitimate gaslighting, trying to tell me that the way I had been treated in the past was not actually the norm at any given point, even though I had had experiences with inpatient treatment over the course of THREE YEARS. I was told time and time again that it is not normal to take in an acutely suicidal person when they’re about to kill themself. Okay then, WHEN do you take them in? When they’re already DEAD?
Sorry to break it to you, but it won’t do much at that point.
Struggling,
ichigonya