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No, the depression isn’t better. It’s worse. Two Saturdays ago, I came dangerously close to purposely driving into a tree. I’m starting to want to hurt myself. I have nowhere to turn. No one who wants to help me, or even seems to care. All my friends live out East, and their time zones are totally incompatible with me calling them when I get home from work. There are times when I feel like the only people living out here who give half of a damn about it are… the people from out East – my husband and a couple old friends who have moved out here. And they can’t help me.
Perfect Husband can’t find any GPs in the area taking new patients. Even the ones LISTED as taking new patients on the college of physicians and surgeons website aren’t taking new patients. Unless you’re pregnant. Which I am very not.
Oh, and I got turned down for long term benefits by our mortgage and life insurance, because I have been diagnosed with depression.
Isn’t that grand?
If By Yes 
And thus the problem with mental health care today – not just in Canada, but everywhere. It’s so easy sometimes to be diagnosed; so much harder to get any treatment at all, much less good & effective treatment.
If you are seriously considering harming yourself, you need to go Defcon 2. Remember back when you first started seeking help, and you kept running into the “but you have to be a danger to yourself” roadblock? If you are a danger to yourself now – and I know this will be hard – tell people. Anyone you can. Crisis hotline, emergency room doctor, walk-in clinic – whoever you need to. And in the meantime, did you try to circumvent the backlog in GPs and find a psychologist yourself? (Forgive me if you did this already). There is a BC Psychologists referral service http://www.psychologists.bc.ca/referral.html that might be a place to start because it allows you to narrow your search by the reason you want counselling help (depression is on the exhaustive list). Even one session with a marginally-competent psychologist will open additional avenues for treatment that you may not be able to access on your own.
Let me restate, for the record – IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING HARMING YOURSELF OR OTHERS, get your ass to an emergency room, mui pronto. I know that you read Thordora. She has tried to commit suicide twice in the short time I’ve known her. I don’t want your next blog post to be “so, I just got home from the hospital”.
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