When you have mental and physical health problems, your mind often takes over

In my old surgery, appointments lasted five minutes . [19659004Ifyouwantedtotalkaboutmorethanonethingyouhadtoaskforyou'dhavetoaskyourselfandforsomeofthemoreyouwouldhavetocomebacksometime

When I had contraception issues, old problems, odd bruises I was leaving my body, and strange cough / cold / back pain, these things dominated my time.

Although I would often be extremely weak and in need of mental health support, physical problems took priority.

The rest can wait, I thought, as my mental health slowly declined in the background.

After all, your body's problems are tangible and easy to explain.

"Yep, push it and it hurts." This cough lasted exactly two weeks and four days, or "I fell and now there is a pain h

Mental illness does not really have the same diagnosis of cause and effect, and it is much more simple to put it aside when there are other things going on.

When I finally asked for help For my part, I felt guilty. did not just seem to sit in the waiting room looking at people with arms in slings and trinkets.

As Hannah Jane Parkinson has brilliantly described in The Guardian last week, mental illness is not like a broken leg.It's more complicated, it's harder to repair, or you You can not see it on an x-ray.

This is less about the stigma of mental illness in the world (which still exists in many ways), but more about

Tell someone you have a physical problem takes you from A to B with a letter to explain to your employer why you were not at the office, and a referral When I was diagnosing brain stuff, I cried doctor after doctor, each of them trying not to grinning at my snotty nose and wet mascara.

I really hated being vulnerable to people I had never met, eating the time I thought I could be better used on someone with "real" problems.

I would rather 100% my cervix for a smear than ask myself why I want to kill myself.

And all of this comes from someone who writes about the importance of mental health treatment and intervention

Because of this presumption that mental health problems are more difficult to diagnose and treat, I have not seen the doctor for a long time.

Refused to get help because my depression and my anxiety and my attention to my other problems had the opposite effect of making me better.

If there is something that anxious people know about the nature of the beast, it is that letting things be by the wayside

The more I jostled my feelings, the more I pushed people away. The more I pushed people away, the more I became isolated.

I felt like a complete failure and I did not see any way out – and all because I had the impression that my physical health was "more important"

a world ideally, physical health problems would be given the same priority as mental problems – both in our own mind and by the powers that be.

Stigma is becoming less and less of a problem in society through a number of public campaigns, but mental health treatment does not yet have parity of esteem (equal funding and value to people). physical issues).

The government has set a target of 2020 to the point where both have the same gravity in funding, diagnosis and treatment, but that seems very far for now.

A report for the NHS in 2013 found that among people with diabetes or hypertension, 90% of people were on treatment. Among those suffering from depression and anxiety, only 25% of people were affected.

The author – Martin McShane – the so-called "binocular vision";

The late Professor Helen Lester advocated for longer appointments for physicians to help health professionals properly badess the situation

. check if there are any physical problems related to their mental illness. For example, people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder run a much higher risk of cardiovascular problems and should be screened for blood pressure as part of their consultation.

Mental health patients see the same doctor each time (and do not need to repeat their medical history in a vulnerable state) and give priority to people with psychosis.

I'm not the only one to put my physical health before my sanity, even though I know it's counterproductive.

And while those of us who believe that one is more important than the other must work with ourselves, it is also up to the NHS decision makers to understand why People might not prioritize some issues and try to work around those barriers.

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