"Withholding treatment"

Every year I go into the Albany hospital mental health unit to see if someone has developed what I feel is a grain of compassion or humanity and changed what I believe to be the arbitrary and disgusting policy of withholding treatment for those suffering ADD and ADHD.

In my opinion, it's akin to saying don't treat anyone presenting at emergency with life-threatening trauma to the left arm, only treat life-threatening trauma to the right arm, in what I feel is its stupidity.

I had, however, come to terms with the mental health unit being what I believe to be intentionally neglectful of its basic duty of care, but last year I was clipped by a car at work and it caused what I call a ricochet.

It's an unexpected event or person that changes my mental ecosystem so drastically the usual routine, support network and self-monitoring can't cope.

Not only have my visits to the mental health unit at the Albany hospital been, in my opinion, completely void of compassion, or even the most basic of treatments, they leave me in a worse state of mental health than before I reluctantly sought their aid.

But it is the last visit recently that is the subject of this story.

After going through the apparent obligatory, we don't prescribe medication that can actually help "why?" Just because of rhetoric, a doctor prescribes me something that is apparently exactly the same as the diazepam but without the pesky potential for the possibility of maybe addiction.

Great, I say, and leave feeling hopeful that I can be myself again for the first time in two years.

They had absolutely no effect, so I asked the pharmacist and was told they are, as I understand it, nothing at all like the benzodiazepines (that I believe work) and take 30 days to build enough levels to be effective, and here's the kicker, apparently most likely prescribed to try and elicit the placebo effect!

I literally felt the last straw snap and plunged into complete helplessness and rage.

I went to emergency with the hope of getting answers, but was in such a state I think I was basically incoherent.

They offered me medication which I declined a number of times before accepting it would enable me to communicate and I suppose stop being so hostile.

Within 10 minutes of taking the medication I had calmed down enough to tell them why I was there, and within 20 minutes I was myself again.

My lesson for the day was, yes they seemingly do have things that can help and, in my opinion, choose not to help unless it makes life easier for them.

I sarcastically said, "sorry you have to put up with me for an hour, but I live with that person in my head every second of every single day". Childish I know, but I feel this apparent suspended duty of care or even concern is, I believe, killing me and the people who are supposed to help are, in my opinion, on some righteous high horse.

I just can't fathom how seemingly 12% of stimulants prescribed going to people who are using them recreationally is, as I understand it, justification for withholding treatment from the 88% of people who I believe desperately need this medication to lead a healthy life.

How can what I think is such a counterintuitive and detrimental policy exist in a modern health care system?

Why has it not, as I understand it, been reviewed in over ten years?

And who is responsible and accountable for withholding treatment from me?

And is it Albany Health Campus policy to prescribe placebos to those who I believe are a clear danger to themselves and others?