Merry Christmas

[julesjones]

A safe and happy Christmas to you all.

I have already had what I expect to be the best present I get this year -- four hand-made peppermint creams, made and posted by a friend who six months ago was not capable of finding her way home from 100 metres down a straight path, let alone the post office. $STUFF is nice, and I am grateful for it, but I am even more grateful for less tangible things. One of those things is the NHS, both as an institution, and as an embodiment of a concept which is known to those of many faiths and no faith, but is summarised in mine as "You shall love your neighbour as yourself."

Comments

[predatrix.livejournal.com]

Yes, its heart is in the right place and it must be a massive improvement on the American system or the Victorian British system (which, if memory serves, was particularly keen on dealing with 'moral insanity').

I think it's much better at dealing with more definite things like a single physical injury or one definite mental illness than it is with dealing with murky muddled co-morbid bipolar/AS/slight cerebral palsy presenting with hypochondriac/OCD features.

Sadly, kindness was not the answer, although the unkindness/unwillingness to listen of some of the nurses certainly wasn't either. The answer I'd found last time I was mentally ill was my partner (the person I've talked to most consistently over the past fifteen years or so) and hometown not very far outside the walls of the hospital. These not being available, nothing seemed significant enough