An Unspoken Story: Why Do We Need a Crisis to Care?

Marie has been working as a dressmaker for 20 years, and she knows what it entails. It has been her livelihood for so long, passed on from her own mother, learning to create intricately woven designs for her customers.

As she works through each day, although the tangible part of her role is to take measurements, piecing bits of material together, she usually also spends the time listening to each customer’s story, from the families to the friends, from the love stories to the heart aches. As her customers share, Marie always smiles, shows kindness, but keeps her heart to herself, as the “professional” woman her mother always taught her to be.

As Marie welcomes the final customer for a busy day, Bethany walks through the main room of the studio. As per the usual appointment goes, Marie starts to work through the motions, pinning one piece to the next across Bethany’s torso.

While Marie works through, Bethany begins to share that she works as a mental health nurse in the local hospital and how her career has been challenging during the pandemic but does it for the love of helping others, knowing the impact it has had her personally. Not enough doctors, not enough beds, not enough support.

As Marie’s fingers continue to work through, she listens intently to Bethany, looking up at her every now and then, contemplating her own thoughts inside. As Marie starts to put the final touches to the dress work, she can feel herself wanting to share.

Almost out of the middle of nowhere - “My daughter has severe disassociation, we cannot get an appointment with a psychologist - her trauma is complex, and psychologists are turning us away. The pandemic has been good for her as she has been home more, but I am at a loss of what to do…the system isn’t helping her”.

From Marie’s face, Bethany can tell she is lost in her own world as she tries to meet Marie’s gaze. Both women in silence take a seat, with the air holding the heaviness of the reality of how things work, as they can feel the weight of the words being spoken.?Marie begins to fumble with the paper in her hands and looks up with a glance to Bethany, her eyes expressing a desperate desire to seek understanding, to seek comfort in a time that doesn’t make sense.

“We haven’t had mental health in the family before, and I don’t understand it. The psychologists are not able to explain it to me…she has tried to take her life a couple of times…she is 16 years old...”

As Bethany reaches out her hand to gently show comfort, she knows she doesn’t have a solution for her. Bethany knows the system well – it is broken, and it is failing to keep up.

Bethany’s eyes are subtle and her words are soft…“I am not sure if it is helpful…I have had disassociation before too, when I was younger and more recently as well…I am not a psychologist, but I have a lot of techniques I used that helped me recover over time… if you’d like me to share?”

Marie eyes lit up - “You had it too…?” Bethany nods subtly.

Marie is quiet and Bethany feels for a moment that she may have said the wrong thing. As Marie holds in silence, she begins to open her lips, Bethany can see the intensity from her eyes as she is connecting the dots…

“And look at you now…That means my daughter could be OK too.”

Bethany realised in that moment, that she didn’t need to provide a solution - she had something else - she provided hope.

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Have you ever noticed that it takes a crisis for us to care? There are examples pertaining throughout our history to example the slow pace in which we act until it is too late, or it is so close to being too late that we as a human race have created permanent damage.

As a world, we wait until moments of despair and struggle to wake up and realise what we have ignored, if we are even lucky to notice.

“The world gives us opportunities for learning – and only if we are lucky enough, we pay attention” – Frank Ostaseski

As humans, we wait until things go wrong for us to invoke real action. Crises induce change as an inexorable response – “necessity is the mother of invention” - a non-negotiable reaction to something we usually could have controlled sooner if we had given ourselves the chance.

But when do we consider something bad enough to be a crisis? When does it truly instigate change?

In 2020, there were 3,139 people who took their own life, higher than the total number of deaths due to Covid in Australia that year - yet we didn’t hear about it.

When does the crisis begin?

When people have nowhere to go, they go to our emergency departments. In 2020, there was 28,000 hospitalisations for intentional self-harm. In the same year, there was 33,000 incidents requiring an ambulance attendance related to suicidal behaviour.

When does the crisis begin?

Wait times for a psychologist are up to 4-6 months due to the unprecedented demand to see someone for support during the pandemic.

When does the crisis begin?

This issue isn’t something that started in 2020 when the pandemic came to our shores, this has been an issue that has been generating, building, copulating for decades and, yet we still do not consider it a crisis.

Crises trigger the collapse of a broken system and challenge us to revolutionise it with a new one.

Crises allow us to rethink what we have done and provide fuel for fire to reform quickly.

Traditional paradigms need to be questioned; systems need to be pulled apart.

Over the last two decades, we have needed to rationalise our mental health services to meet demand, yet we are still seeing unmet needs increasing. With limited resources, we are only able to meet the needs of the most severe patients, if we are lucky enough to even get to them, leaving the others to fend for themselves.

Suicide is preventable. Yet, we act like it is something we cannot control.

Those trying to develop a response are thinking scalability, they are thinking technology solutions, they are thinking generalised support, forgetting the values of the complex needs within mental health and the values-based support that bring patients what we need most - connection, kindness, support, safety – the individual experience of recovery. We fail to listen to the lived experience of those who have stood before. ?

Among many tangible issues that the system presents us, from not enough psychiatric beds, a lack of education and understanding, pressure on quick discharges, lack of primary health care in our communities, there is another thing that are missing from our patients, that we are missing in the entire system - hope.

Hope that recovery is possible. Hope that safety is a genuine and possible outcome. Hope that this isn’t going to be forever.

What people in the mental health system need the most is a belief that things can get better, that things will get better…But, first, we need a system that means for that to be true. We need a system that cares.

About the Author

Camille Wilson?is an inspiring?key note speaker and author?in the space of mental health. For sponsorship of The Hard Truth, reach out directly for details.