#the fucking medical system keeps giving me the runaround

[heavenlymusickcorporation]

I have school tomorrow but I'm genuinely considering having a 3 am espresso 🙃

[alyjojo]

July 🍯 2024 Monthly - Scorpio

Preshuffle: You’re purposely not cooperating with a parent, spouse, or a belief system of some kind. Could be government related, a doctor or something involving school as well. Whatever it is would force you to give up something you’re flat out not giving up, I heard “red meat” 🥩 and chuckled. No way Jose.

Meditation: Wasn’t even a meditation, just a clip of Taylor Swift yelling out “who’s afraid of little old me?”…it seems like you’re feeling very powerful this month - it’s a whole vibe here.

Main energy: The Devil rev

I’m seeing work, Strategy, Triumph, and Home - some of you are flat out done working with other people, something has become toxic and if you have any chance of working at home you’re going to be pushing for that, for the tech crowd and anyone else that’s able. For others, any situation you deem as unfair, imbalanced, getting on your nerves - you’re going to be a powerhouse of potential when it comes to the battles you pick and choose this month, because whatever it is, you’re going to win 💯 “There is no other option” is how I’m hearing it, and it could be about anything.

What’s going on in July:

Justice rev:

An unfair and imbalanced situation is still going on, probably has for some time now, and you’re fed up with it. You see this as The Devil currently, something that’s keeping you in chains, and it probably has something to do with your job or finances - maybe health insurance. I’m seeing someone have a close call with their health that should’ve been prevented but for some financial/work reason ended up having to be delayed or become worse than it needed to be, and I’m hearing “it’s fucked up.” So unfair and The Devil would be the best thing to cover it tarot-wise. Health insurance could be the reason you’re staying in a toxic situation/job, until you find something better. I do see you actively looking for what you want, probably have been for a while, and now you’re getting impatient.

Temperance rev:

There may have been a health situation where you had no choice but to take time off, and because of some policy at your company, there was no paid time off, no back-up plan, there’s nothing financially to aid you during this time period. You could’ve lost your job altogether, and forced to just “figure it out”. I’m not seeing any assistance here from anywhere, you’ve had to fend for yourself during a very difficult time - Strength has been on the bottom of every row. If you’re trying to leave a place behind, you don’t have the resources to do so yet, but you’re so ready. Using everything you’ve got in terms of willpower and mental strategy to manifest healthier situation for yourself. Maybe your job doesn’t even offer insurance and you’ve been there for a long time but enough is enough, you could be giving them an ultimatum or planning to jump ship altogether. This could also be someone outside of yourself that you’re fighting or caring for, a parent/grandparent that’s dealing with medical issues - that’s the main energy this month.

8 Pentacles:

Your job is a heavy burden to bear for you this month, some of you are sick and still working because you don’t have a choice. Some of you could be caring for elderly family members and can’t afford a nurse or anyone, but still have to go to work too - and assistance is giving you the runaround. If it even exists. You’re definitely having to strategize in more than one area this month, everything seems to be on you and you can’t take it, while at the same time not having a choice. It’s like you’re trapped in chains, likely waiting on someone or something like a call back, a message, approval, assistance, something. Red tape. Or again, you have a good argument for working at home and some of you are definitely pursuing that route, wherever possible.

7 Cups rev:

I’m seeing you as having no choice, there’s only a few things you can try and you’ve probably tried them all, it’s coming down to you stepping up and speaking up to those who aren’t cooperating, messaging back, approving, answering, whatever. Queen of Wands isn’t one to be played with, Strength again at the bottom, you may be someone having to step in and fight a battle for yourself or someone else, because if you don’t things won’t change - and it’s too much pressure on you for things to continue as they are. You’re willing to fight for it 🔥 whatever it is.

3 Pentacles rev:

This row is tricky because you’re going back to something. Back to chains, back to The Devil, you don’t have a choice. Or that’s the reason you’re going back to people you’ve already gotten an answer from? Maybe to fight back. These may be family members that need to step in, management or siblings that need to step up, healthcare/work policies that are a roadblock of progress to you, systems of assistance that are being held up for whatever reason, etc. You are determined to make progress, and I do see success here, whatever you’re doing keep doing it. Eventually something has to give, and Carrot Colored Cloak shows something being right around the corner, right when you’re about to give up. A lack of finances is a major issue for you this month, or some kind of debt or lack generally, and you’re going to champion the cause to whoever tf isn’t hearing you properly.

Advice, what can Scorpio do?: Page of Swords & 9 Cups. Research 💯 More effort into learning what’s out there and more of a focus on the things you want. There are opportunities out there for you, and you need to use all of the confidence and direct problem-solving energy you can muster, Queen of Wands is you here, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. For someone, I’m seeing generic prescriptions. Sending you lots of love 🧡

Signs you may be dealing with:

Capricorn, Libra, Scorpio, Virgo & Sagittarius

Oracle: ✨

44 Home 🏡

This card represents a homecoming of the soul, of finding your tribe, of coming home. The situation you are inquiring about has the potential to be a homecoming - a safe and secure place that both nourishes you and facilitates your growth, whether it be a school, a relationship, a job, or truly a home. Go for it! All paths lead home. Home doesn’t have to be where you grow up; family doesn’t always mean the people of your birth family. Look at an expanded meaning. Family are people who share the same core values and path. Home can mean a place you have yet to visit or experience, but once there, it feeds your soul in a way that gives you no doubt you are home. Alternately, find your safe place. This is where the answers you seek will be found.

Triumph 🏆

Success - Victory - Achievement

Strategy ♟️

Planning - Prediction - Mind Reading

We enter into July as:

Blue November 🕊

“ A window is opened as a door gently closes.”

The passing of things in our lives is inevitable. Jobs, people, friendships, or relationships. This card is a message that whatever is going on requires a release on your part. There is no healthy escape from your own feelings. This card is a reminder that what is taken away is replaced with something else, in some form, eventually. You may not even be aware of the loss, but others around you are feeling it, in some cases. This could represent some unexpected news. You must be grateful for what you have. A coming celebration will pull you through whatever is coming. Do not be afraid that you are avoiding your feelings by celebrating. Your feelings will surface, and resurface, when they’re supposed to. Whatever is pending that you must face will not be as frightening as it is in your mind.

What is to be learned in July:

The Carrot Colored Cloak 🥕:

“Don’t quit before the miracle!”

You are being told that changing your direction at this time is not wise. We never know where our miracles lie in the path, often just beyond the boundary of our faith. You may not see it, but it lies ahead. When we do the work that is chosen for us, we are serving a higher order, and if we stop we upset the balance of our lives. Stick with it and have blind faith, an exciting change is coming. You must press on in the direction of your vision, what you’re working for will come to fruition.

Orange may be a lucky color 🧡

[qqueenofhades]

Fedyor is just as afraid of somehow losing Ivan as Ivan is of losing him, but he's just better at hiding it. He's usually the optimistic one and he's known as the sunshine half of the Kaminskys, but he can also have depressive episodes and fearing that he's not going to fix anything and just going to endanger the life that they've managed to make.

This is such an interesting and great take on Fedyor and i have many feelings about 🥺🥺🥺 Reading this though made me realize that generally we see Fedyor in a good place throughout PEL and the fivan backstory fic — the one glaring exception being the proposal chapter ofc. I mean Fedyor gets kidnapped by Nazis and is still kicking without a missed beat. Which does make me wonder exactly the kind of dark episodes Ivan has had to pull Fedyor out of privately and I’d love to know more about Ivan being that rock and source of comfort for Fedyor the way we see Fedyor be there for Ivan (especially in the Drag Queen backstory!).

also i have many many feelings about the fact that one of Fedyor’s biggest fears is making things worse and ruining the life he has with Ivan and then…it kind of, sort of happens in PEL. Nobody obviously blames Fedyor, least of all Ivan, but I think Fedyor would feel a bit of guilt. I mean he tried to help Nina, instead got kidnapped by Nazis and then his husband almost got shot trying to find him (and Matthias was in a really bad place because he thankfully saved Ivan’s ass). And all of this shooting and almost dying is a very very scary thing for Fedyor to try to wrap his head around after the fact. And I don’t think by any means that Fedyor regrets helping Nina but there is this scary part of his brain that’s won’t shut up sometimes and is like “Did I just make everything worse???”

Welp. I do think that post-PEL, once Fedyor and Ivan get home to Brighton Beach and everything really hits, there will definitely be some trauma to work through on both their parts. Ivan will have to deal with his fear of almost losing Fedyor, Fedyor will have to deal with his guilt over supposedly causing that situation/almost getting so many people hurt as a result of rescuing him, and they'll definitely need some therapy, as another anon suggested. Because yeah, they both dealt with it like badasses the whole time, but that doesn't mean that they weren't both fucking terrified, and that will have to be reckoned with.

Ivan, of course, isn't all that good at talking about emotions, whether his or anyone's, but he shows his love through his actions. Whether it's turning up at protests that he personally thinks are stupid in order to physically protect Fedyor, or putting together that whole military-grade rescue plot to save him from goddamn Nazis, or doing anything that Fedyor wants even if he has to grumble first, Ivan has already demonstrated his devotion in countless different ways. Fedyor likes to talk about things and provide the verbal reassurances that Ivan needs, such as in the drag queen backstory, but there's no doubt that Ivan has done just as much for him. I mean, the man left Russia and agreed to head into exile in order to marry Fedyor and be with him, gave up his entire life and everything he had ever known, to go to a foreign country where he had never been before, didn't necessarily trust, and didn't particularly speak or read the language. Even though they're living in a very Russian neighborhood, there's still a serious culture shock to get over, the knowledge that he can't go home again soon or probably for years, and... yeah.

(This isn't to suggest that you were implying that Ivan hadn't supported Fedyor the same way Fedyor has supported him, lmao. I just have Many Feelings about Phantomverse Ivan and how VERY far he has come and everything he has done over the years.)

As for Fedyor's dark episodes, he certainly can give into the "our country is doomed why am I even wasting my time" activist ennui that he and all his friends feel, even though they keep working through it, and Ivan has to be there for him in his gruff Ivan way. Fedyor's organization is also occasionally contacted by desperate Russian parents who are trying to get treatment for their sick kids abroad. The way the medical system works in Russia is that if a drug isn't approved in the country, a patient can't be treated with it, and the approval process is complicated, lengthy, and subject to bureaucratic delays and runarounds. This is bad news for kids with very rare disorders for which the only effective (and expensive) medicine exists in the West. The parents have to apply to the regional medical authority for them to buy it/administer it at a federal hospital, which are almost all in Moscow. And if that doesn't work, they pretty much have no choice but to go abroad, and for working-class Russian people who have no way of getting that kind of money, they don't know what else to do aside from internet appeals and emailing everyone they can think of.

Anyway, Fedyor's organization takes these kinds of requests from time to time, from people who are not necessarily opponents of the Putin regime but are willing to ask Russian activists abroad for help getting treatment for their kids, even knowing that this will probably cause trouble for them when they return home. Fedyor and his colleagues can sometimes help, but sometimes they can't, and he feels intensely guilty about having to turn them down and know that he's basically sentencing that kid to a lifetime of not having the right treatment/dying young, because they can't get it in Russia. That fucks with his head almost more than anything else he does, and Ivan has to take special care of him when that happens.

Likewise, LGBTQ Russians are often in contact with Fedyor and company, and he has to help them emigrate or whatever other arrangements they need. Gender confirmation surgery/hormone replacement therapy for trans Russians is (for the moment) still available, but it's insanely hard to get approval from the government commission who has to okay it, and transgender people can't hold driver's licenses or other essential IDs. So Fedyor often has to help trans Russians find some way to get their treatment somewhere outside the country and then decide if it's safe for them to go back, and if he can't do that, he likewise takes it very hard.

In short, Ivan knows that Fedyor really wants to help everyone, regardless of the possibility or feasibility of doing so, and when there's a particular person that he just can't do anything for, it really eats at him. Fedyor is pretty good at getting over it after a few days and bulling onward, because he really is fearless and used to doing the things that he has to do, but sometimes he needs more help, and that's when Ivan is, as ever, 100% there for him.

[the-space-case]

{Yeah I’ll just put the whole thing here for clarity :D}

OK SO I WAS IN THE MED BAY DOING MY THING YOU KNOW HOW IT IS THERES A BUSTED PAK I FIX IT NO BIG DEAL RIGHT BUT THE PATIENT WAS ACTING STRANGER THAN NORMAL RIGHT JUST REALLY OFF HIS ROCKER YOU KNOW SO I GET HIM HOOKED UP TO THE DONGLE YOU KNOW THAT BIG TABLE WITH THE HOLE IN IT YOUVE BEEN THERE FOR YOUR CHECK UPS BEFORE YEAH THAT THING SO I GET HIM ALL HOOKED UP GOOD AND PROPER AND ASK HIM WHAT HIS DEAL IS YOU KNOW GET THE RUN DOWN OF HIS RUN DOWN PAK CHECK HIS VITALS  PULL UP HIS DATA FILE GIVE HIM THE RUNAROUND AND HE SAYS TO ME HE SAYS THAT THERES A BREACH IN THE ENGINE ROOM AND I SAY UH HUH SURE I DONT REALLY BELIEVE HIM CUZ HIS PAK IS JUST FULL OF VIRUSES HERE IM TALKING MAJOR MALFUNCTION HES GLITCHING ALL OVER THIS DONGLE IMMA NEED THE RESTRAINTS FOR THIS ONE ITS THAT BAD YOU KNOW LIKE WOW BUT HE KEEPS TELLING ME THERES SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ENGINE ROOM ITS MALFUNCTIONING HE HOOKED INTO IT TO CHECK THE SYSTEM AND IT MADE HIM GLITCH SO IM LIKE SURE BECAUSE MAYBE HELL CHILL IF I KEEP NODDING ALONG BUT THEN HE GRABS ME REAL HARD AND SAYS THE SHIP IS FULL OF A DEFECTIVES DATA AND ITS INFECTING THE REST OF THE ENGINEERS SO I SAY HAAH YOURE SO FUNNY AND THEN HE GOT REAL MAD AT ME BUT HONESTLY I WAS BORED LIKE THE REST OF THE MEDICS GOT SHIPPED OFF PLANET SO NOW ITS JUST ME GETTING THE TEA YOU KNOW SO I TELL HIM THAT ILL GET HIM FIXED UP AND HE CAN GO BACK TO HIS BOYFRIEND YOU KNOW AND HE GETS REAL CONFUSED LIKE I DONT HAVE A BOYFRIEND? AND NOW IM LIKE UGH I CAN'T NOT FUCK WITH HIM SO I TELL HIM NOOOOOO KIR IS JUST SO INTO HIM HE JUST HASNT GOT THE GUTS TO SAY SO YOU KNOW AND HE SAYS KIR HAS A BOYFRIEND ALREADY AND IM LIKE WELL DUH BUT HE WANT TO BREAK UP WITH HIM TO GET WITH YOU DUDE EVERYBODY KNOWS IT AND HE ASKS DID HE SAY THAT LIKE IN CONFIDENCE AND I SAY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT DUDE HE SAID IT. AND THEN HE JUST SITS REAL QUIET THE REST OF THE TIME YOU KNOW I FIX HIS PAK ALL NEW AND SHINY MAKE IT REAL NICE AND AT THE END OF IT HE SAYS YOU KNOW WHAT? IM GONNA ASK HIM! AND NOW IM THINKING FUCK YES THE TEA AND SO HE JUMPS OFF THE DONGLE AND RUNS OFF SO YOU KNOW I JUST GOTTA FOLLOW AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT RIGHT SO WE RUN ALL THE WAY TO THE ENGINE ROOM AND HE JUST BUSTS IN AND YELLS FOR KIR AND THEN I NOTICE ALL THE OTHER ENGINEERS ARE KIND OF ACTING REALLY GLITCHY YOU KNOW LIKE THEIR PAKS ARE ALL DEFECTIVE THERE AND IM LIKE OH SHIT ITS ABOUT TO GO DOWN SO MY PATIENT GOES ON UP TO KIR AND SAYS HE ACCEPTS HIS FEELINGS AND KIRS IS LIKE WHAT AND THEN KIRS BOYFRIEND ROLLS UP AND HE'S GLITCHING UP A SOTRM AND JUST SHOOTS HIM AND THEN THE OTHER ENGINEERS ARE LIKE OH NO SO THEY START FIRING THEIR LASERS AND TOOLS LIKE IT WAS NUTS SHOTS WERE GOING EVERYWHERE MACHINERY WAS FYING EVERYONE WAS YELLING MY PATIENT WAS LIKE SO DEAD JUST BODIES ALL OVER THE PLACE MEANWHILE IM JUST HAVING A GIGGLE WATCHING FROM THE DOORWAY LIKE THIS IS THE BEST CASE SCENARIO BUT THEN SOMEONE SHOT ONE OF THE ACTUAL ENGINES AND THEN THAT BLEW UP AND THEN IT DESTROYED THE ONE NEXT TO IT AND SO ON AND SO FORTH SO I MEAN THAT TECHNICALLY TAKES CARE OF THE DEFECTIVE VIRUS PLAGUING THE ENGINE ROOM SO YOU SHOULD REALLY JUST BE THANKING ME RIGHT NOW I MEAN I TOTALLY SAVED THE WHOLE SHIP FROM A ROUGE DEFECTIVE VIRUS SO IF YOU FEEL LIKE REWARDING ME NOW THATD BE PRETTY GREAT THERE ARE THESE PAK UPGRADES MADE BY THE VORTIANS THAT ARE SICK AS HELL AND I REALLY THINK I CAN MAKE AN IMPROVEMENT ON THEM IN REGARDS TO DEFECTIVE REPAIRS AND DETECTION WHICH WOULD REALLY CUT DOWN ON THEIR NUMBERS.

[embarrassingmomentsessay901]

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[cold-iron-burns]

Not surprised, just sad that my personal experiences exist intentionally/systematically. I've received mental health services for 25 years and provided them for about 15. The runaround numbers ... always fucked me up, but only during the sparse times I've had health insurance. Things are already so hard as an impoverished person in the states, but if you're poor, have no insurance, and need mental health services, it gets so much worse. If you think false numbers are bad, I have more:

I'm in Georgia state, USA, one of the less-funded states whose leaders keep deciding medicare is too good for people like me [I just fully lost a four year fight to be declared disabled bc i couldn't afford to get enough medical evidence for subjective things like flashbacks or physical pain], We have agencies across the state getting state funds to provide mental health care to the poor (CSBs) and pocketing the Medicaid/medicare payments from people who are legally disabled. What they receive for those payments these agencies "altruistically" set up for people without much knowledge of what services they deserve for those payments is... it's yikes.

I haven't really talked about this before bc it sounds off the chain, but after 15 years of working in traditional, then alternative/peer mental health in Georgia, I learned some dark shit that I would love to unlearn... like how all the money (and it's a lot of fucking money) from those payments is getting funneled to shadow owners of these agencies (CSBs), with almost nothing getting put back into each CSB for things like paying employees an actual living wage (I usually got paid the equivalent of $12/hr but the services I performed in these agencies were billed by the state for up to $35 -PER CLIENT, PER 15 MINUTE INCREMENT I was with them-and I often ran groups of 15+ people), improving services rendered. I consider myself as being complicit at the time, blind to my own brain screaming that people can't be treated the way I'm being told to treat them, people just like me, people with my diagnosis, people with my income. This is just... what's done, right? Since becoming physically disabled I conquered the shit out of my internalized fascist ablesm and discovered that CPTSD and/or being ND may have had a hand in me accepting the system as one that should be followed... Or, you know, that's just how fascism fucking works. (I've also taken a hard left after becoming disabled and then losing all my material things for the 17th time.) Liberals don't give a fuck about us down here. I'm fucking horrified by pretty much most things I've done in my time working in both traditional and peer-run services in my state. They're both state funded so what's the fucking difference at this point? "Peer Specialists are doing the work people with master's degrees used to do with waaaaay less training and support but HOO BOYYYY they'll do the work for only $12/hr! Hahahahaha those Peer Specialists think we're ~empowering~ them and letting them make their own choices while giving them such little financial support that there aren't enough Peer employees to notice when clients literally lose their lives to suicide in their centers. An "alternative" group that we pay so little to keep afloat that they go to lengths to avoid reporting those deaths as happening in their centers to the state. Can't show the state that our grossly underfunded model that we pretend to be proud of Might Need More Money And Employees Being Paid According To The Tasks We're Asking Of Them. The state could stop funding us at ANY TIME, we can Never Never Never Ever ask for more in this political climate. The state gives us the privilege of staying open and bleeding our own $12/hr employees of donations to keep us running. Budget is a dirty word here, because the state won't ever increase ours, but we are expected to keep up demand of an increasing need for Peer Specialists and Literally Any More Mental Health Care Than We Currently Have... we're expected to do all this on a budget of a wooden nickel, a paper clip, and pocket lint. Peer Specialists have the compassion that other professionals can lack, and that can be -vital- for building rapport and facilitating real healing (but I personally believe integrating peer work with a team of other MH professionals working in a REAL Person-Centered therapy, not the bullshit the state is trying to pass off as "person centered", but actually focused on the client's goals could be Recovery Fast Track--I hear there are other countries who are doing it and it's working? Now that I type that it sounds naive. ||||||||||||||who are still capable of giving a shit and communicate and are well funded is a rad recipe for recovery). run a few victim-blaming "whole health" groups and had to buy any materials [like fruit and veg for everyone to try] bc I wanted to give these people a new, fun experience, since most of the people in these groups lived in independently-run group homes that also stole all their payments and fed these people cheap garbage with not even the ability to make a healthy choice.

This is maybe a take y'all youngins might not like, but the force to make people quit smoking outside during breaks was ABSURD. It's where a bunch of grant money came from (and if we got the money we were collecting in payments to improve services we wouldn't have to follow the grant money), in the case of one of the traditional places I worked. At first, the program to quit smoking was voluntary. People attending a group about quitting got free nicotine patches and gum so they wouldn't need to smoke while forced (yes forced) to be at the center. Then everyone was banned from walking down the street to smoke and talk with their friends (because the neighborhood is complaining that there are ~crazy~ people ~just walking around free~ on ~their~ street. So the agency just validated the dehumanization of all the clients or invented that lie, of all lies, to keep people "on the campus". Keep in mind that only a few of these clients are mandated to be there by drug court, most of the people there are there bc they are poor and have a mental health disorder; it's not a rehab. Then smoking is banned on campus, and we magically found more "smoking cessation" products from our grant sponsors who totally aren't in it to get people addicted to their smoking cessation products... so anyone who was smoking before can get them, as long as we keep a registry and try to shame your nicotine levels down. [meanwhile I passed around articles from the UK and such with evidence that vaping (which I was doing at the time because my own life was fucking stressful) performed SOOOOO much better than patches and gum. And back then, loads of people actually did fully quit vaping their big ol box mods or continued with 0% nicotine. And if you think adults need legislating to prevent vaping, keep reading bc you don't yet understand. Like, these clients have -NOTHING-. They deserve a vice, a few minutes of feeling like a gotdamn human being. No, they don't care ab longevity bc they already know the world can't wait to be rid of them. They're malnourished, abused, and they just want to have a cigarette and talk to the only people they ever get to see outside of the group home, the only mutual social support system they have, their friends. They want to smoke, feel the nicotine and dopamine, and just hang out, like all other people have the right and often the ability to do. Many of these people succeeded at getting clean of heavier drugs and/or alcohol long ago, and caffeine or nicotine was all they let themselves have to feel differently in a world that tells them every second of every day that they are a burden and deserve to be treated as less than human. Yes, big tobacco is taking advantage of them, but smoking or vaping is one of the only choices about their lives many people are able to make. You can't live on the money you save from smoking, esp when you're so broke you only let yourself have one half of a cigarette a day. These people taught me a deep fucking existential lesson that prepared me for my own crazy, disabled, impoverished future: sometimes making a choice that's bad for you is the only way to prove you have any human agency. It's very Dostoevsky, iirc.

It's hard to be optimistic about the future because this system will fight you tooth and nail if you're actually trying to be healthy while screaming at you that you're a piece of shit for not making healthy choices. Literally I had one client who wanted very badly to try to integrate just one "healthy living" change to her life--and it took her FIVE MONTHS to convince the woman "running" the group home she lived in to buy her apples for daily snacks instead of lil debbie cakes. These group homes get like $700 per person per month, but make people share bedrooms, provide only one tv that is usually set to what the owner wants to watch, no internet availability, may or may not let you send letters, use the phone, ~actually give you your prescribed medications~, etc. These owners aren't qualified to do shit, either, they're just random ass people with space in their house who more often than not are abusing the disabled people they are scamming. AND YET, from every angle (as an employee), I kept getting told that yes, the system is corrupt but it's what we have and these people still need support so let's just do our best with the sliver of "coordinated" services we can control.

So the state pays mental health employees to "keep clients/"consumers"/"individuals" [gross vocab] ~out of the hospital~. That's their measure of success. Which feeds the idea that if you're hospitalized it's a personal failure for not utilizing the skills thrown at you by an overworked, burnt out team that may or may not be also abusive bc they get the blame, too. Employee turnover is extremely high. The few employees with actual compassion get compassion fatigue SO FAST-they usually get their supervision hours, then yeet themselves outta there to go work in smaller practices for an actual living wage and suppress the memories of all the suffering they saw so that they can have the slightest ability to keep doing the work they paid tens of thousands of dollars and at least 8 years of their time to be able to do. Clients in "community" settings therefore lose the few people they click with, which causes loss of motivation to keep retelling the Same Old Shit to your 23rd counselor in a row and never getting time to actually get to any real theraputic work with any of them. How could one even try and imagine that life could be better than the hell it is right now (if you use your skills)? When you.

If you miss 3 appointments in a row at a CSB for whatever good reasons you might have, you get cancelled/dropped. Down to your state-funded CSB transportation not bothering to pick you up today--"didn't you call them 20 times on your v limited gov. mobile minutes to get through to someone to schedule a pickup five days ahead of time? The nurse scheduled a follow-up four days after your last and they don't care? Why didn't you call us (even though we're only open business hours m-f) so we could tell you we'll handle it and then drop the ball so badly that no one remembered you called and you not only don't get your ride but also blamed for not trying hard enough right before we cancel you".

Just three months ago I had a med management appt, and bc the client in front of me was 4 minutes late due to transportation, this NP (nurse practitioner, not even a psychiatrist) waited until their appt time was over, then called me in. When I told the NP that someone was before me in line and that they have another appt in 10 minutes so please see them first, this bitch tells me to my face that the other client should have been on time and that she's playing this cruelty intentionally--and threatens not to see me if I don't take what I feel is that client's place in line. This is an NP who abused me via medications/withholding medications when I was hospitalized in 2014 (my last one that fucked me up so bad that I'd rather make sure I succeed at a suicide attempt than go back to the ER when I need help). People like this run rampant in the community mental health system. I think seeing this kind of fucked up attitude and entitlement and abuse on a daily basis was so triggering that it really pushed my fibro (a product of PTSD) into manifesting in my early 30s (as opposed to surprising me later in life).

It's honestly a fucking hellscape, but it's a system that lets leaders claim that we have mental health care for everyone, even those in great need, while actually just doling out abuse and early deaths. Even the people who try to not be complicit get silenced and punished when they blow the whistle. I don't think I could write all this and remain employed, which is why I've only become more and more vocal the longer I'm disabled.

PEOPLE ARE PRAISING OUR LEADERS WHILE THEY SWEEP US UNDER THE RUG AND CRUSH US UNDER THEIR HEEL.

The "ghost networks" of mental health professionals that US health insurers rely on to deny care to their patients

If you’ve decided to investigate treatment options for your mental health, your health insurer will cheerfully refer you to a list of hundreds of providers – but as STAT’s Jack Turban discovered, this “network” of providers is actually a “ghost network,” filled with wrong numbers that ring in McDonald’s restaurants and jewelers. If you happen to reach an actual mental health professional, they’ll probably tell you they’re not accepting new patients.

An NIH study tried calling 360 in-network Blue Cross Blue Shield providers in Houston, Chicago, and Boston, with a 74% failure rate – that is, only 26% of those numbers rang in the office of a provider who would make an appointment. For pediatric psychiatrists, the failure rate rises to 83%.

Maybe that’s just a coincidence…but maybe not. A federal judge found that Unitedhealth was systematically, illegally gaming the system to deny mental health care to its insured customers in order to improve the company’s profitability.

It’s not hard to find a shrink who’ll see you – for $250/hour. But the for-profit health-care industry is signally uninterested in helping Americans take care of their mental health, and since people struggling with mental health issues are often easily discouraged (this is literally a symptom of depression), these hurdles are likely to be terrific money-spinners for the companies and their shareholders.

As Turban writes, “Imagine realizing (or acknowledging) that you have depression — a defining feature of which is loss of motivation — and start looking for a psychiatrist. After calling a McDonald’s, a jewelry store, and providers who say they don’t take your insurance but will be happy to see you for $250 per hour that you must pay out of pocket, you’ll likely be inclined to give up.”

https://boingboing.net/2019/06/20/working-as-intended-3.html