Dr Spence makes some very pertinent points about our current NHS.1 There are long waits for GP appointments, for referrals, for scans, for test results. He suggests less prescribing, fewer referrals, fewer investigations. As a patient who has sustained brain damage due to benzodiazepine withdrawal after 40 years’ consumption, I am deeply dismayed by my recent experience of the NHS. I have suffered beyond imagination for 4 years, tortured by my brain and body, and am physically and cognitively disabled as a consequence. My doctors seem totally incapable of grasping the extent of my suffering; instead, they translate my symptoms into something more palatable. I have been given several misleading and inaccurate diagnoses. This has now become a deliberate defensive strategy. I am compelled to seek further opinions, thereby wasting further NHS resources. I am part of a large and growing online community populated by the many other patients harmed by mind-altering prescription drugs, mainly benzodiazepines and antidepressants. We share our similar experiences of being dismissed by our doctors, misdiagnosed, and referred inappropriately.
We are shocked as the prescribing of antidepressants increases year on year despite mounting evidence of their lack of effectiveness and the possibilities of significant harm, including permanent damage to the central nervous system. We discuss the ways our withdrawal symptoms are dismissed as signs of mental illness and how we are misdiagnosed with a variety of diagnostic labels such as depression, anxiety, CFS/ME, neurological functional impairment, somatic disorders, and medically unexplained symptoms. We wonder why we are offered inappropriate help or no help at all. We wonder why there are no appropriate services for patients who have become unwittingly dependent on prescription drugs. We wonder how a medical profession can get things so very wrong (benzodiazepines) and how they can repeat the same mistakes (antidepressants).
- © British Journal of General Practice 2017
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