CW: Mental illness: stigma and accessibility to health services

I had a full fledged meltdown/breakdown in a #pharmacy today, let me tell you why:

I have severe anxiety/panic attacks and so I need medication to control anxiety and help me sleep. There was a gap of 6 months (1/)

when I wasn't on any medication and it was not a good time for me (also because I was going through #Trauma). So about a month ago, I decided to find a #psychiatrist from scratch who would understand my case and prescribe needed meds. This doctor prescribed meds for 21 days (2/)

and scheduled my next appointment on the 21st day. The meds were not easily available but a local pharmacy got them for me next morning after a gap of 12 hours. So far, so good. On the 21st day, doctor cuts my call & their assistant tells me they won't be available for 5days (3/)

And remember these meds were not easy to get in the first place and now I'm without prescription and on my last day supply. So I consult another psychiatrist on one of the online portals. She sends me a renewed prescription at 9PM. I try the entire next day (yesterday) but (4/)

no Pharmacy in my area stocks them. So today I decide to drive 1hour to NIMHANS to get the meds. On the way I stop at 7 pharmacies. All of them:no stock. NIMHANS pharmacy tells me to "try" tomorrow. I ask if they will definitely have them tomorrow, he says "try, no guarantee"(5/)

Great. I land up at the 9th pharmacy I have visited in 2 hours. One of the big chain pharma's. The pharmacist looks at my prescription, laughs and makes fun of me, and says "ye medicine ka log bohot gadbad karte hai"(people misuse these medicines) and says the prescription is(6/)

invalid because it 44 hours old and I could have "collected the medicines from many pharmacies". At this point I am humiliated and crying at being treated like a drug addict/judged for the type of medication, and basically being called a liar. And I'm a certified medical (7/)

practitioner myself. Yet, made to feel helpless and ridiculed. If this is how hard it is to get help for your mental health, I never want to do it again. It's an ordeal in itself to find a psychiatrist, to find meds. Who wants to do all this while also experiencing anxiety? (8/)

#mentalhealth awareness is nice and all, yet we are stigmatized and tired out by a system that does not care for us. Why is it so difficult to #access mental healthcare? Why do people working in pharmacies judge anyone witht psych #prescription? These few days were traumatic (9/)

to say the least. I lost out on work, personal relationships, everything took a back seat. Saying "reach out" for help is so easy. What happens to people like me who are beaten down when they reach out? (10/)