- Date posted
- 13h
Why can I never take a mental health break?
I have very severe OCD and have tried pretty much every standard treatment, medication, and TMS. My symptoms remain severe (Y-BOCS of 37). My OCD therapist said he and the OCD center wouldn’t accept me as a patient this fall unless I did a higher level of care, like a partial hospitalization program or residential, at a place like Roger’s or McLean hospital. My parents said “we don’t have the money for that and neither do you.” I don’t mean to sound spoiled, but they are upper middle class and my brother and I get free tuition, cause my dad is a professor. My psychiatrist is recommending brain surgery or brain surgery trials (deep brain stimulation and focused ultrasound trials), given all the things that I’ve tried that have not worked. Their first reason for why I couldn’t do it was “we don’t have the money for it.” When I mentioned that there are trials for it that I wouldn’t have to pay for, they said “it’s not safe, and we will cut you off financially/take your car (it’s technically in their name) if you do it.” So I can’t do a PHP program or surgery, which are the two things that could probably have the biggest chance of working. I even found a study that isn’t surgery that pays like $1,200, but they said no because it involves driving in center city Philadelphia, and I wouldn’t be able to be home for winter break. They strongly want me to finish my senior year of college and get a full time job, and they are saying that a full time job will not want me to take time off to do something like a PHP program or surgery, and maybe there will be something noninvasive that will come to my hometown, which is in Western NY. I’m sick of the goal posts moving. It is being recommended by multiple doctors that I take time off for my health, the OCD has been incredibly resistant to treatments, and I am doing what they want, finishing out college AND getting a job over winter break, that I could be taking time off for myself. How am I supposed to get better, if I can never take time off, because it’s inconvenient? I just want to get better, and clearly this is not a normal case of OCD. I have asked multiple times about taking time off, and been shut down every time. I also got fired from an internship because they were frustrated it took me too long to learn things (OCD doesn’t help with that at all), and didn’t take initiative to ask other people how to do it. I told them about the OCD beforehand and how it can make it difficult for me to focus, and they didn’t even give me a warning before letting me go. I don’t know how much is society versus my parents, but I just feel like the world is not set up for me to succeed. I just want to get better