Nicola P

TW: Suicide.

I have lived with complex PTSD for as long as I can remember. My trauma has been lifelong and layered, and I reached out to mental health services for help long before the worst happened. General counselling and CBT had not helped me in the past, and I asked specifically for trauma-focused treatment. Despite being honest about how severely my symptoms were impacting my life, I was told I wasn’t “unwell enough” to access adult mental health services in my area.

Then my world shattered. I lost my 19-year-old son to suicide — and a year later, the father of my children also took his own life. I was left devastated, heartbroken, and completely alone in my grief. I turned to the crisis team in absolute desperation, begging for support, but even after losing my child, I was still told I didn’t meet the threshold for help.

It felt like I was screaming into a void — invisible and unheard.

Eventually, I reached breaking point. I wrote an email to the adult mental health treatment service and told them clearly: if they didn’t help me, I would take my own life. I had been pushed so far beyond what any human being should have to bear, and I couldn’t see a way forward anymore. I was not trying to scare anyone — I was telling the truth. I was exhausted from trying to survive in a system that only responds when someone is at the edge. I had nothing left in me to keep fighting. I was mentally broken, physically unwell, dissociating constantly, and still trying to care for three children on my own.

Only then — after I said I was prepared to end my life — did anyone listen. I was offered ten sessions of EMDR therapy. And while I was grateful to be seen at last, ten sessions are nowhere near enough for the level of trauma I live with. My PTSD remains, my grief remains, and now I have developed a trauma-related tic in my mouth. I’ve been left to manage on my own once again.

I haven’t been able to return to work. I’m raising my children alone on Universal Credit, which simply isn’t enough to live on. The stress and the pressure of trying to survive without proper mental health support are relentless. I feel abandoned. I feel punished for not fitting neatly into a box. It makes me angry that the government and the system think a handful of therapy sessions is enough to address complex, long-term trauma and unimaginable loss.

Until you’ve lived this, you can’t understand how hard it is just to get up in the morning — to function, to parent, to pretend you’re okay when you’re not. I didn’t just lose the people I love. I lost faith in the system that’s meant to be there when we need it most.

I am still here, but not because the system helped me. I am here despite it.

I only stay for my children but it’s like carrying a heavy weight and the road ahead is long dark and scary.