Advocate forced to fundraise for care calls for 'proper mental health services' for those suffering in silence

A CORK woman who has been forced to fundraise for inpatient care for her severe OCD has called on the HSE to provide proper care for those most vulnerable.

Emma O’Sullivan currently suffers from OCD, which she said morphed out of an anorexia diagnosis that was not treated properly and has been forced to set up a GoFundMe page to seek the treatment she needs.

She said she is one of many who have found themselves in the same situation and who have been turned away by the public system at a time when they needed help the most.

“My experience first started off with the services when I was a teenager when I had anorexia and I was with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) so it was a pretty rough time because it was a pretty tough place to deal with.

“I continued to get sicker and sicker until I had to be admitted to a hospital where I was for about six months. I had gotten so sick because they didn’t provide the care that I needed.” Ms O’Sullivan said that if it hadn’t been for her admission to the hospital at that time when she was 15 she would not be here today.

“It had been let get to that point where staff couldn’t believe how bad I was physically when I was admitted. I had been told by the service to just go home and eat. Anorexia is a dangerous thing. And as a result, physically I was so unwell for a couple of months in the hospital that I couldn’t walk. The anorexia had morphed into OCD because I hadn’t gotten the right help,” she said.

When she phased out of CAMHS, she sought help herself but said that when things got bad again she was referred to adult mental health services.

“Since then it’s been a really torturous cycle of going into appointments feeling miserable and coming out feeling even more miserable.

I’ve gotten to points where I was up in the mental health emergency room and just being turned away and given another medication, just horror stories really.

“I didn’t want to admit it but I got to a crisis point where I needed more care and I thought I will let my guard down and admit that I need this but when I did there was no help.

“I’m learning that it’s like a script that they give a lot of people and say that this is better off being treated in the community.

“I have been told there is no treatment plan for OCD in the hospital and all I’m being offered is a crisis admission which would be 48 hours in a room with no phone and no contact with outside support or family.

There’s no treatment and what I’m looking for would be a recovery-based treatment. I’ve been with the mental health system for 10 years now and have deteriorated to the point where I had a lot of crisis appointments at a very very low point where I thought I was going to lose my life to what I was going through and it wasn’t taken seriously at all.

“It’s been the same answer given to me every week when I am at appointments crying and begging for help and just to be told to go home and keep trying and that the medication would be increased and it just puts you on this hopeless road to nowhere.” Ms O’Sullivan said that the last thing she ever thought she would have to do is set up a GoFundMe page to try and fund her treatment.

“Trying to fundraise for yourself is just an awful position to be in when you’re not feeling good anyway.

“It’s going quite slowly too, and it’s the frustration of am I ever going to get there and you’re waiting for the next donation.

“I’ve been working since I was 14 and I was an extremely independent person and to just not be able to work now and to be just debilitated by something and have to fundraise to get some type of treatment is just awful.” 

Ms O’Sullivan is also on a journey of helping others who find themselves in the same or similar positions and regularly shares her stories on Instagram change_withemma in the hope that she can help someone else.

Since she began sharing her story publicly, she said that helping others and being creative through the podcasts she records has helped her to get up in the mornings.

“I started doing stories on my Instagram to raise awareness because I just got so upset and angry at the other stories I was hearing about others going through the same thing.

“It has kind of turned away from just me and into a bigger picture that I’m trying to get help for other people as well.

That’s the thing that gets me up in the morning is that I’m doing some podcasts to raise awareness about OCD and giving me a passion to push on and if I didn’t have that I would just be in this day-to-day living with this but this gives me an avenue that makes it a small bit easier.

“I woke up one day and said this is my last shot now because I’m fighting for myself by doing this because I need my life back but other people also need a voice.” 

Calling on the HSE to improve its service to those most in need of help, intervention, and treatment, she said: “I think the quality of service is just not there. I’ve been with a crisis team and they’ve just given me a leaflet to read out of. That’s fine at a basic level but when you’re literally begging people to save your life because you’re so distressed?

If someone was at the point of dying of a heart attack you wouldn’t just turn them away and people are actually dying because people aren’t listening.

She said that if she had those coping skills to help deal with her OCD that she would be in a much better place.

“There’s a thing called exposure therapy with OCD so I go into appointments and they say we’re doing what we can and I have to do the exposure therapy at home on my own and that would be fine if I was at a stage where I could do that in my recovery but being in such distress that is not a safe thing to do when you’re in such an unsafe place.

“It seems to be just a one size fits all approach and it’s just not good enough anymore.

“I would literally not wish this on anyone and I hope I can find the help,” she said.

Those who wish to donate to Ms O’Sullivan’s fundraising efforts can do so by clicking here.

The HSE has been contacted for comment.