Hi, my name is Ashleigh Wilson and I'm 15, having been in mental health services for around 1-1/2 / 2 years I find it horrific that it's only getting worse. I suffer from depression, generalised anxiety disorder and a mood disorder of some form. I'm being medicated for bipolar as I do present a lot of symptoms but because I'm so young there is no diagnosis of such at present. I get into crisis' fairly often, I'm not ashamed to ask for help because when I need it, I need it, and chances are if I don't get camhs involved I will proceed to damage my self which I will only regret after. The last few weeks have been particularly tricky as my physical health has been flaring up and I've had events happen which was very stressful and unnecessary. I asked to see my family therapist as I was in urgent need of help, I got a nasty attitude from her asking me "what do you want me to do about it?" Now, being a professional you should know what to do in a crisis, along side this I was told I was asking for too much and that camhs is not a "drop in centre", I've been told numerous times it's "government cutbacks" and whilst I agree that is the main cause of the problem, that's not good enough. Mental health is a problem that's only getting worse, of which affecting many more people my age that it ever has before. My hopes and dreams right now is for me to be back into my old mainstream school that I attended from years 7-9 and to be able to complete my GCSEs and become a vet, whilst this will be extremely hard for me to do so with the amount of education I've missed, I'm determined to do so. My mental state has led me out of school many, many times. Through self harming in school (which now I'm in a better mind frame, I am truly sorry because it was totally unacceptable to put my teachers in that position, but that was my mental illness that took over me, that isn't the ashleigh that many people know). My aim for this petition is to get the governments attention and for them to start doing what they should be doing, mental health is killing so many people and it's just awful, so many beautiful souls lost all because of "cutbacks"? This is not good enough. Please can everyone sign this petition so we can do something about this because I've had enough of people swiping it under the carpet.
