13th March 2022 Almost six weeks had slipped past since I had received the call informing me of the cancellation of my meeting with Sally Mungall. I had been both polite and patient while desperately holding onto a fast eroding belief that Sally was still captured by those same ‘unforeseen circumstances’ described by the CAMHS receptionist. That belief was being slowly swallowed alive by a pernicious distrust that tightened its grip around my windpipe and I struggled for rarefied hope. I was hunkered down in the middle of no man’s land, still waiting for a social worker to be appointed to Meg and forward movement on my referral to iTalk but there wasn’t any sign of immediate help anywhere. I was completely isolated and plagued by deep suspicions. It might have been easy for casual observers to misinterpret my deep suspicions as paranoia.
Accusations of paranoia are often used, casually, to belittle or deride
Paranoia
/ˌparəˈnɔɪə/
noun
1.unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people or their actions.
2.the unwarranted or delusional belief that one is being persecuted, harassed, or betrayed by others, occurring as part of a mental condition.
Actual paranoia can turn psychopathological. A long-term pattern of distrust and suspicion can turn into a mental health condition clinically referred to as a Personality Disorder. Such disorders are characterised by enduring maladaptive patterns of behaviour, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the culture. Paranoid personality disorder is a mental health condition marked by a long-term pattern of distrust and suspicion of others without adequate reason to be suspicious (paranoia).
‘The hallmarks of this personality disorder area are distrust and suspicion. Individuals who exhibit constitutional paranoia do not normally confide in other people and frequently misread others, redefining innocuous statements and behaviour as malevolent.
The paranoid personality -disordered person is suspicious of others; this individual thinks that others are out to threaten, betray, exploit, or harm. This disorder presents most often in young adulthood. People with paranoid personality disorder are not normally grounded in reality, nor do they admit that they have negative feelings about other people. They distrust people so much that they will not discuss how they feel, and harbour suspicions for lengthy periods of time. Paranoid personality disorder is within a group of conditions called Cluster A, people within this cluster often appear odd or peculiar.’ - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/paranoid-personality-disorder
Paranoid Personality Disorder was later posited as a possible diagnosis by a truly incompetent clinical psychologist at CMHT The Bridge Centre while assessing my mental health. The truth of the matter was eventually revealed through access to my medical records beginning later in 2022 when incontrovertible evidence revealed an actual covert operation to manage me and MISREPRESENT me.
In the early days of March, 2022 I was labouring under the firm conviction that some conspiracy was at hand, that maybe clinicians at CAMHS and CMHT The Bridge Centre were colluding against me in secret. Things just weren’t adding up and I needed to start digging. I resolved to write to Sally Mungall.
I wrote an email to Sally and forwarded to the CAMHS reception in the early hours of the 14th March 2022. An email reply from CAMHS Team Secretary, Gail Gray, arrived at 13.33 same day with an attached ‘CAMHS Closing Letter’ antedated 8th March, 2022.
‘Our Ref: ***** 8th March 2022 Dear Parent or Guardian Re: Megan Stock, ********************* Basingstoke, Hampshire, ******** DOB: **********, NHS Number: ************, Hospital Number: ******* I have been thinking about the contents of your letter and, the fact that we are coming to the end of CAMHS involvement with you and Meg. Mark, as you know I completed an Adult Services referral for you and Meg. I do not know whether Adult Services will be offering future support as we do not receive referral outcomes. As you are also aware I also completed an urgent Adult Mental Health referral for you so that the Community Mental Health team could see if they were able to provide you with some additional support for your own mental health. I have spoken to Kirsty so I am aware that you have been recently assessed by the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). I understand a referral has also been made to iTalk so that you can continue to receive additional support. I would like to thank you for sharing your personal story with me. I hope you will now feel able to take the help that is on offer from Adult Mental Health Team and iTalk and look to the future for yourself and for Meg. As part of our work together you completed some expressive art work. The art work is your personal work which you may wish to keep as a reminder of the journey undertaken. Could you please confirm if you would like to keep it? The work can be posted to your home address, or if you would prefer, a date and time to collect it from Bramblys could be rearranged with our admin team? Please will you email our Reception team at Receptioncamhs@nhs.net to let them know if you would like your art work posted or if you would like to collect it. You shared with me that you have suicidal feelings and it is important that you seek support with those thoughts, for both yourself and Meg. If you do not feel okay, please seek support from your GP or more urgently from a Mental Health Practitioner by calling 111, or 999 if you need to. Mark, I really wish you and Meg well and would like to thank you both for working with me in such a thoughtful way. Please note that our service protocol is to copy discharge letters to the registered GP, and in this case, we will also copy it to the CMHT as confirmation of case closure. Thank you for letting me be part of your journey. I will write a separate discharge letter to Meg. Yours sincerely Electronically signed to avoid delay Sally Mungall Copies to: **********, Bramblys Grange Medical Practice Community Adult Mental Health Team, The Bridge Centre.’
There was no reference to our meeting postponed from the 3rd February, 2022, only an invitation to pick up my art therapy drawings from CAMHS reception or have them posted. I still feel the acute distress and confusion caused by that ‘closing’ letter. I now believe that I was being ghosted. I have Googled the following definition for the benefit of the reader,
GHOSTING, simmering and icing are colloquial terms that describe the practice of suddenly ending all communication and avoiding contact with another person without any apparent warning or explanation and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate.
The term originated in the early 2000s, typically referring to dating and romantic relationships. In the following decade, the media reported a rise in ghosting behaviours, which has been attributed to the increasing use of social media and online dating apps. The term has also expanded to refer to similar practices among friends, family members, employers and businesses.
The most common cause of ghosting in a personal relationship is to avoid emotional discomfort in a relationship. A person ghosting typically has little acknowledgment of how it will make the other person feel. Ghosting is associated with negative mental health effects on the person on the receiving end and has been described by some mental health professionals as a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse or cruelty.
Sally Mungall never replied to any more of my emails and so all of my accummulated questions were rendered inadmissable. It was as though I had ceased to exist. Sally appeared to be avoiding her own emotional discomfort at the ending of our therapeutic relationship. The difference being that she was fully aware of the destructive consequences of her actions; her acknowledgment was voiced in the ‘Professionals Meeting’ on the 9th February, 2022, her actual words later revealed in my disclosed medical records. The awful dawning realisation of my darkest fears followed my reading of that ‘closing’ letter. There wasn't to be any closure for me. The importance of closure in mental health can never be overstated. Without closure we are likely to become trapped in rumination, lost in a maze of repetitive thoughts focusing on the causes and effects of our distress. These thoughts do not lead us to engaging in active coping mechanisms or problem-solving strategies that would relieve distress and improve mood. Rumination tends to have negative consequences on mental wellbeing, leading to pessimism and cognitive distortions. To this very day I am deeply troubled by the lack of closure. My trust had been betrayed and I didn't understand why. I still don't. I was casually abandoned by a trained mental healthcare professional who should have known better.
