e-Mental Health and PTSD
Yesterday I almost cried in the middle of a consultation. I was just back from 2 weeks holiday and one of my regular patients, a young woman with a big problem with self-harm, came to tell me that she’s managed to survive the time I was away without any self-harm. The last time I went away, 12 months before, I had returned to find her in intensive care after a near lethal overdose.
This patient is a survivor of very serious childhood abuse and has had a lot of therapy including DBT groups – regarded as the gold standard in the treatment of emotional dysregulation. Six months ago she had started an online course for PTSD sufferers and something had clicked for her. It had been torrid but she had emerged from it much stronger. In the last 3 months she had been able to refrain from self-harm but we saw my holiday as a big test.
The online PTSD course marked a turning point. It gave her a better understanding of what was happening for her and allowed her to pull together all the skills she had learnt leading up to it.
To learn more about online therapy go to
www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/emhprac
Jan is Sydney GP, private psychological medicine practitioner in Sydney’s inner west and a GP educator for Black Dog Institute.
Have you ever been on your way to work and asked yourself “I don’t really feel well . . . should I really be working clinically today” – and yet still turned up and completed a full day’s work?
*In April 2021, approximately 619,000 older Australians (aged 65 and over) were employed in the labour force", and at 66 years, I’m proud to be included in this statistic. By Tessa Moriarty
For as long as I have been in practice (and that’s a long time!) I have done my best to avoid looking after old people.