Caught in the Mental Health Riptide: A Parent's Rant

I'm on a roll tonight—two posts in one evening! Don’t expect this to happen often, though. Life gets way too messy to keep this pace up.

But I've got something burning a hole in my brain tonight, and I need to get it out. I’m so freaking angry and frustrated with the mental health care system (or lack of it) here in Queensland, Australia. My son and I have been battling this broken system for over 10 years now—and he’s only 21.

He’s so sick of it all—the system, the attitudes of the so-called professionals, the constant bouncing between services like a hot potato—that he’s reluctant to even engage anymore.

Who could blame him?

That makes things so hard for me. I feel like I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, trying to push him to keep seeking help when he’s completely disillusioned. I feel so damn alone in this struggle, dragging both of us through this nightmare with no real end in sight.

The system feels like it’s built as a "one size fits all," and when someone doesn’t fit, they’re labelled as too hard, too complex, too difficult to deal with. There have been times when he’s been in such distress, so close to the edge, that he’s agreed to reach out for help—only to have a mental health paramedic show up, talk to him for five minutes, and then advise him to “just tell his anxiety to stop.” And then, poof! Everything’s magically better. Well, not quite, but you get the idea…

Or we show up at the emergency department, him in distress, the place a complete zoo. Sick people, crying children, the whole atmosphere just filled with despair and heartache. He hasn’t actively hurt himself, so he’s told to sit and wait. And wait. And wait some more.

How can anyone in that level of emotional pain be expected to sit in that chaos and just wait?

My heart breaks over and over again. I understand why he’s reluctant to engage with the system anymore, but how does a parent keep pushing through all this, trying to find answers, while trying to stay sane themselves?

I don’t have any answers here. I just needed to rant. Maybe you’ve been through something similar? How do you keep going?