Learning to Trust Your Mental Health Care Team

Picture this: you are sitting in your psychiatrist's office and you are probably tapping your foot, and watching while he or she takes notes--- quick and swift notes that seem to determine your fate. I don't think it's ever a comfortable situational, but it is, above all else, an important relationship. Yes, those sometimes irritating conversations in which we explain our damn feelings, well, that's part of our recovery.

Why Is It Important to Trust Our Mental Health Care Team?

This question is worthy of an entire book---or twenty-five. A book that is at least the size of the five or ten that sit on our psychiatrist's table. Or, in my case, the width of the file with my name on it. To try to simplify a complicated question/situation, let's narrow it down.

A few of the key reasons it is important to trust our mental health care team:

>They have our best interests in mind and not just because they spent five years with their noses glued to books learning about mental illness. No, because they are human and human beings usually want to help each other. It's sort of ingrained in us; like my having a damn near addiction to chocolate and coffee (sorry, that was a tad off track).

>They have the power, the knowledge, to make our recovery possible. For as much as we dislike the medication we take it is largely because of this that that we become well. We need to trust them to know that we will became stable and healthy again or for the first time.

>When you find out you are diagnosed with a mental illness it's confusing! We have lots of questions and we fight and we cry and we wish it were anyone else. The person sitting across the table from you, your psychiatrist or doctor, he or she can answer some of these questions and that---that---is worth it in and off itself.

Recovering from mental illness is like walking a long road. Hopefully, it isn't too long. But it is long enough to need someone to hold your hand from time to time. This is why our family and friends are so important, but this is also why trusting our mental health care team is equally important. We do not need to walk this road alone.