My GP, he hasn’t, he hasn’t suggested groups or anything like that, however it, he’s acknowledged that I feel lonely, and he, he either sees me every two weeks or he rings me every two weeks. And he also says things like, “If you need to speak to me, before the two weeks just ring up,” “And I’ll speak to you.” And I’m really lucky having a GP like that.

I: Absolutely. It sounds like a, a very good person, like a doctor that views people holistically.

Yeah, yeah, he’s fantastic, he, he is, he’s really really good and he’s really encouraging.

I: Have you ever gone to the GP for your for loneliness?

Oh yes, that has been a failure.

I: Talk to me about that please.

I think was it last year or the year before, I think I had another breakdown. I had gone into there for an appointment about my physical health and I explained to the doctor at the time that I was, because I was crying at the time and I explained to the GP that I was just in the middle of a nervous breakdown and excuse my tears which obviously he did, because he didn’t offer me any information or anything, nothing. I did, I did report it to the appropriate people because in my eyes I needed help, but I didn’t get any.

I: So, you said, “excuse my tears,” and he did.

Yes.

I: He said, “okay let’s move on.”

He didn’t sit me down, ask me why I was crying, he didn’t ask me about my caring role. He didn’t ask me if I needed any support? He didn’t ask me if I needed to speak to anybody. He didn’t ask me nothing.

I: It must have been devastating.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I’ve come to the point now where you have to be reliant on yourself because again that’s the only person who I can rely on because nobody can possibly understand my life and what I have to go through and yeah, GP just moved on with his consultation and that, that was it.

I: He didn’t refer you, he didn’t make any suggestions, nothing.

Nothing, nothing. [um] I had I came out of the appointment, I mean I had recovered then but I did ask the receptionist, I said, “Can you double check to make sure that I am still identified as a carer on, on the register please?” and she said, “Yes, you are,” and I just thought, ‘Well…’

I: Have you ever asked for help from your GP in relation to loneliness?

No

I: Why do you think that is?

Fear of being dismissed. I think my experience with with the, the youth mental health advisor when I was 14, oh every teenager feels like this, every teenager gets like this it’s, it’s nothing it’s that fear of being dismissed.

I don’t know because, well especially not now, because I don’t go to the GP for anything. Because I’m terrified of overburdening the system, but I still feel like it’s something that they would, like they, they don’t care about. I tend to really, really detest going to the GP about any mental health problems because I, they don’t care about it. They hate dealing with it, it, it’s like washing their hands of it, they don’t even want to touch you, they don’t want to get near you… If you come in there and you talk about mental instead of physical health, they’re just kind of like “oh, I, I’ll call the community mental health team, oh,” you know, “I’ll pass them over to you.” They don’t want to know. So I feel like that’s… Loneliness is, is like associated with mental health and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s mental more than a physical problem that needs fixing, so I feel like they just don’t care about it, they don’t want to know.

I: Have you ever sought help from a GP about loneliness, for loneliness?

Yeah, I have.

I: Could you tell me how that went down?

Sometimes I think GPs aren’t very well equipped to deal with that sort of thing. So you know I would go to them and say, “oh, I’m lonely, I’ve got no support networks” and they would say, “okay, we’re going to send you for some counselling then.” But then obviously in that 10 weeks you’ve got to wait for the counselling there’s no support in the meantime. So I have walked away from GPs sometimes thinking “they don’t have a clue what I’m going through”, you know? But it also depends on the GP that you’ve got. Because I went to a gay GP once and I didn’t know that he was going to be gay, but actually he was really nice, he kind of recognised everything that I was going through, and he gave me a proper pathway to cope with how I was feeling.