Talking To A Fish

In the film Finding Nemo, there is a fish called Dory, who famously is very forgetful. Start a conversation with Dory and in a few seconds time, she's completely forgotten what you were talking about.

While the timeframe is longer, the experience of talking to mental health services is similar. The problem is this:

• The second psychiatrist you talk to can't remember what you said to the first one, and if they are lucky then a small fraction of that is written in your notes. Anything else is essentially forgotten.
• The third psychiatrist you talk to, in a similar way, has no memory of what you said to the second psychiatrist.
• Any working relationship you have built up with the second psychiatrist is lost as soon as they 'move on' and you meet the third.
• It is the same with any other role, such as a clinical psychologist or a care-coordinator or social worker or support worker.

As such, then, over the years the experience becomes like talking to Dory, where while you may have memories of previous discussions, the mental health system does not. You have to keep rebuilding working relationships every time someone 'moves on', and over the years this becomes tiresome, and later on it becomes impossible to summon the effort to try again.

The other cinematic analogue that comes to mind is The Notebook. In that film, Noah tells the story to Allie of how they met, fell in love, and lived. She doesn't remember until the end of the story, and there is brief recognition. Then by the next day she has forgotten everything and Noah has to begin again. Something like that.