Over the course of my short life, I have seen first-hand many of the dramatic changes to the NHS that ultimately left it unable to cope when Covid hit. This year has been unlike any other, but cuts, fragmentation, and privatisation all meant the NHS has been failing to care for patients like me properly since long before the pandemic.

When I was little, I would get recurring water infections. My small local village surgery became something of a second home. I had my own doctor, and I would see him every time I went; I was treated with care and understanding. I remember how I felt safe in their hands, in the hands of the NHS – and it was all at no cost to my family.

I’m 24 now, and my care in more recent years has been in stark contrast to those early NHS experiences. Since I was young, I’ve grappled with my mental health – due, in part, to natural disposition, but predominately from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse as a child.

Fresh out of my teens, I arrived at a point where I accepted that I was struggling and decided to seek help. I had high hopes of starting treatment; my experience with the NHS had, so far, been overwhelmingly positive.

I phoned my local surgery and arranged an appointment. I briefly explained to a doctor I’d never met before some of my history and told him how I was feeling. It was no easy feat: at the time, I was experiencing suicide ideation, self-harm, and a physically debilitating OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) episode.

He referred me to the local mental health team and told me to wait. I heard nothing back for about a week, despite having explained that I was feeling suicidal.

I continued to self-harm, so I booked another appointment. The doctor called the local mental health team immediately and an appointment was quickly secured. I felt guilty for pushing to be seen sooner.

During my assessment, I had to choose one thing to work on first. I chose my OCD, which required Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

I was added to a CBT waiting list. I waited over a month and nothing happened. After lots of phone calls I eventually found out that it had been decided that I actually fell into the next county’s mental health catchment area.

I was on this new waiting list for several months, still self-harming. After repeated, desperate visits to my doctor, I was prescribed medication for anxiety. Still on the waiting list for therapy, I phoned the out-of-county mental health team for an update. They arranged an appointment with a talking therapist back at my local mental health centre. I had come full circle and hadn’t even been given the right treatment. They simply didn’t have enough CBT therapists in the area, but counselling didn’t meet my needs.

After that, I gave up for a while. Chasing my own mental healthcare was exhausting, and telling my story to so many different people had been harrowing. My medication had started to kick in; side effects included intense fatigue and memory loss, but it was better than being curled up in a ball on the floor crying. I took my pills and got by for the next year, putting the trauma into a box and burying it.

In 2019, after a series of life changes, I applied to study sociology at university. I moved from North Wales to Chester and found that there was still a life out there to discover for myself. Along with this came a drive to do whatever I could to help repair our country’s broken health system.

Last autumn, I discovered Just Treatment and the vital work they do. Their vision of social justice fuelled by patient leadership, experience, and stories resonated with me, and I began to volunteer. 

Over decades, the NHS has been eroded from all angles by politicians and private corporations who seek to profit from our health needs. Its structure is now fragmented, and its systems disconnected. Whole factions of the Service have been privatised, and staff are underpaid and overworked. Recruiting new, experienced healthcare workers is a challenge because everyone knows how harsh the working conditions are: many healthcare workers aren’t even paid an adequate living wage, and some have relied on foodbanks to feed themselves and their families.

The NHS is catastrophically underfunded, which means it can’t afford vital resources to treat its patients – and today, that has been made clearer than ever. In the UK, 100,000 people have already died from Covid-19. These are people’s mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbours. Many were healthcare workers themselves. The families of the victims of Covid-19 weren’t even able to say goodbye, unable to hold the hands of the ones they love in their final moments.

My recent NHS experience has been a negative one, but the blame for that does not lie with the many doctors, administrative staff, and other healthcare workers involved in my case – they were already stretched beyond their means. The demands of Just Treatment’s NHS New Deal campaign have been created by a grassroots movement which has brought together the views of NHS users, like me, from every single constituency across the UK. It is a comprehensive plan for how we can create a fully-funded, publicly-owned NHS, that works for all of us. 

Included in our demands are adequate funding and an end to the shameless privatisation of NHS services – the NHS is not for profit. We want to see patients and staff given the opportunity to shape the services that we all pay for, and we must challenge racial inequality, whether this relates to patients or staff. We also need an integrated approach to social care to lessen the burden on the NHS: social inequality is unacceptable in a so-called ‘developed’ nation, and we must treat the root causes of ill health.

We believe that everyone has the equal chance to enjoy a healthy life. This should not be a privilege – it’s a human right. And we hope that our stories will move people into action: we’re organising in every corner of the country, bringing together a network of patients and activists who will take the demand for an NHS New Deal to our political decision makers.

My story does have a happy ending – or perhaps a new beginning. I have now received official diagnoses of PTSD, anxiety, and OCD, and I have been referred to a wonderful therapist through my university’s student support system. But not everyone’s stories end this way.

I want to use my experience to motivate, encourage, and support others coming forward, so that together, we can all be part of a movement that will bring about a new era for our NHS – one in which no one has to battle to get the care they need.