I just need to vent on how TERRIBLE mental health in pregnant patients are in the USA!!🤬
My sister is 8 months pregnant. For the past 5 years she been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She had a really bad psychosis episode in 2015 which landed her in the mental hospital for about 3 weeks (super bad experience for her😩) but since then she’s been on lexapro and clonazepam. About once a year, she thinks she’s all better and she won’t take her meds, and she’ll get in a deep dark anxious/depressed state for about a week where she won’t eat or drink or do anything! We can normally pull her out of that bad place and help her get back on hers meds, and within a day or two she’s back to normal!!
Since she found out she was pregnant, her obgyn told her to continue the lexapro but stop the clonazepam. (They probably didn’t realize her past medical history with stopping meds🤷♀️)
She’s been seeing a therapist, and she’s been doing really good without taking her clonazepam but the past 4 days things has been getting on top of her. She’s been very very anxious, and overwhelmed.. She’s at the point where she hasn’t eaten in 4 days! Hasn’t slept in 4 days! Is barely drinking water! All she does is stare off into the distance. When ever I ask her a question or her husband ask her a question she starts crying and says I don’t know!
She saw her OB on Thursday and all he said was “take Benadryl if you have anxiety”
Benadryl isn’t working and it took her husband an HOUR to try to get her to take her medicine.😭😭😭
He thought it was best to take her to the emergency room today. WELL, she went to OB triage, they only checked baby and said baby was fine so they sent my sister to the regular ER. (Which the Emergency rooms here are scared shit to treat pregnant patients!!) when a doctor saw her, he basically said, to keep taking Benadryl and stick it out until the baby gets here..🤯🤯🤬🤬 wtf!!!! He wants my sister to not eat/sleep/drink, sit on her couch, lay in bed, like a potato??? I am LIVID😩😩😭😭 my heart is so broken. I’m so worried about my little sister, she is my best friend. I live 6 hours away with a newborn, so I can’t be there right now to help. Her husband is trying everything he can to get her help. I just CANNOT believe the hospital system here. They “ping pong” pregnant patients back and forth because they’re scared to treat them. OB says go see “this doctor, that doctor” but then they’ll say “ooo no, you’re pregnant, you need to see your OB” and this is just a circle of back and forth. (I work EMS in Florida and every single ER is afraid of pregnant patients (we have to take ALL pregnant patients specifically to the local baby hospital here)
😭😭😭😭 her husband is taking her to a
Psychiatrist on Monday. But I have a feeling they’re not going to want to help my sister because she is pregnant.
Am I wrong? How would this situation be handled in another country?
America is always trying to “be better” at mental health. But they are not doing anything to make a difference!!
If your still reading. Thank you 😩 any input/advice/calming words would be sooooo appreciated
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