r/Glasgow Tools

I think there is a place for charities, and there have been times when I have been helped by Breathing Space just to have that connection when it's 3 am (at the weekends) and I feel incredibly isolated and either have no one I could call in my personal life or wouldn't want to bother them. I have also been helped by support groups for my particular mental disability run by a charity, though at my worst and most symptomatic I would need strong medication to settle me down and help way above what I would expect a charity to offer. In a short half hour phone call I wouldn't expect anyone at the other end to offer more than a listening voice, and then only if I was able to keep it together somewhat. For me making progress with a different condition (bipolar) it took more than 40 50 minute sessions to have a lasting impact, as well as faithful compliance to medication. Some I was able to access free or at a sliding scale so for that I was very grateful to the providers.

You sound like you have educated yourself well enough about your condition whether that's been from books or online so you are probably already familiar with the types of things that go into a Wellness Recovery Action Plan, so the phone line suggestions probably sound trite. I wish there more charities up here running drop in groups the way MIND does in England and Wales, but then my bias is that social connection is the element I have missed out on most when my condition got so bad I essentially dropped out of society. Tl;dr I have been helped quite a bit by charities but not really so much by helplines, maybe that's because I wouldn't like telling my story anew to a different person each time. I am also not in favour of how much stuff that I think the NHS should be doing which I think has been fobbed off onto the third sector either, though many have had bad NHS experiences and prefer to do things another way.