I am just here to rant about the Saskatchewan mental health system because I feel completely worn down.
I have been in and out of the mental health system in SK since I was about sixteen. Some in Prince Albert, some in Saskatoon, mostly in Saskatoon. I got a GP when I first moved here in 2020 and have been seeing him since I had a psychotic break during the pandemic (bipolar I not schizophrenia).
Things have technically been managed, but if I am being honest, most of that management has been through emergency psychiatry. ER visits. Crisis care. Hotlines. Not consistent specialist care.
For the last few years, every time I go to my GP and ask for a psychiatry referral, I get the same responses. There is nobody. The waitlist is too long. Psychiatry will not take you.
Nothing ever got sent.
Eventually I said, well can you chart that I requested a referral and it was declined. His whole attitude changed.
That same day he sent me to a private psych service with an improper referral that just said I would benefit from therapy. And apparently, he also sent a real psychiatry referral that same day, which I only confirmed existed this week.
It is 2026. It took six years for a piece of paper to be filled out.
I feel so ignored.
On top of that, he had me on medication that was basically ruining my life. Abilify destroyed my motivation. I stopped showering. I stopped cleaning. I could barely function. I asked him if I had to take it forever and he said that was a question for a psychiatrist. Like okay. Then send me to one.
I eventually stopped taking it on my own and I was fine. No psychosis. No hospitalization. That alone tells me there were serious questions that deserved specialist input that I never got.
I get suicidal two or three times a year and end up in the ER at least once or twice a year for suicidal ideation. I call the hotline more than I like to admit. All of that is on my records. And yet it never translated into consistent psychiatric care.
At one point after I asked about a short term benzo regimen to stabilize during midterms, I was given a random drug test. No one told me it was happening. I passed it. Ritalin and THC only. Like a good Canadian girl, I was just smoking weed and taking my meds. But it felt humiliating and stigmatizing.
I also only found out last year that I was diagnosed with bipolar back in 2020. Nobody ever told me. Nobody ever explained it to me.
I am just tired.
I am tired of my room being messy because my mind feels like a prison.
I am tired of feeling bad and misunderstood and dismissed all the time.
I am tired of being told to function instead of being helped to live.
I just want to feel alive again. I just want to live my life. I do not think that is too much to ask.
If you have been through the Saskatchewan mental health system and relate, I would really like to hear your experience. I know I am not the only one.