For more than ten years, I worked as a counsellor and psychotherapist. I sat with people on some of the hardest days of their lives. And again and again, I saw the same thing get in the way.
It wasn't that people didn't want help. They did. It was that the help was so hard to reach, and once they reached it, it often didn't fit.
I watched person after person wait anywhere from three to eighteen months for support through local services. Months, while they were already struggling. By the time their name came up, some of them were in a far worse place than when they first asked.
And when help did arrive, it came with limits. A fixed, often small number of sessions, whether that was enough or not. Usually one type of therapy on offer, most often CBT, which is excellent for some people and simply not the right fit for others. No say in who you saw. And the connection between a person and their therapist is not a nice extra. It is most of what makes therapy work.
The other route was through a charity, often with a therapist still in training. That work is genuinely valuable, and many trainees are wonderful. But it comes with its own limits when what someone needs is a fully qualified, experienced person beside them.
None of this is the fault of the services or the people working inside them. They are stretched, underfunded, and doing their best in a system that asks too much of them. But the people falling through the gaps are real, and I was sitting across from them.