'Doctors make me feel worthless,' says Beryl Gidney

Beryl Gidney, 81 and from Norwich, has experienced depression over the last 30 years.

She says since she reached 65, the way she has been treated has changed.

In recent years, when I've been to the GP, I've felt worthless.

As far as I'm concerned, you're just lumped in as a little old lady on your way out.

I just have difficulty getting anyone to listen to me.

I found that some GPs could be very unpleasant - they were rude and patronising, and totally at a loss about mental health problems.

They just try to get you out of the surgery as quickly as possible. They just don't want to talk about it.

I wanted talking treatment... but the doctor just wrote 'not suitable' on my form when I asked about it

I never have time to explain my problems properly to a GP, I have to book double appointments, but I've never found a doctor who I can relate to, they all just talk down to me.

I didn't like the anti-depressants the doctors put me on, they had nasty side effects and I don't think they made me feel any better.

I wanted talking treatment, because I'd heard that was more effective - and obviously it doesn't have the side effects - but the doctor just wrote 'not suitable' on my form when I asked about it.

More recently, when I've been in hospital, I've been put on a psychiatric ward for older people, because I'm over 65.

But I don't have dementia, like most of the patients on those wards do.

It's not a place where you can get better - the surroundings are more distressing, you get very little individual attention, and even less respect or dignity.

I hardly ever saw doctors. All the contact was through the nurses and nursing assistants, and by the time anything you say has been relayed back to the doctors, it can be entirely different from what you actually meant.

One time, a doctor came to see me, and said I could leave.

I told him I didn't feel well enough to go, but he said that the nurses had seen me chatting on the ward, so they told him that I'd recovered!

I found it very lonely in hospital.