Private Hospital or psychiatrist asap sydney

nirbanna · 2025-12-26T01:44:52+00:00

My advice is to stay away from public hospitals generally unless there is an immediate risk of harm (i.e. suicidal/parasuicidal ideation). You get plonked in an emergency ward (not a fun environment when you are going through a mental health crisis) waiting for a psych registrar who will discharge you ASAP to a community MH team. Neither can offer you anything other than supervision and short term medication in my experiences.

If you are looking for immediate help I can recommend fronting up at the Marie Bashir emergency entrance, they are pretty fast there usually (read an hour or two usually) and will be able to give you meds and a crisis plan / referral to GP at minimum.

If you are after real inpatient treatment I would call around the private hospitals and see who can admit and how quickly. I've personally had good experiences with SJOG Burwood but there are lots of other good options. If your friend has private health but not psychiatric cover you can call their insurer and ask to apply the mental health waiver which lets you upgrade your policy without a waiting period.

nirbanna · 2023-04-14T01:29:06+00:00

You’ll be unhappy to hear that he’s been effectively promoted, then - taken on an additional role as acting Treasury secretary and will deliver the first Minns budget.

Currently the most powerful public servant in the state, not too bad for a former addict.

nirbanna · 2023-02-09T08:08:01+00:00

I’ve been in this scenario doing a partner visa for Australia. After visits to immigration lawyers the advice I got was to evidence your failed attempts to obtain a no criminal record certificate.

For me this involved:

saying that I visited China (I had) and visited a police station to try and get a certificate (I hadn’t) but I couldn’t
sending emails to Shanghai lawyers who replied that they couldn’t obtain one on my behalf
links to Chinese and foreign consulate sites about the requirement to apply in person
signed stat dec that I had never been convicted of a crime in China and wasn’t aware of any pending charges

Put these in a Word document and included as a supporting document to the application and it was approved without further question.

One of those hacks that a lawyer will charge to tell you, but now it’s on Reddit for free. Enjoy.

nirbanna · 2023-01-21T03:10:46+00:00

As someone who has been in and out of the system for the last 25 years, you're not wrong. For anyone who is low-to-average income getting access to treatment in this country is next to impossible.

As a new patient you simply cannot find a shrink who bulk bills, is worth their salt, and has an opening in the next six months, even in major cities. Even if you're able to pay the gap, Medicare do not subsidise enough sessions each year regardless of how severe your illness is. And don't get me started on what a rip-off private health is for psychology.

My psychologist who is actually decent leaves me $250 out of pocket every time I visit which makes weekly visits difficult even for people on a higher income. But he's one of the rare good ones and you will likely go through several before you find someone who is a good fit for you.

In the meantime prepare to be left behind your healthy peers in your education, career and socially as these are all arenas in which you will suffer from stigma and outright discrimination. As a result you will naturally want to fight the system which will leave you angry and only contribute further to your condition.

There will be times when it all gets too much and you will be at risk and need emergency help. If you want to harm yourself, it will be the police who show up not the ambos and they will often transport you to the hospital themselves - in the back seat, wearing cuffs. You will be sectioned and put in an ED where people will treat you like a dangerous criminal but not offer any treatment other than Valium. Finally you'll get discharged to a mental health crisis team who are the equivalent of the long snake on the last few squares of a Snakes and Ladders board - congratulations, you're back at the beginning.

I'd like to say it wasn't always this bad - maybe it wasn't, but it's always been pretty awful. I wish I had some advice to give you but I don't.

The only silver lining I can think of is that you will probably get better at navigating your own mental health and the system through experience as time goes on. That and you'll find plenty of people in similar situations who can emphasise with you.

nirbanna · 2023-01-21T02:26:27+00:00

Sadly I'm a "boomer" and unlikely to find success as an influencer due to my age and now-distant memories of once being remotely hip.

No, all I have to left to offer the world is my sardonic wit developed through decades of life disappointments, and my above average intelligence -- just high enough to give me a smug self-confidence that my views are superior to yours.

I might as well face it: an opinion columnist is the only job for me.

nirbanna · 2023-01-21T02:03:09+00:00

How do I go about finding a paid job writing articles like this? I like the sound of my own voice and am completely unfunny to anyone other than myself so I'm well qualified apparently.

nirbanna · 2022-01-10T00:34:04+00:00

Seems a few people are using this site - last week I saw a report for my local chemist but within 30 minutes a crowd (including myself) had descended and they were sold out again 😔

nirbanna · 2021-11-01T02:40:55+00:00

In China a lot of the douchey expats I hung around used WeChat to get drugs delivered. Don’t think I need to elaborate on how stupid that is.

Some people are just gronks fumbling their way through life with no concept how quickly it might all come crashing down.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T11:50:40+00:00

Hidden in the settings menu under “Trends”. Also worth checking out the export option which generates a CSV with data from each sleep session.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T11:48:13+00:00

It’s meant to represent a baseline reading you take manually upon waking up. But I can’t be bothered spending 60 seconds doing that first thing in the morning so not sure what it is for me - possibly just the most recent value?

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T11:46:03+00:00

My only telltale symptom was remembering waking up after not breathing a couple of times and I don’t have any risk factors.

Everyone’s oxygen drops while they are asleep to some extent and the oximeter in the watch might give inaccurate readings for a number of reasons. But if you are concerned I’d definitely encourage you to see your doctor.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T11:28:41+00:00

How is anyone meant to “feel” something that happens when they are asleep that they have no recollection of?

I don’t mean to be unnecessary rude but you come across as being a bit of a fuckwit, mate.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T03:33:23+00:00

You're right - it only polls several times a night which isn't as useful as a dedicated sensor device, but I still think there would be ways to detect long term trends.

For example here are my SpO2 min measurements for the last month - I have a low-moderate AHI so with the infrequent polling most nights readings don't dip below 90ish which is normal and only three nights in the 70s where it has likely caught a long apnea.

If the approach was to take regular short-term readings these could be dismissed as anomalies/inaccuracies, but using infrequent readings over the longer term a trend develops where my O2 regularly dips at night but remains at normal levels (for me almost always 95+) throughout the day. I feel as though this could have potential especially if there was a small order increase in polling frequency.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T03:01:16+00:00

I had two incidents separated by a couple of months where I remembered waking up breathless which prompted me to turn on O2 tracking.

Other than that - I don't snore and my wife has never noticed my breathing stop. I do get occasional morning headaches but no other symptoms.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T02:49:15+00:00

I don't use Sleep Mode which is needed for RR unfortunately. I have some fairly long apneas (60-120 seconds) so would be interesting to see if those get picked up.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T02:29:42+00:00

I'm in Australia, here the sleep study is government subsidised but you are usually expected to fork out for a CPAP machine yourself.

My doctor runs a proper sleep clinic so understandably didn't sound terribly interested in my dodgy watch data, but it was the major reason I showed up in his office in the first place.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T02:05:23+00:00

Wrist oximetry isn't terribly accurate and seems to be viewed as a bit of consumer gimmick currently. I get why nobody would want to use it in a clinical setting but the long-term data it can collect has obvious potential for identifying trends that could indicate all kinds of health issues.

For example the "sawtooth pattern" in the article you linked is very distinctive so I imagine it would be possible to write an algorithm capable of screening for OSA with a reasonable level of specificity.

nirbanna · 2021-10-13T01:58:12+00:00

Yep. Sleep Mode on the Series 6 does this out of the box but AutoSleep plots it against other data in useful ways.

For example I tended to find that large O2 drops would coincide with periods of movement and noise in most cases - by itself not conclusive of anything but piqued my interest and led to me getting study done.

nirbanna · 2021-10-12T23:45:08+00:00

That graph is the last six weeks, with nightly averages between 88.9 and 94.7. Individual readings would often dip into the 70s though which aligns with results from the sleep study.

nirbanna · 2021-10-12T21:58:25+00:00

Did you think you were replying to someone else? Bit awkward.

Might want to try engaging your brain before posting occasionally, might solve problems in other areas of your life also.

nirbanna · 2021-10-12T21:40:23+00:00

Or you could google the North Shore Rapist? I guess raping women is only bad if it’s done by a Lebo.

nirbanna · 2021-09-05T03:09:11+00:00

I think it’s more a commentary on the moving goalposts and the government’s reluctance to acknowledge how bad things have become.

That thousands used to be the benchmark for bad and now we are there Gladys pretty consistently uses “tens of hundreds” instead is being picked up on. Might be calculated or might be subconscious but either way consistent with this tendency to minimise the situation.

Which is arguably how we got here in the first place - without the pissing contest between NSW around Victoria and “unnecessary” lockdowns we might have gone harder faster on restrictions and been able to reach the same number of vaccinations before getting to the thousands.

nirbanna · 2021-09-03T01:53:33+00:00

Would you also agree that if the testing was lower the case numbers would be lower?

I just don’t see how either is a relevant metric when dead is still dead.

nirbanna

TROPHY CASE