I'm in Canada so it's different here. I'm very lucky to have a good doctor, as many of them are so booked with patients it's hard to get in.

I usually go once a month, but I think I've gone as long as two when I've been well. Right now he has me coming in once a week because he's worried about me and wants to keep a close eye on me.

Our doctors here are usually not available by phone or email between appts as far as I've ever heard. I can't even imagine that.

If I go into crisis and it's during his regular hours I could try to call his office but chances are he'd be booked. I'd likely have to go in to emerg and see whomever was on call.

He does time on call as well so if that happened I might see him. So far the once a week has been enough, but I've come close to going in to emerg a couple of times in the past couple of weeks. I was very close to being suicidal last week... not just ideation but considering it seriously feeling compelled. My hubby was here and I managed to hang on, but that would have been a situation to go in.

I hesitate to do that because in emerg here you wait for hours and the regular doctors in my experience years ago were never sympathetic for psych patients. My experiences were horrid. So it is very unlikely that I'd ever go in that way.

When I hear about people having their doctor's email and cell # it seems very strange to me. It's pretty cool though :-)