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The future of mental health services? Don’t forget the current failures.
Posted Thursday 18 November 2010
There’s much talk at the moment of the future of mental health services. Is NHS funding really protected? What does the move to GP commissioning mean for mental health? Yet there’s a need to focus attention on the current state of services too, which is what Mind is doing through our new Care in crisis campaign.
As I prepare to speak at an NHS seminar next week on ‘safeguarding service users within the criminal justice system’, it strikes me that one issue isn’t getting much attention at present. Far too many people are the victim of crime or abuse when receiving mental health services, either in hospital or in the community – and too often people never see the perpetrators brought to justice. One person told Mind:
I was abused by mental health staff over 13 years. Stolen from, assaulted, denied food, water and medical attention, bullied, threatened, intimidated, and now repeatedly rejected and denied any support.
Sometimes nothing happens because people fall through the gaps in services, so no one picks up on the abuse and people feel disempowered to speak up themselves, due to barriers within the criminal justice system. Within institutions, in particular, abuse by other patients or staff is often seen as an ‘internal’ incident and dealt with by complaints procedures – which may be flawed, non-transparent, or inaccessible – without any involvement from the police. I entirely disagree with the implication in this, that abuse committed when people are in the care of mental health services is somehow less of a crime and should be dealt with outside the criminal justice system. Everyone must have equal access to justice – that is a fundamental human right.
There’s a glimmer of good news – after a lengthy review of the ‘No Secrets’ guidance on how agencies should work together to protect people from abuse, the Government is now developing a new approach, including specific guidance for mental health professionals. That is welcome, and Mind is engaging with the process, but it won’t be enough.
As debates on the future of mental health services roll on, this aspect must not be forgotten. It is bound to come up as part of Mind’s Care in crisis inquiry – and if you missed the opportunity to fill in our survey, you can still share your experiences by emailing action@mind.org.uk.
In the meantime, next week and in the future, Mind will keep pushing the message with Government and frontline staff from a range of agencies, that equal access to justice must become a reality for people with experience of mental distress – whether they are receiving services in hospital, in the community, or not at all.
Amy Whitelock, Senior Policy and Campaigns Officer
9 Comments
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I work in serivces and have done for 5 years. I really enjoy working with service users and feel supporting someone in crisis is the most touching and rewarding things in the world.
I recognise service users are vulnerable and need to be protected. I also aware of many many times when professional boudaries have been crossed and it horrifies me that anyone can abuse any vulnerable adults in their care.
At the same time I have been aware of several false accusations (illness lead or otherwise) against staff and have had colleagues suspended and there were found to be innocent. I feel service users are protected but perhaps staff should be too. -
I thinkyou are always going to have a special circumstance in a mental health institution - like a theatre of war or a playgroup. Just like small children may bite each other and no-one would expect the parents to launch a criminal investigation, unless there had been a breach of protection, care and supervision by carers and supervisors, and just as no-one would expect zero casualties in a war - there is going to be risks associated within a unit where many people being vulnerable to harm or harming are brought together. That does not mean there are no rules and no justice and standards should be slipped, but it the scrutiny of the caring staff and the regime that is in main question, just as in a nursery, toddler group or other situation with small children below the age of criminal responsibility. It would be inappropriate to subject mentally ill and mentally disabled people displaying challenging behaviours to criminal procedures as a matter of course. It is a challenge to the model of responsibility and when this may be diminished, as much as it is challenge to the important notion of personal validity to think like this. But...
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Hi Kathy, I understand the point you're making and am sure you didn't mean to cause offense, but wanted to flag up to yourself and others reading that it's not particularly helpful to compare those with mental health problems to disruptive children without 'criminal responsibility', and the environment of a psychiatric ward to that of a playgroup or nursery.
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Would that apply to rape Kathy?
Sexual harassment within mental health settings is not entirely rare and is not always taken seriously and addressed [and it doesn't matter who's doing it].
I want to see both service users and staff protected equally and I think both groups are let down in different ways.
Staff can be let down by their managers and Trusts fixated on risk aversion and toeing the line. They can be hauled over the coals for ridiclous reasons.
Service users are let down because in the eyes of the criminal justice system they are not seen as credible witnesses. The infamous Yorkshire doctors abuse took many years to be brought to light because no one wanted to hear those women.I never reported the physical and sexual harassment I experienced by both service users and staff because I thought I wouldn't be believed and that it could even go against me [because I've seen that happen to others]. I don't care who's doing it, if someone sits on me it hurts the same.
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Bernie Owen Mental Health recovery coach. How can we change an inadequate MH system
I am very concerned as to the amount being piled into anti-psychotic medication.It seems its use is becoming an epidemic.
We have to have more alternative therapy.I myself have recovered from schizophrenia and have been symptom free for 6 years and medication free for 4 years.I have started recovery programs to help all those lost within the system.
The psychiatrist's approach using mediation overtakes your mind and thought processes only to lead to you straight in to a long term trap of a life living on anti-psychotic medication.For some this doesn't appear to be a problem for many years and they are able to study and lead normal lives,Yet even when you can obtain a comfortable standard of living while taking anti-psychotic drugs they will still reduce your life expectancy by around thirty years.But for many they destroy your whole life,Your whole personality and thought process changes to one that is a gamble between confusion and disorientation with little concentration ability's coupled with poor memory and lack of emotion. Or as in my own case hitting the self destruct button within the mind resulting in suicide attempt after suicide attempt ending in becoming a revolving door client,Cutting your self of from your community and often family making it difficult for others to reach you.With no out of hours service i worry due to the failing health care system how many lives will be lost within an all ready troubled system that does not work.I want to change how we as the sufferers are treated in regards to our mental health.I cannot understand why we are treated along side sex offenders and prisoners being accessed from HMP.
The therapies offered at present which seem to be highly focused around anti-psychotic medication which causes a person who feel that their very being is being torn from within their minds,You gain Hugh amounts of weight,i myself went from 10st to 15st over a couple of years.You have a higher than average chance that you will develop anxiety problems low self esteem accompanied by a feeling of worthlessness and a self hatred witch often leads to self harm.Many have spoke to me of total loss of their own personality with incredibly mind altering differences in their thought patterns.
It is all to often made so easy to fall into this net and become trapped in a world of hospital visits and psychiatry appointments every few months.
When i became ill in 1990.I was diagnosed with depression and like most of us who suffer from depression.I was prescribe anti-depressants.I then stayed on them for the next six years with no offer of counselling or any other therapy.
After the death of my son in November 1996 i suffered a total breakdown which ended in my first admittance to a psychiatric ward we're i found the use of cannabis quite readily available paitents walked the ward on a substance that i cannot guess.But extremely high and very agressive towards other paitents.Mixed wards where patients of both sexies we're at times seen naked to each other.A woman who was suffer from altsimers was allowed to have sexual intercouse in a laundery room.I have sat with paitents who have been told they have nothing wrong with them only to be discharged walk in their own homes and then take their own lives the same day.I have attened day centras where sevice users have been very distressed and approuched CMHT for help which hasen't come.I no of single paients with young children who are only visited once a fourtnight for their depot and then only a brief conversaion.One schizophrenic mother with a 2 year old was feeding him jars of baby food tjhat are aimed at a 4 month old baby.This continued untill he was nearly 18 months.Its wasen't because she was a bad mother,It was becuse she had no support teach her to be a mother.Even while this was occuring Her CPN refused to accept their was a problem as the child was clean and had the latest toy s.her CPN even gave a report to social services to say everything was fine their was no problems.I was not acceppting this and contacted social services a ferfure 3 times with my concearns which was not acted upon.Funny thing is i recieve a call from social services asking if a new we're my son was which i had constanly tried to warn that his mother was unwell.She ended up at the local AE dept then tranfered to a psycatric unit while my then mother in law drove 100 milesa to pick my son up.I have witnessed staff taking the mickey out of patients delusions on the wards.I have been on the wards when people suffering from drug induced psychosis have threatened other paitents.on the wards drug induced patients are often violent and are involved in 8 out of 10 attacks on the wards.Should it not be a case of drug rehab first instead of placing these sufferers on the normal acute wards I was diagnosed with a SPD and proscribed anti-psychotic medication.From that point I was admitted no fewer than 35 times to psycatric wards.I had taken at least 15 overdoses,walked on train lines, self harmed,and became incoherent. I had hallucinations, became delusional.I argue that psychiatric patients are not ill, but rather individuals with unconventional thoughts and behavior that make society uncomfortable.I argue that society unjustly seeks to control them by classifying their behavior as an illness and forcibly treating them as a method of social control.According to this view mental illness does not actually exist but is merely a form of social construction, created by society's concept what constitutes normality and abnormality.I do not consider myself anti-psychiatry In the sense of being against psychiatric treatment, but simply believe that treatment should be conducted between consenting adults, rather than imposed upon anyone against his or her will,Why should the first real treatment offered be that of medication.Using my own experience' I feel that had I received the right treatment my own recovery would have been sooner rather than later.Psychiatry had already failed me miserably and left me with no where to turn.Given a diagnoses of schizophrenia.I have suffered Huge torments in my mind that caused me to hallucinate and have visions of my departed Mother and son.I struggled to deny the voices coming from within my mind.The hallucinations tore at my very being.Desperate cry s for help went unheard.Instead i received no support as too an option of recovery which i feel every body should be entitle to.Only now is it that i am able to find the true meaning of the disordered mind that I fought with in my hour of need.Learning how to cope with the irregular thought process's of my inner mind.Years of being on mind altering anti-psychotic medication killed my inner self many many years ago.Now 15 years after my initial crisis i have become medication free.I have remained medication and symptom free.I am finding my place in society regaining the emotions that were shut down by "anti psychotic medication".It has been an extremely long battle that i still fight to this day.Anti-psychotic medication was introduced into my treatment for depression. It's use in my own treatment and many others has a negative effect and results in an escalation of their negative symptoms destroying their lives.Mental health seems to have become a easy money option for the pharmaceutical companies.Are we to follow america's lead and diagnosis children as young as two with such disorders as bipolar.
My own serve acute psychiatric problems which lasted for over 15 years of my life including 7years in total spent on the units.I now speak out to shame the medical profession to reconsider the effects of this toxic medication that has a negative effect on many destroying lives while the drug company's line their pockets.These Anti-psychotic medications destroy hopes and feelings of the free and innocent minds they take in the name science.We are used as though we are their personal lab rats trying to free ourselves from the cages they have placed us in.Throughout history illness of the mind has scared the uneducated .We are placed in hospitals that are inadequate for the purpose they try to serve.The only reason i can find for this action taken against us.Is so that the members of the public and our own community's no longer have to see the tormented minds of the suffering we injure throughout our
lives.We are cast into the very depths of hell to be forgotten by all humanity.Just so nobody no longer has to hear our cries of pain from the torments that life has chosen to place upon us.Our spirits fight to brake the chains holding us like prisoners bound to the walls.Our dignity striped away from us as though it were nothing at all.All this enforced by the powers of the mighty law.Can it really be a criminal offense to be insane?
I was told that i would never recover from my diagnosis of schizophrenia,Yet i have and enjoy life now.How many thousands still suffer the abuse of an inadequate mental health system.Bernie Owen Founder of damaged Minds
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KATHY B Really scared me to read your reply. I have been attacked on wards as a patient and all i am offered is some paper and a pen to write it down so i will feel better!! Even when taken to a General hospital to be stitched up, as soon as staff are told i am from a Mental health unit they clam up and stop asking questions. So time and time again nothing is done, but as you say these ADULTS are only like children, so it is alright for them to slash and scar my face while i am sleeping!! Never mind maybe you can KISS IT BETTER!
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Where I worked half the staff were bullied to the point of tears and the attitude towards people with mental health issues was appalling. And I worked for a Local Mind Association! Mind needs to clean up its own house and crack down on rogue LMAs.
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Whistleblower, if you'd like to make a complaint about any aspect of a local Mind association, please do email mindtomind@mind.org.uk and my colleagues will be happy to assist you.
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I have been an inpatient a number of times and maybe I have been lucky but the only abuse I have suffered is at the hands of the staff. There is one particular ward in the hospital I was in which restrains and drugs people as a matter of routine, even though they have done nothing other than talk back to the staff. Certain members of staff have authoritarian attitudes which are completely inappropriate in members of a so-called caring profession and yet they are the ones who get promoted! Beware if you are small and female because you are more likely to get this treatment than large males. I have tried to complain about this a number of times and get nowhere.
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