Mental Block.

Kinda forgot about this place. Might start posting regularly again, if I can be bothered/find the time…

I sat outside this evening from about 22.10 and watched the total lunar eclipse. I’d not seen one in a long time, either through being unaware or just uninterested when I was younger, and now I’m kind of sorry I’ve not seen a few more of them.

Really was pretty impressive- for a start, the shadow was slipping up the face of the full moon so there was a crescent shape you don’t normally see for about twenty minutes. I live in a pretty built-up area and it’s a shame, ’cause the yellowish streetlights cause a big haze and what should have been a really peaceful moment was wrecked by people shouting to each other as they left the pub down the road.

At totality, there was a subdued but pretty spectacular halo around the darkened face, and the whole thing was a slightly erie rusty blood-red (being red/green colour-blind means I probably got a fairly distorted view of it though). It didn’t exactly bring on the sense of… wonder? that a solar eclipse gives but it was very serene.

Sat out on the cold grass of my back lawn, it was just nice to spend an hour doing nothing but watching something gradual and uncontrollable. None of the bother about doing things or getting to places on time or having to do something to make it happen, just the chance to be completely passive and to see events unfold.

Woo, a new draft mental health bill came out today. About time, right? After all, the existing legislation (despite being amended over the years), is basically 23 years old and allows for the gross infringement of a patients human rights, if the clinical team feel it is justified.

So, good news then? Uh, kinda. This is the government’s third attempt at this bill; they tried twice with the same piece of legislation (in 2002 then again earlier this year) and finally gave up in March when they realised they hadn’t a hope of hell of getting it through parliament. This new bill isn’t exactly the same (instead of being a completely new bill, it just would comprehensively amend the 1983 Act), but it basically aims to achieve the same thing as its predecessors.

In short, the bill aims to allow the detention of patients who have conditions that aren’t treatable. Currently you can only be held on a section of the mental health act if you have a treatable illness (such as depression, anxiety, most mood disorders) and if you pose a risk to either yourself or the public.

To be honest, I just don’t know what to make of that. From a safety point of view, I can understand the desire to ensure that people who are a risk to themselves or others because of mental illness can be managed effectively and safely and that at times, this means detention in hospital.

On the other hand, if we as healthcare professionals aren’t able to treat (notice the use of that word rather than “cure”) an illness, what on earth are we doing in our professional role? I for one would quickly lose motivation and morale when holding a patient whom I know will not recover in any substantial form, and yet is being held indefinately under a section. Granted, I’ve worked with some patients who possibly aren’t able to cope with living in mainstream society- but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessairly the ethically correct course of action.

The media has made a great issue on this “protection of the public” issue, and as previously mentioned on here I find it pretty disgusting. In most of the tragic, awful cases that come to light in which a mentally unwell person (usually a male) has committed some terrible act, the patient has already been in the care of our services. It’s our existing care that is faliable, not our ability to detain or treat “untreatable” people. Granted, it is immensely difficult to assess risk in some patients, and personally I would prefer to err on the side of patient dignity and respect rather than attempt to keep people wrapped in bubblewrap, but there have been failings- and the good news is that we’re already aware of them and working on them. I’m not sure that legislation will solve these specific problems- but I greatly welcome other aspects of it such as giving more power to nurses to prescribe medication and to admit and discharge patients as suitable.

Once again, the media manages to piss me off with shoddy reporting of mental health.

PM on Radio 4 this evening headlined with the news that an NHS enquiry had condemmed the care given to a “Violent Paranoid Schizophrenic” who stabbed a cyclist in Richmond Park in London.
When. Will. They. Learn?!

There is no such thing as a paranoid schizophrenic! People can have paranoid schizophrenia, they can be violent and have schizophrenia, but they cannot be a schizophrenic. It’s labelling someone in the worst possible kind of way; saying “this person is dangerous, murderous and should be locked away from society”. Generally, the public image of a schizophrenic is someone with multiple personalities (which is complete crap, that’s another psychiatric condition entirely), someone who is liable to dangerous acts, someone who might attack people. News items such as the BBC News website’s coverage of the issue: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6153592.stm just reinforces this image.

If the NHS, voluntary agencies, service users, patients and anyone else with a vested interest in removing the stigma from mental health (which should be all of us) want to really make an impact on how mental health issues are treated by the public, we need to challenge sloppy journalism. Grrrr!

Have realised why I never bother updating this thing- there’s so rarely anything about mental health in the news, and where there is anything it tends to be three or four things at once. So in the quiet bits I loose interest, and so I forget about it…

Going to start including random day to day stuff as well. Not because it’ll interest anyone, but because I want to.

Score one for pointlessness!