To think its unsurprising mental health services are so under funded..

[abacucat]

when so many people have such awful attitudes to the mentally ill.

Agreed mama. Not one person in my whole life has ever taken the trouble to help me mentally, except for giving me more medication. I was promised a CPN, then told I wasn't due to lack of funding. Because I come across as being capable ( I have an 11 year old son so I have to hold it all together somehow) I get dismissed as being low risk. I come out of any appointment feeling like I just don't want to be here any more.

I phoned my crisis team telling them I was suicidal and that I was alone that night and I was sure I might try to kill myself.

They sent me some leaflets in the post.

I am a victim of underresourced MH services and yet to meet anyone who "gets it".

NotUmbumgo - I think that in order to cope working in the industry, you probably have to develop a tough exterior and try to not get too sucked into the pain that the patient is feeling(?) Otherwise you end up traumatized yourself and not coping when not at work. (Would love it if a professional could confirm?)

to those in pain.

I was misdiagnosed with borderline & not treated very nicely by the cmht.

Then they realised I was actually having a psychotic episode & I've been diagnosed & medicated for schizo affective disorder instead.

Now their attitudes are totally different! & I get a lot more help. It shouldn't be that way.

But I only tell people that I have depression.
I rarely say I have schizo affective disorder or Psychosis as it scares people.

I know I see the world slightly differently for example if I take lower dose meds then I see inanimate objects as having faces & personalities, I feel I can control traffic lights, I feel that people can hear my thoughts, I get very paranoid about people plotting against me & get obsessed with things easily etc etc.

I do take high dose anti psychotics so I seem normal to everyone - so my colleagues just don't understand that I'm unwell that's why I work part time on shorter shifts.

Some people could to be more resilient

Fuck me, I'm cured! After all these years of severe mental illness, all I needed to do was be resilient. Who knew that resilience would magically change my brain chemistry?!

Also, in years of suffering, I've never come across anyone within the NHS who has been any good at their job, and I've seen many people.

I work I in forensic mental health

Myself and everyone who works in the team go above and beyond our duties most days and it’s often very draining it’s the nature of the work

Some areas are terribly underfunded other areas money is wasted

And the stigma can be awful. Understanding of mh issues are constantly evolving and treatments are individual to have people who comply with medication that’s often such a battle

And drugs impacting people’s mental health (particularly weed) is such a huge problem

More education is needed to start in schools to be more openly spoken about not just when someone with schizophrenia has attacked someone

What is forensic mental health?

I also used to be a forensic mental health nurse. Forensic is patients with mental health illness who have committed a crime. There are regional secure hospitals- they have same security features as prison but they are primarily a hospital. I looked after people who had killed a family member or child or stranger, set fires, sexual offences and some more low key stuff. If you see someone has been given a hospital order due to dismissed responsibility when reported in the media or means one of these medium secure regional beds or far fewer high secure beds such as broadmoor. Each bed costs a basic 250k per year. Lots of rehabilitation and psychological input to reduce risk of another crime

Diminished not dismissed! Bloody autocorrect

My diagnosis is recurrent psychotic depression and I too found they give lots of support with psychosis. But in the long term I've been discharged and on antipsychotics and anti-ds and GP does blood tests and med reviews. But I kind of prefer not to be too involved with MH series as the staff change a lot and the buildings are not pleasant and a bit scary. I appreciate the help if things get really bad though.

I would say a lot of the problem is that the model of psychiatry as a science is flawed. A lot of the treatment is trial and error. A lot of diagnosis is subjective. All well and good, because that is the best knowledge available at the moment, but it hands an awful lot of power to professionals and sometimes this is not used in the best interests of the patients.

Wheretheresawill1, I see where you are coming from, but psychiatry seems to want to have it all ways: those with bpd are not functioning correctly - they need help. You try to help them. There is never enough help of the sort you are offering because that is part of their disorder. Is that their fault? At some point probably a drug will be found that works and then suddenly those with bpd will be treated as are those with bipolar disorder. i.e. not particularly wonderfully but not as though they are troublesome attention seekers who waste the time of those trying to get on with more worthy case.

By the way, I have bipolar disorder. I have just observed over my 35 year involvement with services, how these people are treated.

And the drugs for severe mental illness are awful with side effects. Really awful.

Imo the underfunding of mh services causes a vicious circle with other means of support the sufferer might have otherwise accessed.

Supporting a friend or family member with a mental illness is hard in any circumstances. But if the sufferer isn't getting the help from professionals they need, and the friend/ family member is left in the position of being the only support, it makes it all the more likely they'll need to step back to protect their own mh. So instead of help from professionals and support from family/ friends, the sufferer ends up with nothing and inevitably deteriorates.

Like so many services, it's often too little, too late.

Re resilience, I didn't interpret that as aimed at those with mental illness. Just in reference to those with an armchair self dx who are making it all the harder for those who do have a mh problem.

I'm also disillusioned with mh services.
I was recently referred by my gp to the local auths mh assessment service. After a 1 and a half hour telephone assessment, where I was asked to talk about lots of issues and probed on these until the point I was in tears and said I didn't want to talk about it all in such a concentrated fashion to someone I've never met.
They then said actually they couldn't help me because (and I paraphrase here) I was too fucked up for their service where they only offer 6 free counselling sessions and I obviously needed a lot more.
They then arranged to call me back at a set time the next day. So I work my self up for this call knowing again it would be distressing but would be beneficial in the long run. However the call never happened as she forgot about me!!
So I open my heart to be told they sent help and then I'm forgotten about. What a way to help someone with issues!
So the free service they offer is only for people who have a couple of issues, but if your truly screwed like me then tough shit you have to pay for help. And it you can't afford that help......Well let's just hope you don't do anything silly.
And during this assessment this person would have known they couldn't help me a lot earlier than they said, so why keep me talking and asking me things that they could tell I found upsetting.
I now have to go through all this again, if I manage to find someone who can possibly help me.
So yes basically the service is fucking awful.

All the BPD sufferers I know don’t get even the bare minimum of support so you can’t fob us all off as being too difficult to handle. That’s your job at the end of the day.

Like with any profession there are good nurses and bad nurses. I’ve worked with both. I’ve worked with some outstanding staff. Lots are now leaving nursing and medicine. Services throughout the nhs are so stretched- I have trouble accessing these services on behalf of patients particularly GPs.

The current advice is never to make the illness own the person - a person with mental illness is fine, to say a person is "mentally ill", or "physically ill" actually comes across as there being nothing else to that person.
Bear in mind though that people have different preferences. I don't want to be 'a person with autism' because to me that sounds so impersonal and like I don't exist. I prefer 'Nike is autistic' or 'Nike has autism' (or preferably 'Nike is bloody fantastic, highly witty, drop dead gorgeous and autistic to boot' but I've not had that much)

Sorry *sent help should be 'can't help' I was typing in a huff.

I said the sufferers I know.... nothing to do with you.

999/1000 I don't need all those hours. But I'd love a nurse to phone once a fortnight and say "hey bin... Still kicking?". I'm lucky I have found magic pills (lamotrigine fwiw). I don't expect a nurse to be able to give the psychological support I need - and frankly having had 5 years one-to-one (private) I've nothing left to share. It's fucked up. As am I.

Wheretheresawill1 Is this how you respond to people on the ward unless they are grateful?