To be disgusted at MH provision?

[TooBigForMyBoots]

An amazing woman I knew died this weekend. No doubt it will be attributed to suicide, but it wasn't really.

She died because there was no hospital place for her. She suffered BiPolar disorder. Diagnosed 20 years ago. For over 4 weeks she, her GP, family and partner tried to get her into hospital as her condition worsened.

She needed urgent medical care, stabilisation and a meds review. She didn't get it and now she's dead because...

No Fucking Beds.

MH provision is woeful. The sheer volume of patients requiring MH help has increased massively. Beds have been cut and they don’t have the staffing levels they need to cope with demand. I work in A&E and we are booking in more and more. We don’t have the space for the numbers coming in and have to keep converting bays, removing everything from the rooms to ensure the patient is as safe as possible. Very often if they are acutely unwell we have to wait days for a bed because there aren’t enough.

YANBU, MH provision on the NHS has never been adequate, and during Covid it got worse. Huge backlog, and more people than ever needing referrals.

I am sorry to hear about your friend

Lack of MH provision in this country is disgraceful, thanks to Tory cuts. The incidence of MH illness has increased exponentially and still no services are provided. Suicide rate is highest ever, government honestly couldn’t give a fuck

It has been a hell of a lot better than it is. Her condition was known and treatable. Her death was preventable.

If she'd suffered a heart or lung condition people would speak loudly and indignantly about it. But her death is spoken of in whispers because "suicide". It wasn't "suicide", she died from lack of treatment for a known medical condition.

Yep-it’s woeful. Don’t vote Tory.

The "hell of a lot better" statement was in response to @XenoBitch comment.

MH care is absolutely bloody shocking..I don’t blame the professionals it is the lack of funding! My daughters friend literally had to reach crisis point before being admitted on Friday…absolutely heartbreaking 💔

@TooBigForMyBoots To be fair we running at what has been described as 'traumatic' levels of excess deaths since the pandemic. 30,000 people died in the last six months of the year. Ambulance waits are appalling. I don't disagree with you, btw, it's just that it's all shocking and there's not much more than a shrug of a response...Brits are passive creatures. I'm sorry for your loss

I’m so sorry fog your loss.

Im angry about this too. Furious. Kids and adults in crisis without proper (or any) help. Then the weird awareness campaigns and calls to ‘get help’ that make no sense when this help is not forthcoming.

*for

Then the question is, how and by want means can a fully equipped nhs be funded and at what costs will the total be, and taxes are not the answer

That is heartbreaking OP

Treatment for mental illness is so appalling in this country, and has been for a long time, that it is hard to find the words to describe the deep inadequacy.

People without first hand experience can’t believe that often there is not even any crisis care available. Just nothing at all. It is cruel and frightening for unwell people and their families. So many lives ruined that could have been improved with therapy. It’s devastating.

We are with CAMHS … it’s woeful

So, so many lives ruined.

Her mother who found her body and lay with her, refusing to let go when the ambulance arrived.
Her children.
Her neighbours who heard her mother's screams and called the ambulance.
Her siblings.
Partner.
Patients. Some of them on her books for 25 years.

Mental health is contagious.

Are you getting any support yourself @ExtraOnions? It is so very difficult for the parents of children with MH problems.

For years and years it felt like psychiatric bed cuts were trumpeted as a sign of how much more forward-thinking we were now, treating people in the community and helping them get back to their lives rather than warehousing them in hospitals. And they kept cutting and kept trumpeting, and kept cutting and kept trumpeting, and it got to a point where I knew how severely unwell you had to be to get a bed and thought, "This wouldn't be touted as a positive thing if it were cardiac beds". Then they cut some more, and the media started to notice provision was inadequate and wavered in their positivity towards cuts, then they cut some more, and news outlets started reporting on people being placed miles out of area and in private hospitals, then they cut some more and even doing that couldn't nearly meet need, then they cut some more, and here we are. Bed numbers were insufficient two decades ago and there are half as many now.

And this treatment/support in the community we're supposed to get is bloody poor. The day centres have gone, therapies are impossible to get whether group or individual (unless you're accepted by IAPT or whatever they're calling it now, but that's hardly appropriate for SMI), the moment you're out of crisis you're shunted out of the CMHT and back to the GP so don't get to check in with a CPN or care coordinator to keep you well or get meds reviews, and you're very lucky if you can get on the crisis team caseload if the need arises. Which, if they do take you on, amounts to a visit or two a day, encouraging you to take your meds; hardly a substitute for hospital treatment.

Instead, people with life-threatening, disabling, lifelong mental illness are encouraged to cobble together and organise their own care packages from scraps of support they can get from charities (sometimes with some government funding, but that doesn't make you feel any less like Oliver Twist with the begging bowl), GPs and other generic services, @and their "social support network" (read: the families and friends we don't want to worry, are fed up of burdening, or have poor relationships with because of our illnesses).

The other effect of this is that the average psychiatric inpatient now is more severely in need of inpatient treatment than the average patient 20 years ago, because they only have half as many beds so have to prioritise, and has there been an increase in per-patient staffing to reflect this? Has there bollocks. So it's more stressful for staff and a more difficult, less therapeutic environment for patients.

Similarly in CMHTs, all the "easier" patients are now either not taken on in the first place, or handed back to the GP at the earliest opportunity, meaning CMHT staff are seeing people who are on average more unwell. I'd imagine the job is much more stressful if it's just the most difficult, severe or high-risk cases, all day every day, one after the other.

Two decades ago, DP was seen in the CMHT several times to sort out medication, because his GP had tried him on a couple of antidepressants and they hadn't helped much, and since this counts as treatment-resistant depression it merited a referral to a psychiatrist. I can't imagine that happening now.

I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend, OP 💐 Sadly, I think this type of loss will continue to occur, due to a lack of beds, but even more due to the lack of staff. The NHS is short over 40,000 nurses now and several thousand doctors in a range of specialities. You can’t get help if there’s no one to treat you.

It’s hardly surprising, tbh. Who wants to train for and work in a stressful environment where you’re massively overworked and underpaid compared with many countries?

The sooner we move to a system like the French health service the better.

Unfortunately the MH services have always been the poor relative of the NHS.
Even ' back in the day ' it was overlooked.
Sorry about your friend.

Right now practically everything is not fit for purpose. Maternity services, GP services, elective surgery. It is all crumbling. I have got family in France. No waiting for gp, xrays, scans, blood tests. Psychiatric care is immediately available. Yes there are some issues in remote rural areas but we don't really have quite that same situation here. Relative had a problem, saw gp same day. CT scan next day. 40 euros. Based on earnings related insurance/ part payment. Yes people pay a bit more insurance but care is free if you have very low income.