To agree with Wes Streeting's statement that MH issues are overdiagnosed?

[Locutus2000]

Pretty controversial stuff.

Who decides?

and this!!!

It isn’t going to be deemed as enough evidence. A 5 min appointment and diagnosis by a non specialist GP who will write up very little and not even make a referral to CMHT will get you zilch.

18 months ago my wife was in a coma due to an overdose. Possibly accidental, but I can never be sure. She has for 10 years been under the watch of mental health services.

There is within her family a prevalence of bipolar and she has shown signs of cyclomania. I have said this till I'm blue in the face to get the correct treatment and have been told consistently she has anxiety with mild depression. My aim is not to get benefits. She works part-time and I feel this is more beneficial than claiming benefits.

However, I feel the national health service have under diagnosed her as it has a costs implication for the mental health services should she recieve the correct diagnosis. So from personal experience he is incorrect.

You're not getting that there is no objective test, all the reports you have from medical experts are just the things that you've told them, they just write down what you say, and a GP will give a prescription, some people collect the prescription but don't take it.

Very convenient that he’s saying this when they want to slash benefits wouldn’t you say?

Whether or not it’s true its motivations are political not rooted in fact.

And mental health care is so under resourced it’s not fit for purpose - I’m not sure if there’s a speciality that has enough clinical psychologists (happy to be corrected).

Is he a consultant? Wow I didn’t know that. If the answer is no then listening to him as a BS politician is no different than listening to the dick at the end of the bar who has had one too many. He needs to stay in his lane, total dumb twat. Have that on good authority also.

Like many medical conditions (diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, cancers), diagnoses of mental health conditions in the UK are high.

While it would be possible to reduce SOME instances through preventative methods (moving bodies more, spending time outdoors, eating a good diet to fuel the body, not living in mouldy damp accommodation, reducing the stress of not being able to afford rent/heat/transport/food/school uniform). There is, if anything, MORE work to do to rectify those underpinning factors, not less.

And even if we did, as a society, there would still be plenty of people with legitimate diagnoses - many of whom would be capable of getting into work with the right support.

But saying "it's all over-diagnosed, we're going to cut support" is a classic consultant's (the management type, not the medical type) approach to getting to the end game of reduced numbers. Skipping all the supporting steps to try to get there is only ever going end up with a worse situation than we started out with...

Lived experience has a value of its own. It doesn’t mean you should diagnose or treat someone else.

100% agree 👌

Exactly. Files full of evidence repeating how someone with, for example, anxiety has stated they cannot go out alone. How can anyone dispute that and some claimants know it.

The evidence produced with mh just says what the patient says, it isn't specific like say someone with a physical disability where an expert can definitively say what a person with that physical problem is able to do.

And you’re not getting that that’s just not true. Paperwork from meetings, admissions, medical documentation, notes from highly trained NHS professionals, EHCPs, ward notes, support workers, multiple prescriptions and documentation of titration, multi discipline team meetings, an individual’s team meetings….the list of robust documentation is huge.

A prescription from a GP will not get you anything.

And let’s not forget you could equally say that with pain professionals will just write down what you say.

A piece of paper from somebody saying they can’t go out alone and a prescription from Prozac after a 5 min appointment with a GP isn’t going to get you anything.

I agree with a lot of what pp are saying about resilience.

However, I think there are a lot of factors that cause people to suffer depression and anxiety, which may well be out of their control. We’re in a cost of living crisis, many are in precarious employment, may be struggling to afford rent, have to choose between heating and eating. If a person is struggling because of these environmental factors, I’m not sure if resilience training or counselling would make them well.

Access to mental health support is challenging, and people really have to push for it, when it should be easily available. And also think that people should not just be signed off without support.

Difficulty is that counselling and therapy is expensive. From my own experience, I had to ask for therapy specifically, as I wanted support instead of just medication (though the medication has helped greatly). I was referred to the MH team. It took two months t have a telephone consultation with a nurse, who didn’t really listen to me. I told her that I’ve been living with OCD since I was a teenager, and wished to have CBT (which is what the NHS own website recommends).

The nurse referred me for 6 counselling sessions (which may have taken 6 months to begin) and sent me information on ‘self help’. Well, the ‘self help’ that I was directed to states that it should only be used in conjunction with a qualified therapist. (Attempting to deal with OCD without direction from a therapist could exacerbate the condition). I’m not knocking counselling, but it’s not the right interventin. It’s like offering a plaster to a person with a broken bone).

I’ve had the counselling, which has helped with some things, but not OCD. The counsellor outright told me she couldn’t help with that this during our first session. I’ve come to the conclusion that I will just have to pay privately to access the support I actually need, although as some of you can imagine, it is expensive. I will just be able to do this. But I can’t help but think of people who can’t afford it. Imagine being in their shoes.

On another note, my counsellor told me on our last session, that the contract for counselling with the NHS may not be renewed. That will leave hundreds of people in the area with no support.

Crap therapy is useless .Good quality therapy from highly trained professionals preferably with NHS experience is expensive.

I haven’t read through the replies so forgive me if I’ve gone down the wrong path with my thoughts.
i think anyone genuinely suffering from poor mental health should be able to access support. It can be quite devastating and deliberating.

I’have worked with teens for nearly 40 years and it is only in the last few years that mental health is being used by many teens as a reason to describe poor behaviour.

One of the first occurrences that I remember was a few years ago when a girl who was fifteen at the time hadn’t gone to school but I saw her in one of the known hotspots known for picking girls up for grooming. She was having hanging around with her mates. I asked her why she wasn’t at school and she said ‘it’s my mental health innit’
That was a defining point for me because after that I was hearing it a lot from teens who didn’t want to do something.

There is a lot more to it and I’ve only covered the bare ones of my observation without giving a lot more detail.

For balance I have worked with teens whose mental health has been absolutely shot and they have had a terrible time and needed a lot of support to help them get better including hospital stays and medication. When I know what these children have been through it annoys me when others use poor mental health as a reason to behave badly.
Often when challenged why they’ve done something it’s usually something like ‘well the teacher pissed me off’ followed by ‘she fucked my mental health up’

Other teens in recent years seem to have very little resilience and can’t cope it’s day to day up and downs. It definitely is a thing in the area I work in.

I also think people struggling with ND and mental illness are some of the most resilient people in society.

'However, I think there are a lot of factors that cause people to suffer depression and anxiety, which may well be out of their control. We’re in a cost of living crisis, many are in precarious employment, may be struggling to afford rent'

There's always going to be a cost of living crisis. Money is always going to be tight, employment always precarious, relationships hard etc etc. These things are part of life and people need to develop strategies to cope.

While some with significant mh issues will of course need meds and hcp support many with anxiety need to find ways to manage their expectations and cope with life's challenges. We all get anxious, it isn't an illness it is a human reaction and we can all find ways to help ourselves with self care etc.

This isn't new, it has been the case for at least 20 years. They did this to me (20 years ago in late teens). Turned out I had undiagnosed autism, and trauma (made worse by them, being unable to access therapy or hold down a job/have a normal life as a result of my issues). Although I am a lot better/healed now, it has had a huge knock-on effect on the rest of my life, including employment (having not been able to develop a career, or even have a reliable work history).

The system doesn't recognise trauma unless it meets strict criteria for a PTSD diagnosis. I met one poor lad recently who was so clearly autistic I raised the subject - he'd actually been diagnosed with autism as a child, and the CMHT had removed the diagnosis and told him he had personality disorder!

I strongly suspect many of the recent cohort of people struggling with mental health fall into this category. People are suffering from trauma/complex trauma and can't access therapy so don't have any support in "getting better". If benefits are removed we will see a lot more homeless people on the streets (no mental illness = no statutory housing duty from council. You have to been in a "vulnerable" group to qualify for housing/hostel, although some areas will have better provision). Informal support falls away pretty quickly because people say the person "isn't trying to help themselves" as they are percieved as not trying to get help from services... the resulting situations, such as not being able to find somewhere to live, pile trauma on top of trauma, making the situation worse and harder to address.

Obviously these people need therapy - proper in depth therapy, not CBT. But instead Wes wants to pretend they are fine, supported by an ignornant, overly medicalised mental system that ignores human suffering, who will say "no mental illness here".

I find the people coping with physical disabilities which also affects their mental health and causes anxiety and depression in many the most resilient, but it isn't a competition just an anecdotal observation. Whereas those I have met who are stressed and anxious seem the least self aware or empathetic people I know.

Totally agree with your comments.

It's just an excuse to take money off the poor. Labour have turned out to be right scumbags, like the tories.
If they had a 2% wealth tax on everyone with over £10,000,000 they could raise 24 billion.
Picking on the worst off people to appeal to right wing awful people.

I think a lot of people were hidden in the past where only one member of the household had to work.

My school BF mum never worked, she was ‘fragile’ she was always going for lie downs and didn’t do much. I know she eventually died of a heart condition so I don’t know if that was part of it.
However her dad worked, they were relatively well off on one wage.

Now maybe they would have to claim to make ends meet if his wasn’t enough. My parents bought a 4 bed detached wage on a main scale teachers wage at the same time. Money went much further.

I think there are more pressures on people than at any time in my 69-year life. Work is often insecure, and frequently involves working long, unsocial hours or weekends, housing is hugely expensive, and insecure for most renters, and longer working hours plus the 24-hour society means that there isn't the sort of "enforced downtime" that there used to be.

I'm not at all surprised that this is reflected in a greater incidence of things like depression and anxiety.

Agree and in my experience, the way we treat ND people increases their risk of developing trauma. Interestingly, research has shown that people with ADHD are at heightened risk of developing PTSD. This happened to my son during school and again in the workplace where he was bullied and harrassed by his manager. It led to a serious MH crisis which took months to recover from. He couldn't access NHS therapy but medication, rest and support from family helped but it was a challenging time. So I agree, we need more access to therapies including long term therapy. I also know of people who have been told by the NHS that they don't do labels (this is someone with possible autism) so I'm wondering if there's a shift happening to decrease diagnoses and the need to support. This isn't going to achieve anything; its just going to exacerbate peoples difficulties.

Well, I really hope there isn’t always going to be a cost of living crisis. I hope that we will eventually see a bit more economic stability in the future and people will struggle less. I agree that people will experience hard times at some point in their lives, and should develop strategies to cope as best they can.

I agree that occasional anxiety isn’t an illness. Suppose my point was that for some, experiencing anxiety due to their situation may be understandable, and I hope, short term. I do think though, that there is a big difference between money being tight (an issue), and people not being able to meet their basic needs and risk becoming homelessness (a crisis). With all due respect, what self self care do you recommend in that situation?