Mental Normality NOS

[UpOnDown]

Everyone is welcome.

good luck david, what are your plans once you get there?

poor you with no sleep Enn :(

have had another good night with no dreams or 4am misery and appear to be surfing the outer limits of City Mentally Normal - highlight of the day will be my blood test shortly but look how sunny it is out there

'thinner leaner stronger, the simple science of building the ultimate female body' has arrived from Amazon :)

well done ivy :)

Thanks. Not sure if no sleep - maybe an hour between 5 and 7?

Bloody musical motifs again.

Morning all. Just been to drs myself and got 2 weeks of AD. He was very good but set me homework to try and research psychotherapy and whether any charities could help with it. Any thoughts anyone. I cried in the appt(haven't done that in a while) and he was really kind. Hate feeling in a turmoil with living(had to have bloods done because took too many paracetamols again last night(naughty I know). Why does no one from mh services listen to me :-(

Oh no bright, I'm sorry you ODd

Thanks Ennn

So sorry, bright, big hug. I hope the bloods are ok
Re: psychotherapy, I'm not sure about charities, but many therapists offer a sliding scale of fees, for those who are unable to pay the full amount. Please let me know if I can help in any way. UKCP was the start point for me, when I was looking for a therapist (and I found a very good one)

hi bright, hope today is better for you. what does he mean, whether charities will cover some of the costs?

I was just looking for someone else at what our local mind has to offer and they will subsidise lots of different therapies, from counselling to more uh known to be helpful stuff, while some are completely free, but despite looking at the booklet recently I can't find it again

obviously this is my lot but your local mind will have its own stuff going on (although depends what you call local, it's about half an hour each way in a car so goodness knows what people without transport do but that's as close as it gets)

Thanks Millie and polly.

what kind of therapy are you looking for?

Go thinks psycotherapy is the way forward. Tried cbt and dbt with no success. Seen psychologist for 6 sessions, no success.

Long term psychotherapy is the only thing that's helped me. It feels like I've tried everything

Am realising am relatively lucky - can walk to local MH charity place offering groups etc., and we have an IAPT self-referral thing too. Do you have any iapt providers locally?

IAPT seems shocking, my friend has to keep going through it and it sounded horrible - yeah we have them, although again only in the nearest towns as far as I can tell, so about 15 miles away

I don't particularly want to but am not allowed to avail myself of any IAPT stuff

"Psychotherapy" covers all talk therapies IIRC.

I don't know why DBT is such a darling ATM. I didn't realise before it's based in part on a religious-spiritual epiphany/experience the inventor had. When I've looked into it it seems to be a bit of CBT, some mindfulness, a couple of common sense strategies, and catering quantities of contrived acronyms and cheesy cartoons. Which is okay as far as it goes but I worry that the NHS has fallen so far in with one person's branded product (her website being called "behavioural tech" reminds me of Scientology)

Totally agree with you ennn.

IAPT is just a system under which independent providers set up according to certain rules then the local health swrvice pays them. I think it might be like the Any Qualified Provider (or whatever it's called) changes to nhs physiotherapy. So it probably depends on which business is running the IAPT as to what you get.

I know our local one won't see you if you have suicidal thoughts

Disclaimer BTW, have never actually had DBT

In some areas (like mine) MIND is less active and you're better off looking t people like Richmond fellowship - it really depends who's big in your area.

ours is definitely for the 'worried well' rather than people who actually have something wrong with them but it just is really shit, #1 did their 'stress management' thing a few years ago and it was someone reading painfully slowly from a book for an hour each week, you could have read the whole book yourself in an hour, but if you don't go through those hoops you can't access anything useful unless you are in crisis

DBT seems to actually help people though, #2 was in a cygnet hospital in ealing for girls with ED and BPD and they all seem to be doing well now, the ones we've stayed in touch with (one of them died in there though but probably not the fault of DBT)

and MBT, which might be even better

I am feeling less keen on the therapy idea for me today

I usually just ask for a referral to CMHT have never had trouble being referred and nobody's ever suggested the IAPT thing - perhaps different areas do things differently (surprise surprise)

I think it probably is helpful, it seems like a pragmatic selection of tools, but that doesn't make it a technique in the same way as CBT or psychoanalysis or whatever -it very much seems to be a product. And when health services fall in love with a particular thing it can leave the people for whom it doesn't work feeling to blame.

Has anyone else done NHS CBT which involved buying a copy of Mind Over Mood and reading chunks of it with a psychologist? I had a pretty good psychologist but DP's was pretty much "read a chapter, do the chapter homework" with no actual input from the psychologist

it's evidence based isn't it, like CBT, but by the time it's rolled out it often doesn't resemble the 'product' for which all the evidence was gathered - don't know if this has happened with DBT but much of what passes for CBT these days looks very little like the CBT of the earlier clinical studies

that's how I would console myself anyway if DBT happened to me and didn't help