Losing It: Our Mental Health Emergency

[purpleme12]

Anyone watching?
Shocking the stories so far
This girl started saying she doesn't want to go on at 6 years old! How can someone so young think like that?

I have slowly been catching up with episode 2.

May's story makes me want to learn more about anorexia from a therapeutic/generalist perspective rather than a clinical one.

I work on a camhs inpatient ward but my real passion is eating disorders, it was so good to see May's story shown on TV. The therapy Richard was delivering is called family based treatment where we work with families to empower them to get their child better at home. It's an evidence based treatment that when done well, with full engagement from families and nursing staff brings amazing results. And it just shows that parents of all different walks of life have the same anxieties and worries about the process.

@kiabella is the cause of the disorder explored or addressed? Or is it a case of supporting the patient to eat more?

@bugbhaer personally I think finding the cause is sometimes a distraction, parents can feel like finding the cause will make things better but initially the sole aim of treatment is to stop the weight loss and start weight restoration. In former treatment models, the patient can carry on losing weight for some time before there is any consequence. In FBT as soon as you have a 4 week period in which the patient hasn't gained at least 2kgs (0.5-1kg per week is what's expected) then they start to talk about hospital for medical stabilisation, and then once that's completed they're straight back to the FBT. That's the process that happened n the show, and thankfully for May, she and her family worked out the barriers that were keeping her from restoring the required weight and she didn't need to go in. It's designed that way to avoid the downsides of inpatient treatment.
Through the family based treatment and involving families in every part of the therapy, you can start to join the dots of certain things that have contributed to the illness. But I believe and I think there is a study recently that proves that there is a predisposing biological factor to people who develop anorexia that, combined with other environmental factors, lead someone to develop the illness.

Thank you for sharing your expertise and experience @kiabella. Do you enjoy your job? What part of the process do you play a role in?

No qualified psychologist will be charging 30 quid a session! No way. You get what you pay for.

No qualified psychologist will be charging 30 quid a session! No way.

I think you're right. But you can get qualified counsellors and psychotherapists who might.

Money down the drain in my opinion.

Not an uncommon opinion, I'm sure

I think counselling can probably be very successful for people who are struggling with difficult periods in their life or need help trying to process aspects of their past etc. I have a couple of friends who swear by their counsellors and have worked through difficult situations and feelings.

But personally I feel that my mental illness is very complex and when I tried the free counselling offered to me at work I felt that the counsellor was very much out of his depth. I also felt that I was being pushed to talk about things I wasn’t ready to talk to with no recognition that for somebody already in crisis bringing things to the surface would risk making it worse.

Counselling is no doubt very valuable for people going through a hard time but going through a hard time and having a mental illness are not the same thing. Accessing private therapy through a psychologist or psychiatrist with experience of supporting those with mental illness is unfortunately not going to be affordable to most who really need it and I think seeking out counselling with somebody who has no medical background/ understanding of mental illness is unlikely to be the cure. A trained masseuse might have some understanding of body anatomy and be able to help someone with occasional shoulder pain but they’re not going to be able to treat a complex spinal injury and similarly a trained counsellor is unlikely to have the knowledge and experience to treat a mental illness, which is why psychology and psychiatry are areas in which doctors can specialise.

It's all just so futile.

Counselling is not suitable for actual mental health problems. Proper psychological therapies are needed for those. By trained psychologists. The NHS need more psychologists so longer therapies can be offered to those who need it.

CrazyKittenSmile, I hope your anxieties didn’t get too bad today. Thank you for posting so clearly about what you need.

I agree with you that MH services are currently dangerously underfunded, leading to people like you being in crisis and not able to access anywhere near adequate support.

The third episode of this series did show the views of patients and staff which backs up exactly what you are saying.

Wishing you a good day tomorrow.

@bugbhaer when I was on the ED team I was fully trained in FBT, but as I am not a registered staff member such as a nurse, I would support the nurses in FBT and we would both deliver it together. I also did all the weight checks, blood tests etc and supported the patients that weren't suitable for FBT. I really love working with EDs, I'm really passionate about it especially as there is so much still to learn and good care is hard to find as it is a very misunderstood illness even by professionals. At the moment I wok in an inpatient CAMHS ward and we do see ED patients but the majority are low mood/self harm/suicide attempts.

I don't know why the mental health person said biological dad rather than just dad

A 12 month waiting list is just stupidly long

It just seems to me that they discharge lots of people too soon

It said Zoe was on the waiting list for specialist treatment but wasn't stable enough for treatment so Do they mean she'll be stable enough when it comes to her turn?

I feel bad for Christopher's dad he seems like he's got such a lot to cope with.
I wonder what Josh's problems stemmed from
It seemed like he was making progress at the end

I have only watched the first episode so far, it's a bit close to home. I will say though that my DB has been sectioned twice, and the first time he was taken to A&E, assessed at hospital within a few hours, and sectioned; the only place with beds was 4 hours away, but he didn't have a choice once they had assessed him, but he needed it. The second time we called his support worker who alerted the crisis team, and after seeing him sent him for assessment where he was sectioned but thankfully in a local bed. He now has support in the community, and is extremely fortunate, but shows how it can work, and how disgaraceful it is that most of it is underfunded and doesn't offer the same support.

I definitely don't agree that all self harm is a 'trend', at all, but with apps like tik tok glorifying it, programmes like what's it called on netflix etc, it seems similar to when I was at school and Tumblr was coming into its own- but about a million times more intense. I was into emo music (cringe) and it was part of the culture almost, I was a very content teen but I got sucked in. Again, not saying this is true for the vast, vast majority of cases, but social media is a poison and if I had been exposed to it at that age who knows where I would be now.