Any other mental health professionals on here?

[ShrinkInterrupted]

Psychiatrist here. Not finding it easy at the moment (understatement) and thinking of leaving. Difficult to work out if it's me, or the job. Just wondered how everyone else is finding it.

Love your name . I'm a Clinical Psychologist. I've tried leaving and hate to say it's kind of the same everywhere. I'm starting private work to see how I like that but I sometimes fantasise about doing something completely different. I'm having some therapy which I find helpful. I'm also considering a sabbatical. Have you tried therapy or a different job or anything?

Yep, looking around at different jobs at the moment feeling burnt out, the last 2 years I’ve been fire fighting & it’s not letting up

the burn out is bad at the moment. i'm in university research related to mental health & the university has had to impose strict limits on sabbaticals because apparently EVERYONE wanted one this/next year (and had good reasons).

can you switch to part-time or take a good break somehow?

I’m a Clinical Psychologist. I took early retirement (aged 55) from the NHS in 2014 when the Tory cuts were starting to have a major effect on the service that could be provided to patients. I was a professional lead and tried to explain to the executive board why it wasn’t reasonable to limit treatment with a Psychologist to 12 sessions. By that time, the only patients we saw were highly traumatised, or had other complex needs. The days when the intensity of the work was broken-up a little with a sprinkling of the ‘worried well’ were long gone. I explained that e.g. many adults who had privately harboured a history of sexual abuse could take 6 months or more to be able to talk about the worst of it. That fell on deaf ears. The prospect of, not only providing a grossly inadequate and therefore, often damaging service and also having to direct and manage staff to do that was enough for me to go. I have done some private work since then. What I hear from private patients about their recent experiences of NHS mental health services is mostly depressing and I know I made the right decision.

Nurse here.
In process of ‘downsizing’ back to a 6 from a 7.
Sorry the next part of my post is moaning.

I’ve had one day off in the last 9 - well I say a day off I still checked emails and signed timesheets at home. I’ve had 3 migraines in that time.

I’m totally overwhelmed, sleep is crazy. I woke at 11.30pm the other night after 1 hour sleep. Early morning wakening is one thing but that wasn’t fun.

Many staff on sickness absence. And I am sorry to say some seem to have been almost “unbelievably” unlucky with Covid…lots of symptoms, every few weeks thinking they have Covid. Choosing postal tests which take ages, wanting to work from home when in our role it really doesn’t suit the team to have people working from home.

Ooh, I'm not alone! Hello everyone

I'm half reassured, half saddened that we're all having a bad time...

I like my patients - I'm in a long-haul type specialty and love getting to know their stories, little foibles and helping them, as far as I can. My colleagues are fab. My working hours are actually quite reasonable.

But... the crushing weight of responsibility without any real control, not being able to offer patients what they need (because resources, stripped and stripped, MDT dwindling by the year), being held accountable for absolutely everything, drugs (SO much drugs - I work in a big rough city and sadly everyone is off their respective heads), and eternally being between a rock and a hard place. I can never, ever switch off and relax. It just feels like no way to live.

I've been doing this for years but think I've come to the end of my tether. Just had a couple of weeks off but instead of feeling refreshed, am dreading the hundreds of emails and incident reports I'm going back to on Monday.

Aarrgh.

The burnout is real. Good thoughts on therapy (having it and loving it!) and a different job (but it seems everywhere is just as bad). Thinking of retraining as a therapist so I can look after people the way I want to, but maybe that's just a fantasy

Oh I identify entirely with the email situation.
I call it death by email.
I get 50-100 per day minimum.
The first thing most of the team say is ‘did you get my email?”
A good morning would be nice occasionally!

Also most, if not all, of my patients are the products of trauma and damage from abusive childhoods. Societal issues of drugs, poverty, neglect, abuse that I'm several decades too late to get to the real root of.

The prospect of, not only providing a grossly inadequate and therefore, often damaging service and also having to direct and manage staff to do that was enough for me to go.

@AnnieSnap - this resonated very strongly with me. This is what's happening in our service. I can't tolerate being in a supposed "leadership" position as a consultant and having to accept this.

@onepieceoflollipop yep to death by a thousand emails. We have senior managers who love a good "discussion" by email chain, picking up cc's with each reply like a passive-aggressive snowball Just to add to the fun.

@ShrinkInterrupted What is holding you back from retraining as a therapist? You'd have an amazing skill set!

People seem shocked that I pick up the phone instead of emailing sometimes. Crazy.

I work in an area with high unemployment, little opportunities, the main area for temporary housing for the county. Most of our referrals are for things as a MH team we can’t help with. Drugs are rife, lots of referrals for cptsd and long waiting lists for when we actually get a referral accepted by the team providing psychological therapies. So person is seen by us, then waiting for therapy & while waiting gets referred back to us be surprisingly because the problem hasn’t gone away but we haven’t anything elseto offer them …

@ShrinkInterrupted

Ooh, I'm not alone! Hello everyone

I'm half reassured, half saddened that we're all having a bad time...

I like my patients - I'm in a long-haul type specialty and love getting to know their stories, little foibles and helping them, as far as I can. My colleagues are fab. My working hours are actually quite reasonable.

But... the crushing weight of responsibility without any real control, not being able to offer patients what they need (because resources, stripped and stripped, MDT dwindling by the year), being held accountable for absolutely everything, drugs (SO much drugs - I work in a big rough city and sadly everyone is off their respective heads), and eternally being between a rock and a hard place. I can never, ever switch off and relax. It just feels like no way to live.

I've been doing this for years but think I've come to the end of my tether. Just had a couple of weeks off but instead of feeling refreshed, am dreading the hundreds of emails and incident reports I'm going back to on Monday.

Aarrgh.

The burnout is real. Good thoughts on therapy (having it and loving it!) and a different job (but it seems everywhere is just as bad). Thinking of retraining as a therapist so I can look after people the way I want to, but maybe that's just a fantasy

It is a fantasy. Unless you work only as a private therapist (and in most areas, there are not enough people who can afford private therapy for it to be viable), you’ll be constrained to 12, maybe even 6 sessions, irrespective of what the patient needs.

@howardmoonseyebrow - yes I absolutely recognise that picture. Heartbreaking and frustrating in equal measure. There's no medication for crap housing, awful neighbours, and having nothing to do except drugs.

@Rotherweird good question! I am seriously thinking about it. Thank you for the encouraging comment

It is a fantasy. Unless you work only as a private therapist (and in most areas, there are not enough people who can afford private therapy for it to be viable), you’ll be constrained to 12, maybe even 6 sessions, irrespective of what the patient needs.

Oh Such a rubbish state of affairs.

To be fair it's not like that everywhere. Maybe I've been lucky but I've never been so tightly constrained. I've mostly worked in psychosis services where no one monitors the number of sessions I offer but even my in a CMHT I was free to see people for 32 sessions and I could've argued for more if necessary.

That's good to hear @NutellaEllaElla . The psychologists in my service are also not tightly constrained - the problem is they are non-existent (left and not replaced for over a year and counting ).

@NutellaEllaElla

To be fair it's not like that everywhere. Maybe I've been lucky but I've never been so tightly constrained. I've mostly worked in psychosis services where no one monitors the number of sessions I offer but even my in a CMHT I was free to see people for 32 sessions and I could've argued for more if necessary.

Good to hear that Ella. Is it still the case in your area?

Mental health nurse here.

Would love a job in Waitrose.

Says it all really 😂

In my area i'm not really meant to see individuals for longer than a year. Again, I could argue it, I feel no pressure to be honest. I've always worked in 2ndary/ specialist adult services, i expect it to be v different in primary care.

I'm a clinical psychologist but early career. No one is applying pressure directly to only do X sessions but the waiting list ever creeps up as demand well outweighs resource, exerting implicit pressure on care given.

I can absolutely relate to this already "not being able to offer patients what they need (because resources, stripped and stripped, MDT dwindling by the year)". The resource dwindling in nursing and social work and social care provision is having a colossal impact on what I can provide too.

I don't have any solutions but you are not alone in your experiences!

@CanteenCulture I have an alert set up for jobs at my local branch of Waitrose, I kid you not

@TheDaydreamBelievers yes such an impact from staff shortages in other disciplines. It's soul-destroying to know what would help but not be able to provide it.

I worked in MH for thirty years and now work in a university MH team.

It’s so sad to see people being bounced about between services because there isn’t enough provision out there. People are being retraumatised all the time (including staff), our team is small and non-statutory so there’s a lot we can’t do but we can be flexible and responsive within certain boundaries.

I’ve been qualified 25 years

The changes in that time are immense. The acuity is so much greater. The threshold for accessing services is higher… and let’s not get started about inpatient care availability.

The levels of risk we are expected to manage as practitioners is frankly, scary. And I’m considered an experienced clinician in terms of length of service.

Our community teams have real capacity and retention issues. People are waiting weeks and weeks for initial assessment. Which means people are presenting in crisis more frequently. Which adds pressure to urgent care provision.

After 25 years I am still shocked by the levels of self harm we see daily - and I work in urgent care, in a city setting, where this is more prevalent. But I honestly don’t remember it being this acute when I started out.

Recent government has A LOT to answer for 😡

That said, I still enjoy my job and am not thinking of leaving… I just crave a job with zero responsibility for other people’s health and safety sometimes

To be honest it's quite validating to hear @CanteenCulture that some of these dynamics have intensified. For some only recently qualifying;(though I have now worked in mental health for 8 yrs), it's easy to feel like we are too soft/can't hack it. But everyone I know working in the field is feeling that immense pressure