Woeful mental health care ...

First of all no slur/ critism of anyone who works with the NHS. The situation is NOT THEIR fault. However it is a total failure when it comes to mental health care. My experience is with the youth. My nephew committed suicide. My dear sister and her husband were not allowed to know anything as he was 18, even though they were the first port of call when the Police picked him up walking barefoot and bleeding from self harming.
My friends son who is 16 can tell his parents to stay outside the consulting room, even though he is living with them and wholly dependant on them. He is delusional and very scary.
The whole mental Health Care in this country is a utter disgrace. If your child becomes mentally ill you will be on your own.
The same goes for non urgent but painful physical conditions. I have been ill for two excrutiating months with a bad back. I needed to take strong painkillers every 4 hours for weeks. The wait time for a MRI scan was six weeks, no Physio until I had MRI scan. Then, when I went privately it was four weeks for Physio. I just paid up.
The NHS already has a two tier system, one for the rich and then there are the rest of us. The whole system is in the hands of Jeremy Hunt ( Old Boy , Charterhouse, Oxford Degree in PP and worth at least 14 Million) you can imagine him waiting six weeks for a MRI scan NOT.

jane - you're right to feel the system has failed you. I agree with you that the country seems to be run more for the rich than the poor, but that's a separate but very important subject.
And yes, the unhappiness etc has probably always been there, but unreported - 'stiff upper lip' etc
But eg the issue of self-harming in young people. In my 30 years of working with disturbed children and young people I never once came across that. It must have spread via the internet. Also the idea of taking one's own life in such young people

It wasn't until we had the experience as a family that we realised how inadequate the services available for mental health problems can be. When my son had a major breakdown it was so difficult to get help for him. He saw his GP who gave him a phone number to try and book some local 'talking therapy'. Some weeks later he was assessed and eventually a letter turned up saying they wouldn't accept him and suggested he try Relate. I won't go into what had happened with him and his ex and their experience with Relate but it certainly acted as a catalyst for their split! So, there he was stuck in his childhood bedroom, lost his job, lost his kids, lost his home and getting increasingly anxious and depressed. Prosac next. We found a local counselling group and he eventually started with CBT which did help. 6 weeks was the limit for treatment, but they said they'd get back to him.........I release now that their funding had stopped. We've worked hard and he is now finding his way out of the dark tunnel but we won't know where to go if he relapses.

DH had to give up his work years ago because of mental health problems. Prior to the closure of mental hospitals he had a few spells in hospital, one was particularly helpful. 30+ years ago he saw his psychiatrist regularly then those appts went down to annual but he had an excellent CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) who visited regularly and was available on the telephone. Then when he was 60 he was discharged from the mental health service and told if he needed help he had to go through his GP - often his unwell episodes had gone by the time there was any help. A CPN has visited him a few times through the GP but she had no case notes, knew nothing about his history, had never heard of his psychiatrist (now retired) and we think she has discharged him. She is very busy and there are people in worse scenarios than we are, basically it's me who copes with DH's episodes.

A very familiar picture unfortunately. and !

'Care in the Community' has a lot to answer for. All those people discharged into the care of visiting support are now developing issues relating to older people, dementia etc which are then added to their already poorly supported MH issues. We had a huge MH institution in our local area which had been running for many many years like an estate, they had a shop, farm, small factory units, a church and graveyard,plus it gave work of all kinds to hundreds of people now all that has gone a a huge housing estate sits on the land. Some of the older patients have now ended up in sheltered housing, they are like mini MH unitsinstead of a place of safety, security and company for older people in the wider community who would have given up family homes to move in. These older people are now looked after in the community and are developing MH issues due to isolation, depression, malnutrition, and everything associated with loneliness!!!!

Ok Ok Ok, I've heard the problems now what are you posters going to do about it.

Don't ask the tax payers to contribute more because, as a pensioner, I feel £63 a week is enough, and that's after we've paid NI for 47 years.

Is their a country which we can take as an example.

If anyone's interest my mental health is controlled by Prosecco, starts at 11:30 and continues until I pass out.

That sounds like the sort of place my uncle lived in for so many years, travelsafar, and where he felt safe. Obviously there were huge issues with many of the old institutions, but there was caring and appropriate treatment too for many. Why on earth was it ever thought that simply closing them all down instead of addressing the issues was the way forward?

Is there anything we can actually do about it, illtellhim? Are we not allowed to discuss it though and perhaps show a bit of empathy and support to fellow GNers who have real problems?

What does £63 refer to?

The daily weekly Prosecco bill?

Of course!

I do wish illtellhim would post something constructive and not facetious. I am dealing with a mental health problem with my son and really don't need such comments when dealings with, what quite frankly, is a life or death situation.

When an issue is as close to home, it can be very hurtful for it to be dismissed in a facetious way. We all need to be more sensitive to the feelings of others even if we do not know the whole story or details of their situation.
A timely reminder annsixty

Is anyone petitioning their MP about all this? They are the representatives who have a voice where it matters. HMG needs to be constantly made aware that 'care in the community' is simply not appropriate for many people with mental health issues.

We see on tv programmes about the police and ambulance services, that a great deal of their precious time is taken up by people with MH issues. This is in addition to the stress placed on neighbours and families.

I do suspect that this has always been known and that, as has been touched on in this thread, asylums were closed down to save money. Now the Government is hoping these issues can be swept under the carpet.

Decision makers of the past should be ashamed and those in charge now should be held accountable.

Perhaps the MH charities could form some sort of lobby group and make these points forcefully till something is done.

There are still a few old fashioned farm/real work type places which provide an alternative lifestyle for people with learning disabilities. The Steiner approach is at odds with modern thinking but, having visited several of their places, I thought they were lovely. Not part of the wider community and comparatively expensive so local authorities are not keen to pay. Although there are aspects of their ideology I'm not entirely with, they are where I'd like any family member of mine with LD to live.
Otherwise, I've seen a variety of small group homes run by various organisations. Some have been wonderful. Others not so much. A lot depends on the individuals who run them.
The old, large institutions were not ideal. There's no doubt that there was abuse. However, there was a lot of good too. Maybe we need more medium sized places of care and safety with well trained staff with the right attitude towards the people who live there. In the country, with meaningful activities, exercise, fresh air and good food. Oops - back to the Steiner approach. Not wrong is it?

The fact that so many have posted here with similar experiences and stories of woe just highlights the inadequacies of services. No-one is criticising the carers - just the poverty of provision for much needed support.

For my DS, it is a case of being very active in advocacy for him, attending drs appointments with him, pushing and chasing and insisting on service for him, meanwhile gently assisting him to self-care. Meanwhile, we having to hope to god that during those times when A&E turn him away at a point of crisis, or the crisis team are eager to 'sign him off' simply because he has told them that today he is 'fine' when it is bloody obvious he isn't, or he is told he has to wait yet another month even before he gets assessed, that he will not lose all hope, not unravel further, not self-harm ...
Of course there are no quick fixes. Ill thought-out and poorly funded policies are at the root of current ills. However, some relatively simple processes with regard to information exchanges and a frontline policy of care at A&E and more funding for the crisis team level of support might be the starting points. I guess it is a case of writing, petitioning etc. Hard to find the energy for this when over the years we are worn down with simply compensating for the poverty of proper care.
I am surprised there are not more reported tragedies - things have come to such a poor pass .

A couple of years ago, I attended a local carers group, and everyone was encouraged to tell a bit about their circumstances
There was a lovely woman there, who explained that she has spent the whole of her life supporting her son, who has serious mental health issues
The person running the group made a few suggestions, but the woman said all of those things had been done, tried, set up, or talked about over the years. She finished by saying "I have just resigned myself to the fact that this is my life. He needs and will need support for evermore, and it all falls onto me". It was heart breaking to hear. She looked so worn out with it all.

Just to add, this lady spoke about how things had recently got worse for her, as her sons flat had been the scene of a murder recently.
Her son had made new 'friends' who would go to his flat where they drank and took drugs all day, and a really gruesome murder was the outcome. I didn't attend the group after that, for various reasons, but a few months later saw in the local paper that the trial had been halted, as the accused had (despite having killed his last partner) claimed that it was this ladies son who had committed the crime.
His defence lawyers pointed towards this ladies son's years of mental problems as 'proof'.

So very sad MissAdventure.

There are so many silent carers - and we worry about what will happen when we are gone and there is no-one else to care.

Misadventure. That is awful but it doesn't surprise me. This targeting of vulnerable people's flats is incredible common. One man on my estate who is an alcoholic was evicted because his flat was taken over by drug dealers. I am not sure if he was a victim or part of the problem but I do wonder how much effort the Council took to find out whether he was agreeable to what was going on. The men that took his flat over seemed to be very new 'friends'. Now the flat is empty but the drug dealers are still using it.
Communities generally need to be more aware of it so that they can contact the police or Council as soon as they suspect that it is happening and the Police need to have a policy of how to deal with it. At the moment they just go out and see if there is any disturbance at that specific moment but these gangs know how to deal with the police.
For it to have happened twice on a very small estate like mine in a good neighbourhood by different gangs shows how prevalent it must be.
It is not something that lady's son could possibly be expected to deal with.

I think that the problems many of us are facing are different to LD.
The Home Farm Trust and the centralized living schemes were ideal for many living with LD.
I am talking of someone who has led a full and normal life suddenly not being able to cope, attempting suicide, being hospitalized and being unable to work, with all the pressures that that brings. It is truly horrendous for them and their families.
Some GPs are totally unsympathetic, some would like to help but don't have theh time and resources to help. All they can to is dole out antidepressants.
They can be thought of as workshy when that is far from the truth and after a period out of work, if employers find out there has been a MH issue they will not employ them. Unless you have been there,done that and worn the tee shirt you will never understand.

Blinko Mental health charities all bid for government contracts and are often part of the problem.
People had the opportunity to vote the government who created this system out (not that New Labour made things that much better - but they have definitely got worse in the past 7 years) but people simply don't care enough about issues like this.
My MP has voted with the government 100% of the time and is in an ultra safe seat that he was gifted because his surname is Hurd. He is a third generation government minister, married to a countess, who has no idea of how difficult some people's lives are. Contacting him is futile. I'll be moved from his constituency after the next boundary changes and hope to have someone a bit more grounded in the real world.

No easy answers. If only there were! Families bear the brunt of the worry and caring. What happens to people who don't have such families? People with mental health problems are overrepresented in the prison and homeless populations.

I found myself in tears reading this thread and when I feel able I will write a longer reply. I have been going through this for two years with my adult daughter and I feel like my local health board are content to let her die. She has made numerous acts of self harm and her arms are badly scarred, she is so chronically underweight that her BMI is just 12 (too healthy apparently to access the eating disorder clinic). She has made several attempts on her life through overdoses. One of these was made while she was on the open hillside. It included a police dog search to find her and the assessment unit at the local hospital discharged her the same day. Her GP is fantastic and provides as much support as he can manage, but there is nothing out there. I have been unable to even get her an assigned CPN.

My heart goes out you all. Thank you for contributing. It is a solace to know that I am not alone and I am grateful.

Spent hours in A&E with DS1 last night. Referred him to umbrella care of his 'local' mental health team and sent him away with 2 doses of diazipam. No idea of when mental health team will be in touch. We can only hope this will somehow fast track him to therapy support he has already been waiting 6 weeks to receive. Gave him Samaritans number as a 'stop gap' and said someone from there will ring or he can ring anytime ...explained part of his personality disorder probs means he struggles with using a phone ... no other solution offered. He is coming home for some respite care as not self caring ... Don't know what l will do if he needs extra support while with me ... Shocked about being given the Samritans number as THE hiding mechanism ... Ex DH is a trained Samaritan ...they are not mental health specialists. But on we go. Spent time yesterday with 2 mums of lads with MH probs. O e died last year, the other recently tried to commit suicide and is on an acute ward. Similar tales of chasing support. Glad DS has me and his dad at the moment, but hard times again ... Just need a vent. This is so wrong.