Mental health services

Let me put it like this, even if we can’t agree on the reasons/cause, then mental illness is on the increase in our young people, particularly those we might call ‘millennials’ (for lack of a better term) and we need to identity ways to help prevent this rise in future generations.

Thank you Fennel you have understood the point I was making and how we do indeed need a new and proactive approach.

I can see your point, Friday. I worked with mentally disturbed young people in the '70s-90s, and the types of problems they had were different from those which seem to be prevalent nowadays. Going back even further, in the '50s and 60s there were many mentally ill folk as the result of WW2. Which I saw as a student.
So apparently the underlying causes have changed, and we need to take into account the social factors which lead to psychiatric problems.
As well as that, I think there have always been the types of problems which other posters have mentioned, probably genetically and chemically linked.
It's an area of health which has never been fully understood ,or well-funded.

I don't know this series maryrliza - I will see if I can find it.

Neither do I lucky - I wish in some ways it were that simple. I’ve never known one mentally ill person that was ill because of not being able to have it all. Many of the ones I’ve met have made me feel enormously sad at the deep seated, intractable and complex range of needs they have which overall are not being met and in some cases seem unmeetable. And I’ve also been moved at the love, support, despair, heartbreak and isolation that their families experience whilst trying to care for them. I know it was fiction but the recent Sean Bean set of plays Broken had an episode that dealt with this in a very realistic way.

I have children and GC, and know well their many friends and I do not recognise the stereotype of young people who think the world revolves round them.

I have worked on many projects with young people and again do not recognise this attitude at all. The majority of young people were kind and caring - and fun! A bit mixed up sometimes, but who wasn't at that age?

Scratch the surface and they are much like the rest of us I find.

The ill young people that I saw were mentally ill because they were mentally ill - not because they were spoiled and had unrealistic expectations.

Labelling them in this way is a bit like the let's blame the Baby Boomers approach!

Anyway - back to topic. I am deeply concerned about the shortage of funds and skills in the mental health services.

Come on luckygirl get a grip!!!!!

If you don’t recognise the picture I paint of how many of this younger generation have been encouraged to think the world revolves around them, the little princes and princesses, the ‘you can have it all’ generation, and recognise that this has done them no favours at all, then we will just have to agree to differ.

Look at what I’ve said - I reiterate it is not their fault, but the fault of the society who has pitchforked them into this identity and then left them to flounder when they eventually discover that they can’t ‘have it all’ and they are not little prince and princesses in the eyes of would be employers.

And that I accepted in my post above vsmpirequeen (live the name ?). It’s not those mental issues I am talking about over which we have little control (except possibly chemical) yet.

There are many aspects to the (can I say without being deliberately misunderstood) lack of mental well being and resilience afflicting our younger people these days. There are illnesses brought on by the expectations and stresses of today which we ought to be helping them with before they take hold.

Surely?

I absolutely agree Friday that we need to build in help for young people to become resilient. I greatly favour children learning relaxation techniques as part of the life skills that comprise their education. Would you favour this, or is it mollycoddling?

I am not the product of molly coddling. Neither am I a weak person. I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. Mental health issues will never be taken seriously until people understand that.

If I had a physical chronic condition such as diabetes or kidney failure no one would accuse me of being weak. But you can't see my illness.

Whilst I'm on my soapbox. Depression is not the same as 'being a bit down in the dumps' and anxiety is not the same as 'being a bit churned up'.

You don’t have to lecture me on mental illness lucky and to deny the place that having build-in coping skills to deal with the stresses that can lead to breakdown is a symptom of the society we live in.

Mental illness can and does strike indiscriminately especially those illnesses with a genetic factor. However you seem to be saying in one sentence thar you agree with my statement about the stresses on our young people and then in the next saying that I’m being offensive by suggesting we try to equip the young and vulnerable with coping skills.

You can’t have it both ways. Either we can help those whose mental illness is brought on by these factors or we can just throw our hands in the air and say there’s nothing we can do.

I was brought up in a home full of love, in a mining village which was so secure . I was encouraged to make my decisions, had freedom to speak out , was given confidence to be me. Yet things happened and mental illness struck, so it can hit anyone. As for the wealthy, they cannot avoid it, my husbands sister has been in the .priory three times,still not healed.

My beloved daughter who was so strong mentally yet was hit with a mental illness which brought about self medicating, which brought about alcoholism. Impossible to say why it strikes , it just does and the suffering unbearable for many. We must never, ever judge .

There is a difference between a mental illness and simply being unable to cope with life.

A mental illness can afflict anyone at any time and has nothing at all to do with "mollycoddling" or lack of resilience. I cannot believe that this misconception is still doing the rounds. Mental illnesses are related to brain chemistry and structure - they can be triggered or exacerbated by stress, but that is not the root cause.

I agree that we need to look to how our children are brought up - but my take on that is not that they are "mollycoddled" (how I hate that word) but that we need to ask ourselves why mental health problems are now so prevalent in teenagers and young adults - I believe that the stress of the school system with unrealistic targets and exhausted teachers has a great deal to do with this, as well as the evil of drug pushers who prey on the young. All these things can trigger mental illness in susceptible people.

The implication that mental illness is a sign of weakness or poor upbringing is offensive and inaccurate and another excuse not to fund the service properly.

It’s no good just throwing money at the situation, though obviously services need to be improved, but more needs to be done to teach people how to cope with the stresses, trials and tribulations life inevitably throws at us.

I’m sure past generations were much tougher - well they had to be. Too many of our young people have been brought up in a culture that says they are the centre of the universe. Or they haven’t experienced failure in a supportive environment and learned to deal with it. Competition, is a No No, so they’ve always ‘won’ even if they came last in that race. And certainly the culture if going out and getting legless at weekends will fuel the rise in alcoholism.

I’m not denying these people need help. What I’m saying is we need to examine the way we molly coddle our children, yet expose them to the the world and culture and stresses of t21st century life, without helping them to develop the resilience needed to live in this world,

Prevention being better than cure.

It is indeed about priorities. The whole of the health service is struggling - the mental health services are the most deprived.

The problem is that those making these decisions are able to pay for what they need and find it hard to imagine what it is like to be so ill that you wish to end your life and no-one is tasked to help you. That is a disgrace.

It’s perfectly reasonable when discussing the problems of poorly funded public services to make the point that there IS always money to be found if the Government wants to find it - bribing the DUP, paying the debt we owe to the EU, WFA for well off pensioners

It was just a throwaway line Annie - I know we voted out! I was just trying to illustrate the need to allocate funds to this service.

Not the EU please. We voted out

The need for a place of asylum is vital in these crisis situations; a place for someone in a severe state to be cared for and kept safe.

Care in the community never was going to work - it sounded good on paper and in principle, but it needs huge amounts of money that has never been forthcoming. I was working for SS when this idea came in and we all kept saying: "It will cost more, not less."

The irony is that the cost in wasted time by police and ambulance services is huge. They are trying to do something they do not have the qualifications for and the poor patient gets shifted between them all with no satisfactory result.

But, hey-ho, let's give the EU £40billion!

The people at the front line do their best but the system is not properly resourced and it's not properly organised so buck passing becomes the 'go to' action - if you can call it that. We are not moving with the times as a country and with the current MPs in place who are nice as people but useless when it comes to the crunch we will not be progressing any time soon. Departments are afraid of doing the 'wrong' thing and stick to antiquated systems. Awareness of mental health is fortunately being raised thanks to royal input but what is happening in reality? The above posts give some idea as do my family's own experiences.

I think it’s hard to draw a meaningful comparison, Society was different, mental health services were different ( not necessarily better). Expectations were different! All that matters now is the fact that the MH services are in crisis and basically there is no political will to do anything about that in any meaningful way because the well off can always access The Priory

But in the past people had much worse situations to cope with. Wars, famine, typhus, cholera. No NHS, no medicines, no benefits to fall back on.

Alcoholism isn’t something new, nor is homelessness.

So are we less resilient these days?

Needs have changed, alcholism , drug addiction, counselling, people do not live in close communities now, children need psychiatrists , elderly live alone not with family. Psychiatry not top of the list for people wanting to work in medicine.

Care in the Community has failed/ is failing because it is not properly resourced. The basic concept was right - the long stay institutions that were closed down were in many cases offering poor quality institutionalised non individualised care and abuse was certainly not unknown. It’s the shortage now of small scale residential units in the community for both crisis care and longer term care that is part of the problem. But fundamentally, there is no leading politician that really and meaningfully ‘champions’ mental health - there’s much lip service but little action. But as soon as something goes wrong, it’s all the social workers/doctors/ police officers fault. Never the fault of the politicians and the public in general

Once again this issue has surfaced, MH nurses are battling almost insuperable odds. My daughter has worked in the Community and despite her best efforts at resolving the immediate crisis there is nowhere to turn for continuing support and treatment. Successive governments have run the service into the ground. The word Asylum has now got unfortunate connotations but its real meaning is about offering safety from perceived danger. There is a great need for more Units to offer a place of safety where people can get appropriate care and treatment. So called care in the Community has in the main failed most people.