I submitted this article to Your Thurrock but they didn't post it so here it is for anyone who's interested.
There
are a number of big problems with mental health services in the UK all of which
paint a very bleak picture for the future and unless they are addressed in
quick measure that future won’t get any rosier.
The
first problem is the chronic lack of funding that is pumped into the mental
health services by the Government which is a self-defeating proposition given
this time of ideologically driven belt-tightening. It is self-defeating because, in the long
run, properly funding mental health services will save money in the rest of the
NHS which is also dangerously underfunded, understaffed and near breaking
point.
People
suffering with poor mental health get physically sick more often and for longer
requiring more money to be spent on making their bodies better while not
properly curing the underlying psychological cause of the illnesses. There is also the matter of those who
physically self-harm or attempt suicide, causing untold damage to their bodies
that has to be patched up, costing the wider NHS a considerable amount which
could have been avoided if the mental health service was given the resources to
catch such behaviour before a patient exhibits it.
The
second problem is the ‘Payment By Results’ system that is in place which
encourages the different mental health trusts to get someone stable enough to
be discharged from services but not necessarily well enough not to fall back
into crisis in a relatively short period.
The mental health trust gets paid on the patient turnover so for every
‘new’ patient there is a reward. Why
then would a trust want to do more than stabilise a patient and discharge them? Every ‘new’ referral comes with more funding
for the trust in question.
This
brings us to the third problem which is that of mental health services (and
this includes voluntary sector providers) building dependence into their
services for their service users. In the
case of statutory services, the fact that people are being discharged from services
before their underlying problems are fully addressed means that the patient
keeps returning to the service provider, giving the trust a welcome injection
of cash and a regular supply of patients.
In the case of voluntary sector service providers, the focus is not so
much on getting people to live independently but to be such a vital part of a
service user’s life that they come to depend upon the service being
provided. Voluntary organisations are
viewed as successful, much like statutory services, by how big their budget is
and how many people they ‘help’ so it is important that they don’t encourage
too much independence amongst their service users otherwise their client pool
will dry up and their reason for existence will likewise disappear.
The
final problem is the users of the services themselves. The dependence bred into them by the various
mental health service providers causes apathy amongst even the most able of
individuals. They will complain about a
lack of services or the poor quality of those that they do receive but they
will do nothing about it. Give them a
chance to voice their complaints and they will, in the main, not take it. Offer them a chance to contribute to a
project that might provide the services they do want and cannot get elsewhere
and they decline. Give them a chance to
provide their own services, as some plucky service users have done in some
parts of the UK, and they cower in fear rather than getting off their fat
backsides to make a difference for themselves and others. So many people bemoan the fact that the
mental health services, both statutory and voluntary, fail to meet their needs
in terms of type or quality of provision but then allow themselves to be
dependent on those inadequate services.
Unless
mental health service users get a grip on themselves, start to look beyond the
provision that is currently out there and try to set up their own peer support
projects, they will have no one but themselves to blame when nothing seems to
suit their needs.
