January 2007

In today’s Daily Star there’s a story that shows a complete lack of understanding of mental health services. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that in terms of sheer crassness it’s pretty much up there with the Sun’s “Bonkers Bruno Locked Up” headline.

TOP shrinks have claimed stressed-out bully Jade Goody should be locked away in rehab for six months.

And they dismissed her stay in London’s Priory clinic as a “publicity stunt” after it was revealed she was planning to visit India later this week.

Well, the bit about her stay in the Priory being a publicity stunt is probably fair enough. Admittedly I’m no more privy to her mental state than any other viewer of Celebrity Big Brother. Even so, it’s hard to imagine her symptoms being anything more than would get us mortals dependent on the NHS anything more than a prescription for some Cipralex and, if we’re lucky, six sessions of counselling. If the Priory really are allowing celebs to use their facilities as a holiday camp, then shame on them.

It’s more the first paragraph I have the problem with. “Jade Goody should be locked away for six months”? Seems a tad excessive for a bout of depression.

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I’ve been in trouble a few times for defending political correctness.

Yes. I think it is a good thing. *pop* That sound was probably OldSchool’s heart finally giving out at my traitor words.

The Tabloid Definition

What Is Political Correctness?

Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behaviour, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished. [snip] It started with a few voices but grew in popularity until it became unwritten and written law within the community. With those who were publicly declared as being not politically correct becoming the object of persecution by the mob, if not prosecution by the state.

The media and the Internet are full of examples of what they call Political Correctness gone mad. Sometimes they have to make it up though, or do they ?

I don’t define the actual cases of PC gone mad as Political Correctness. The day I believe anything written in the Sun you can rip out my eyes and poke them with pointed sticks. Really, please.

I prefer to define them as outbreaks of stupidity.

What people do with the term political correctness is use it to diminish anything they don’t like.

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Hello. I have finally found something I think is relevant, educational and interesting enough to post to Mental Nurse. I hope you agree

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Management is go!

Tum tum tum tum, Tum Tum tum tum tum, Tum Diddleum, Rum Tum Tiddleum Tum Tum…………

Wasn’t it F.A.B?

Title in honour of a famous Canadian.

This post is about two things: Violence and foreigners. Not really much of a point, just some things I wanted to share.

Violence has been touched on before. I may well return to the topic of a zero tolerance policy to violence again, as I see it is being raised as an issue for the forthcoming Scottish elections. We have also seen how foreign lands at times do things … a little differently. At least we know what happened to some of ZZ Top.

We’ll start with the foreign people, not in the style of the Daily Mail though !

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I don’t know when it started but it started before I came into nursing. I don’t know why it started; I suppose that someone, somewhere took mild offence. I do know that it just doesn’t stop. The “patient” carousel is in a state of perpetual motion. If it could be harnessed the energy crisis would be over. Good old fashioned “patients” have been clients, residents, service users, customers, service recipients, personages of various kinds and goodness knows what else. Well I’m bored with it. Nothing has changed for the better. A ridiculous number of man hours have been squandered. The only people to have benefited are the printers. STOP, I, for one, would like to get off.

It would appear that patients` are starting to find it tedious too. BipolarMo made this splendid contribution to one of Rosey’s threads:

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Got to the meeting in the middle of the regular beverage discussion. ‘Who made the tea and coffee ?‘, ‘Could we get higher quality biscuits ?‘. After all in our bit of the NHS we could only dream of the Hob Nob Heaven I am certain they enjoy at the management meetings. ‘Could we get the secretaries to prepare refreshments ?‘. This discussion taking an impressive twenty minutes. A dozen highly and lowly paid professionals discussing refreshments. We should have invited a drug rep, they would have provided all the high quality biscuits we could eat … even chocolate covered Hob Nobs !

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I’ve not searched BBC News for a while but I saw a theme when I decided to have a browse today.

Firstly as we all suspected mental health services will be cut first when a NHS Trust needs to save money.

Mental health wards face closure

Three mental health units based in Leicestershire are to be temporarily closed to save money.

Can you imagine the outcry if they closed cancer wards for a little while to save money, after all those fancy new drugs are costing a lot of money.

Next there seemed to be a way to return a little money to the mental health services.

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I like the Queen. O.K, she had two too many children but on the whole she’s put in an impeccable performance. I accept that if you were to start a nation from scratch then you may
not decide to have a hereditary monarchy. However, as it is, the monarchy is an integral part of our national identity. When you look at all the no-marks who’ve been elected as head of state in countries throughout the world since 1953, then you could easily argue that our system is superior.

In a vaguely similar way history has bestowed alcohol and nicotine on us as our national drugs of choice. Again if you were to start a nation from scratch then I’m sure there would be some very robust debate. But as it is, and as far as I’m aware, alcohol and nicotine are legal in this country. At least they used to be until this government of halfwits tinkered with the law

In consequence, I am being subjected to remorseless bombardment by horrible nannying types telling me how to manage smoking (or should that be NO smoking) on the ward.

Read on….
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Not trying to be clever with the post title. If you don’t want to read a lot today I’ll sum up the entire post in the next few sentences.

I’ve been asked questions a few times by students, I try to discourage this kind of thing but the little dears just can’t seem to help themselves. One question in particular has reached my ears a few times now.

Student: Mental ! Another student I know is downloading stuff from the Internets. Cheating their way through their essays. What should I do ?

The people asking the question are fully grown adults, no longer at primary school; so the rules of the playground do not apply. The answer ?

Mental: Grass the scumbags up !

Read on for some mild ranting.

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On the Island of Sodom, the Community Mental Health Team are getting very excited, or at the very least The Fat Controller is. He organised a day long seminar for mental health practitioners’ across the misTrust. No expense was spared….on his suit, and some even suspected that he had trimmed his hair especially.

The food was marvellous, mostly high fat nibbles….and for the weight conscious, some fruit and little pots of couscous. Eli Lilly paid for the grub who are of course the proud manufacturers of Olanzapine.

The Fat Controller is doing research….well more of a pilot study really. Trying to find out how many people with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia also match the profile for developing Metabolic Syndrome – that is Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a big fat belly. His study, which took all bloody morning to go through, found that the mentally ill population of Sodom has the same incidence as the rest of the mentally ill population the UK and the conclusion was that SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE, and by jove, Sodom CMHT is leading the way in doing it!

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