This Week in Mentalists (39)

Time for our weekly round-up of mental health blogs that are better than ours.

Never let it be said that Mental Nurse isn’t down with the kids. We’ve worn our “grooviest” beige slacks today and have even been listening to that “hip” new beat combo, Dire Straits. So let’s start with a couple of blog posts on the subject of child and adolescent mental health.

First, Coloured Mind and Scattered Thoughts considers self-harm and emo.

One thing that was mentioned a lot in the comments of the last post was what the media has done to Emo’s, and Goth’s before that, and another group before that. The media has picked an easy to identify group and publicised the worst bits about them. So what do they do (I know there is more than this but I am being simplistic); follow fashion, talk about how they feel, listen to certain music, get drunk, write poetry. There is nothing wrong with any of these activities and most of us do them, the things that what the media has done is pick up the worst features and publicised it- the self harm, the idea that mental illness is cool, the idea that they like to look sad. I would be surprised if the self harm and the glorified mental illness is actually as widespread as we are led to believe. What the media had done is picked up on something which are hard for us to approve of or to condone, making them a group hated almost as much as Burberry cap and tracksuit wearers.

Meanwhile, the Cockroach Catcher mentions the effect of child psychiatry on junior doctors.

Child Psychiatry is one rotation in Psychiatry that often reduces grown men to jelly. All that you have learnt at medical school and afterwards is suddenly of no use at all. Many juniors do not have problems dealing with adult patients. When faced with a child, some feels like being thrown a scalpel and told to get on with an operation that he or she has never performed.

I have a good idea what the Cockroach Catcher means. I’ve noticed it myself.

Aethelred the Unread ponders the lack of gay mental health blogs.

I think this is all made a little bit worse because one of the ways that people used to be nasty to poofs was by telling us we were mentally ill. I know this is a factor in the way I think. When I was still quite young, but old enough to know what gay was, and be properly aware that I was gay (which happened pretty young for me), I saw a letter in the Radio Times, of all places, that said something along the lines of, ‘Of course, all homosexuals are mentally ill, and most of them have other kinds of mental illness too.’ I don’t remember any of the context – I imagine the letter must have been in response to a TV or radio programme – but I’ve always seen it as my duty to prove that nasty-minded little letter-writer wrong.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I still feel quite a bit of guilt about this. I am worried that by being open both about being gay and being a bit of loony I’m Letting Down The Team. I know the guilt is irrational. I know it’s incredibly arrogant of me to think that my inane wurblings could have any effect on the general social opinion of gay people. But I still feel guilty, though.

So, this is (finally!) my suggestion as to why there might be a lack of gay people blogging about their own experience of MH problems. Basically, I think that everyone with a mental illness is likely to feel guilty about it, but that gay people are likely to feel even more guilty.

Bipolar Mo is stuck on the waiting list.

On the 19th of June, Dr Portillo assured me the new shrink would see me within 4 weeks. He asked me to make a follow up appointment with him in a month to ensure I had been seen, I didn’t. Once again I’m feeling like the doctors are screwing me about. It’s now over 5 weeks and no appointment. I know the government have targets for medical consultations, do these targets not apply to loonies? I’m now swithering about phoning up and telling them to fuck off.

Crazy Nurse reflects on the past.

When I consider how I was then, to how I am now; I can see that I have in fact come a long way and made huge steps forward. Its just a shame I don’t really notice them until I reflect at length. I’m sure I have written here before about how I am just the same as I always was, blah blah blah, that my head is in exactly the same place. I have definately said it to the diabetic nurse, and the lovely nurse practitioner at the GP’s. But in fact, its not true – I am much more controlled now. I don’t react as dramatically to things, I have learnt to think about the knock on effects of my what my actions could be; as opposed to just doing something and dealing with the consequences as they arise.

Speaking of reflecting, Not Another Nursing Student is not quite getting the hang of Gibbs model of reflection.

How I felt
Pissed off, mostly. I wanted to smack their chavvy heads off the nearest wall and tell them to keep it in their pants and glue their legs together. Often, I wanted to shout: HAVING A BABY WILL NOT MAKE YOUR SPOTTY BOYFRIEND STOP SHAGGING YOUR BEST FRIEND. AND PUT THAT FAG OUT, YOU’RE PREGNANT FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Evaluation
To be honest, I was very pleased that I managed to refrain from doing any of the above. Therefore I consider this to have been a successful placement.

Action Plan
1. Never have children. I don’t think I will have the patience. I am very intolerant of having small things follow me around, as I discovered when I looked after my mum’s dog for a week. Although at least I can put a nappy on the baby; the dog wee’d on the rug twice.

2. Learn to be more tolerant of chav’s with 6 kids and no job.

What’s with all the reflecting at the moment? All the bloggers are bloody reflecting this week. It’s like a hall of mirrors on my RSS feed. Student Mental Health Nurse has a reflective account on the dilemmas of being a mature student.

At my current place of training I haven’t declared my background but I know, from the initial flush of support, that my capable self has ‘blossomed’, so to speak and now there’s envy, resentment and a sense of being tolerated. It’s not good. Do I really want another year of this? I love the job, love working with the patients and the team (when they permit this) but I deplore the NHS culture – staff fear of job loss, re-organisation, financial cut back, reduced number of staff, hidden agenda, ‘chinese whispers’ and so on. It’s sad to say, in my own experience over the last 10 months, the older student, who will not easily tolerate being treated like a 19 year old school leaver will question their completing the course.

Seaneen is not reflecting. She’s ranting. This is good, because she does rants very well. Right now she’s ranting about people who dismiss incapacity benefit claimants as a bunch of scroungers.

I know that these people are probably not referring to the severely mentally ill (I’d wager that they’re so ignorant that they don’t know what severe mental illness actually is- they probably think people like me are locked up in hospitals dribbling) but their constant “too lazy” and “idling” does evoke images of people who suffer from depression who are too depressed to get out of bed. “Self-pityists” as Marcus Brigstocke memorably called them. I’ll tell you what- I’ll give you my illness, and you can give me your job!

GOD DAMN it is not self pity but I want people to understand that there are real people behind their stupid, blinkered, classist, ignorant catcalling. I hate the public nature of such things. It should be between the person and the DWP and not for anybody else to judge. It is hard to claim benefits for sickness. It took me a long time, and now the DWP have all the medical evidence for my illness, including statements from doctors and nurses attesting to the severity of it, the constant nature of it and the unpredictability of it, as well as my issues with paranoia (humiliating), anxiety (humiliating), psychosis (humiliating), being a risk to others (humiliating) and reliance on deadening and sedating psychiatric medication. But claiming benefits, even when you need to, even when you’re judged by the authorities that you need to, puts you in a very vulnerable position of feeling constantly like you have to justify your existence.

On the subject of benefits, Mental Patient About Town looks at the upcoming changes to the benefits system.

I have just spent an hour or so reading through press reports online. What’s most striking is the lack of detail as to how existing Incapacity Benefit claimants will be migrated over to the new Employment and Support Allowance. Some press articles mention the year 2013 as the date Incapacity Benefit will be phased out. Despite the amount of column inches since Friday – when a draft of the Green Paper was leaked – I know very little I didn’t already know about changes to welfare benefits.

What is new is the idea of people on Jobseeker’s Allowance having to undertake compulsory work of the cleaning up litter variety. This seems to be vindictive and pointless. I’m all for giving people help in finding a job, but I don’t see the point of punishing them for being unemployed. They won’t after all be receiving the minimum wage. Why should they have to work for less than people in a job undertaking similar work?

Mandy Lifeboats Ahoy is unimpressed by her Crisis Team.

What they do is turn up, give out medication, write notes and go away again. This takes a maximum of 20 minutes but ususally lasts around 10. Well that is what they did with me and with Dad today. Fekkin’ good doss of a job if you can get it eh?

Dad was not that enamoured with them. He reckons if he had more of support worker’s time that would be much more beneficial. I agree. Scrap the Crisis Teams and provide more Support Workers. The NHS would save a packet and patients would get better, appropriately focussed, care!!!

The Shrink is equally unimpressed by the I Want Great Care website.

If we want patient feedback, let’s use comment and complaint systems that are already in place, but also use mechanisms such as 360 degree appraisal.

Using scrurrilous websites that lack credibility, honesty, authenticity or explanation/just redress is A Bad Thing since it’s harmful to doctors and isn’t helpful for patients. Let’s hope the lawyers can effect change, here.

I’ve used the word “unimpressed” twice, so I feel like if I say it a third time I’ll be getting repetitive, so I’ll say that Experiment Chimp isn’t keen on memoirs of mental ilness.

Bipolar disorder is always presented as having the most extreme highs “a huge manic episode of about four weeks where I barely slept, and shopped so much I had nothing left in my savings account” and the most extreme lows “she made countless suicide attempts, went through painful electroconvulsive therapy and suffered a brutal rape”. Because the everyday experience of living with any of these mental illnesses doesn’t sell books, but casting yourself as some kind of Byronic hero does.

Life With Aspergers considers the media stereotypes of people with Aspergers Syndrome as geniues.

There are two main sources of this misconception;

The first is the popular media, such as TV, movies, newspapers and magazines which often confine themselves to the most spectacular cases of the condition citing famous historical figures like Einstein and Michelangelo while investigating only the most severe cases of modern autism.

The second cause is the “serious” media, such as medical books and how-to’s about aspergers children which persist in using the “little professor” description. Sure, some little aspies do sound like professors, but this is by no means in the majority.