This Week in Mentalists (42)

Why isn’t The Shrink shouting at me for a round-up this morning? I’m starting to feel like a battered wife who thinks there’s something wrong if she’s not being abused.

Anyway, here is the 42nd edition of This Week in Mentalists.

Aethelred the Unread is wrestling with benefits applications.

It’s not really the form that’s the problem, but rather the knowledge of what will come after the form. The inevitable medical appointment with a DWP “doctor” (inverted commas because these “doctors” don’t waste their time with anything namby-pamby like trying to help you). The long, long wait for the decision based on the consultation. The possible (probable?) negative decision followed by months of fuck-all money and the pseudo-legal process of the appeal.

It’s been 9 months since I last went through this whole rigmarole, although, to be fair, that time the “doctor” decided not to overrule my psychiatrist and agreed that actually, against all the odds, I really was ill. Who’d have thought it? Certainly not anyone who reads the papers.

Social work blogger Fighting Monsters looks at some dumbing-down in Wirral Council, where they’re replacing social workers with unqualified social work assistants.

I think the use of personalisation to justify this change is a smoke-screen. I’ve worked to the model of having more unqualified staff to do more work and it was nothing to do with personalisation agendas – it was to do with the cost of recruiting and retaining qualified staff.

The claim that self-assessment somehow reduces the need for qualified staff is completely baffling. Self-assessment for service users isn’t about replacing work done by staff – it is about empowerment of service users. Staff would still have to work on interpretation and implementation of care packages – and no, it doesn’t have to be someone who has a degree in social work doing that.

But it looks to me like a pure and simple cost cutting exercise by Wirral – dressed in personalisation packaging to ease some of the disquiet – rather than an alarm bell ringing as to future needs in the system.

Mandy Lifeboats Ahoy points to a rather unorthodox approach to achieving mental wellbeing.

In an article on the NME site, it claims that singing monks have invited Amy Winehouse to join them. They think that will help sort out her personal difficulties.

The chart topping monks (their album reached no1 in Australia) are signed to the same record label as Amy. Could this be a marketing stunt? Or are the monks really interested in helping ‘our’ Amy get back on track?

Her next song could be “They wanna make me chant with monks but I said “No No No”.

Despite winning acclaim for their Gregorian style chanting, the monks want to show how hip and down with it they are. Heck, one of them even has a computer with internet access in his cell. Cell? What kind of place do these guys live in?

Seaneen seems to be getting musical. She’s created a depressive mix tape.

“This is a Low” by Blur: This song isn’t particularly depressing but I find the listless quality of it, then the sweeping chorus, to be melancholy. I listen to it usually when I am tube hopping in big, lonely London.

“This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush: Is heartbreaking for anybody to listen to, but especially if you’ve lost somebody that you love.

“Stay With Me” by Lorraine Ellison: This is Rob’s choice. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s breathtaking.

“Red Sleeping Beauty” by McCarthy: This is my favourite song, ever. It’s gorgeous, simple and reminds me of youthful, disappearing idealism.

“Country Feedback” by R.E.M: In seeking to avoid “Everybody Hurts”, we went with the next best thing. This is improvised, and gets you in the guts with its regretful, “It’s crazy what you could have had”.

And if that’s too much of a downer for you, she’s also done a hypomanic mix tape.

The Cockroach Catcher discusses lithium.

Some parents question the wisdom of using a toxic drug for a condition where suicide risk is high. My answer can only be that lithium seems inherently able to reduce that desire to kill oneself, more than the other mood stabilizers, as the latest Harvard research shows.

Lithium has its problems – toxic at a high level and useless at a low one, although the last point is debatable as younger people seem to do well at below the lower limit of therapeutic range.

Many doctors no longer have the experience of its use and may lose heart as the patient slowly builds up the level of lithium at the cellular level. The blood level is a safeguard against toxicity and anyone starting on lithium will have to wait at least three to four weeks for its effect to kick in. In fact the effect does not kick in, but just fades in if you get the drift.

The Shrink is also contemplating his prescribing habits.

So there we have it. In one week I’ve stopped more antipsychotics than I’ve prescribed, which is pretty typical. It’s not too bad, is it?

Life With Aspergers talka about women with aspergers syndrome.

That said, there’s still considerably fewer female aspies than you’d expect.

Personally, I think this comes down to differences in behavior and detection. Women tend to have less social difficulties than men, particularly with the opposite gender because they’re usually approached, rather than having to do the approaching themselves.

There’s also a suggestion that “Girls are generally recognized as superior mimics. Those with AS hold back and observe until they learn the ‘rules’, then imitate their way through social situations.” – Tony Attwood.

It’s not just school that’s out for the summer. Writing in the Margins of my MInd is trying to access CAMHS over the summer holidays.

1. Please, please try to arrange your holidays so that patients don’t get left with all their clinicians off at the same time.
2. If you are going to reassure me that it’s ok, because x will be around and see me regularly during the time the rest of you are away, please try to ensure that x isn’t actually also off for a week in the middle of this time, which she will only tell me once the rest of you are gone.
3. In the event that the logistics fail and you are all away at the same time, maybe you could take 2 minutes, find someone (anyone!) that’s in the office during one of my appointments, and go “this is ____, (s)he will be available to contact whilst I am off if you need to speak to someone from the service, his/her number is ____”. And they can go “hi Megan” and we can all go on with our lives.