- Global Mentalists News Round Up
- Global Mentalist News Round Up
- Global Mentalist News Round Up
- Global Mentalist News Round Up
- Global Mentalists News Round Up
- Global Mentalist News Round Up (.)(.) The Boobs edition
- Glabilstil Meuntlist NewSrundup – The feeling seedy version
- Global Mentalist News Round Up
- Global Mentalist News Round Up – The Hovis conspiracy
- Globalist Mentalist Newsalist Roundalist Upalist
- Global Mentalist News Round Up
In this edition: More wonderful stats work; the curative factors of involuntary admission; talking therapies and smoking.
And this edition has a competition: What IS a psychological autopsy?
Not only do we know that 1 in 4 people have a mental illness – Australian statistical analysis researchers have now unearthed estimates that so do 1 in 4 parents!
My goodness. This is shocking. Shocking to know that someone gets paid for doing this.
The spin off tho is that now “parents” have been identified as mentally ill – people are asking – “oh my! what about the children?” So of course they suggest this information be used to further psychiatry policy and programs.
Ok, so I have some statistical analysis estimate research too: I estimate that 1 in 4 police officers have a mental illness, – and they give them guns; 1 in 4 supermarket shelf stackers have mental illness and they might poison my milk; 1 in 4 researchers have a mental illness and they might produce irrational conclusions that drive policy.
Mental Health Foundation has a new booklet called “Talking therapies explained“. It’s an elaborated version of a ‘leaflet’ and it looks ok. Available in PDF.
I wonder if Jane Wyman was given a copy on her recent stay with the Sheffield MH services?
She took an overdose in August and was detained in the Longley Centre at the Northern General.
Paul said although he had known Jane as a friend for some months it wasn’t until he started to visit in October that romance blossomed. After three weeks of daily visits he proposed.
He said: “We had talked about getting engaged, but then thought, ‘why wait?’. But first I have to get her out. “When I first saw her she had no advocate or solicitor, now she has both.
“She’s got issues, but who hasn’t? She lost her daughter and her husband. But she’s now come to terms with it, all she’s on at the moment is Prozac.”
Jane, a Social Worker, was sectioned for suicidal behaviour. She was eventually sent to a secure unit for absconding 4 times. It doesn’t say if there were any other ‘problematic behaviours’ leading to her transfer – but Jane seems to think it was because she complained about her prolonged detention. It probably saved her life – at the time – and her suicidal behaviour seems to have abated. But she has questions to be answered on her treatment:
“My time in the secure unit was the longest two-and-a-half weeks of my life. I was surrounded by people with severe mental problems, some with convictions for serious crimes.
“When you’re in the system they can do what they like with you. They took no account of my progress and even moved me to what was in effect a prison, with no timetable for release.
“It was a failure in the system and I’m going to sue to ensure it never happens again.”
That therapy is caled “Giving you something bigger to worry about so you forget about your original problem” and it is much more popular in Psychiatry than Psychotherapy:
Of 650,000 therapists in the country, probably fewer than 200 make their living practicing traditional psychoanalysis, estimated Jonathan Engel, author of the new book, “American Therapy: The Rise of Therapy in the United States.”
At Mass. General and elsewhere, researchers are ramping up a fight for long-term psychotherapy’s survival, producing research that shows it helps some patients, and casts some light on how. One apparent finding: Just as the therapy lasts longer, it appears that its beneficial effects may often last longer.
Well, good news for people with mental health issues in Broadhaven, Lousiville, Kentucky:
Bridgehaven President Ramona Johnson, announcing the project yesterday, said that national statistics show that 41 percent of people with a mental illness are smokers. That compares with about 28 percent of adults in Kentucky who smoke in the state with the highest smoking rate in the nation.
“We want to change that,” she said. “We want to make it possible for people who live with a mental illness to believe they can stop smoking.”
Yes folks, you can now come for your involuntary psychotherapy and we’ll throw in some involuntary smoking cessation programmes for free.
And there’s likely to be a huge increase in depression in Arkansas with all this economy nonsense – so just as well they’re looking at raising revenue by increasing cigarette tax.
Well, this 50-cent or more tax per pack would be for more than a trauma center and system, but a statewide health program. Cigarettes contribute to our health care costs — of course — and bigtime. Beebe said he’d heard that it’d require a $7 a pack tax to recover all the costs to government of tobacco-related diseases. So there’s a clear rationale.
While over in New York they have a different idea on mental illness and substance use; they’re amalgamating the two services:
Michael Hogan said in a recent article; “We have roughly three suicides a day in New York; 90 percent of whom we know from psychological autopsies had a mental illness at the time. And it’s not just mental illness, it’s very often drinking or drug use.”
More excellent stuff. Err.. what’s a psychological autopsy? Is that where they open up the brain and go “Ahh…see? … depression!” ?
Is a psychological autopsy when someone might’ve topped themselves, and they look at their medical history and stuff to find out if they’ve got illnesses that mean they probably did?
And if so, do I get a prize?
“My time in the secure unit was the longest two-and-a-half weeks of my life. I was surrounded by people with severe mental problems, some with convictions for serious crimes.
When you’re in the system they can do what they like with you. They took no account of my progress and even moved me to what was in effect a prison, with no timetable for release.”
Ummm… Welcome to the Real World.
If you were in Cambridgeshire, they’d've pump yo’ ass full of Largactil (38/39′s are not compulsory around here); stuck you on a locked ward with a loo with shit up the walls, staffed by agency nurses and told you (and your solicitor) to fuck off.
Or probably just told you to fuck off straight away.
(If you guys need substantiation for erm…, legal reasons, I’ll be happy to provide you the documents; if you are for some reason (chianti?) unable to use Google.)
And when you do get to a Review, it’ll probably be in the cleaner’s broom cupboard at 2.30am on a Sunday.
Do I sound bitter?
I wrote a piece criticizing psychological autopsy studies if you’re interested. These are the studies that are trotted out to back up the statistic that 90% of suicides have a mental illness. Trouble is, the early ones were entirely uncontrolled – no control group whatsoever – and the later ones that tried to actually have a control group, as with your “1 in 4 parents” article, found an absurdly high rate of mental illness in their control groups.
A rather breathlessly positive 2001 literature review in the journal European Psychiatry about psychological autopsies describes them thus:
“Psychological autopsy is one of the most valuable tools of research on completed suicide. The method involves collecting all available information on the deceased via structured interviews of family members, relatives or friends as well as attending health care personnel. In addition, information is collected from available health care and psychiatric records, other documents, and forensic examination.”
Is the Chief Autopsy Person – Hercule Poirot?
I’d love to say something but I can’t follow Socrates after that! I enjoyed the reading though, although I have to say that is one of the weirdest love stories I’ve heard since I gave up reading Take A Break.
Lola x
“That therapy is caled “Giving you something bigger to worry about so you forget about your original problem”
(sorry I don’t know how to do italics/quote properly)
In my experience this is a popular solution to a lot of problems (medical, psychiatric, financial…) – it does work. And as my mum always said, “If your foot hurts then we’ll chop it off.”
Differently
PS How do you do italics?
Oddly enough Differently, I say literally the same sort of things as your mum. It’s CBT/RET at it’s lowest I guess – “if you think it’s bad now, I’ll show you it can be worse.”
But Cambs appears to be the Gold Standard, as reviewed by Socrates.
Do they really not have F38/39s?
There’s a ‘common law’ doctrine of that gets used I know but it shouldn’t be done repeatedly. I wonder how it would go if someone were coercively medicated while arguing with the bank manager or the traffic warden….
Italics – use the less than/greater than symbol with an i in between to open, then to close do the same but with a / before the i.
Use b for bold and I think that’s my limit.
I must say, that story about the social worker who was detained leaves me feeling somewhat sceptical about her account of it.
She’s saying she was moved to a secure unit because she complained, but she also admits that she’d attempted sucide and that she’d absconded four times.
A patient with a recent history of suicide attempts, who regularly absconds from care, demands to be taken off section so she can marry someone she only got engaged to the previous month? I’m really not surprised they initially said no.
As for her claim that “I’m going to sue to ensure it never happens again”, as a social worker she really should know that there simply isn’t any legal judgement you can obtain that says you can never be sectioned.
I’m a bit bemused by Jane’s story. I assume she is able to appeal to a tribunal in any case. I think there’s probably an extensive ‘other side’ to the story. As for leave to marry, my first thought was that that would change her nearest relative.. and would be able to appeal the section although she would be able to do that in any case. Also the fact that she had absconded four times and gone to her fiance probably doesn’t help her case.
Although it sounds like she’s fully able to do that herself.
I’m also presuming she is not ‘there indefinitely’ as her sister claims.
So many unanswered questions.
Here’s a thought — could you have a psychological autopsy whilst still alive? If you knew which of your mentalist traits would be the one to kill you off, you could focus on treating that and not worry so much about the others . . .
I’d have thought it impossible to die directly as a consequence of a mental illness. A bit like ‘no one dies of AIDS’ but it didn’t help keep them alive.
Maybe they’ve found the black box of the brain and they get to replay the last hour or so?
You can die directly as a consequence of anorexia.
smart arse ;oP
I’m going with Crazy Nurse’s theory tho.
Tho it could also be argued: The weight loss in anorexia nervosa is a symptom of faulty thinking and it’s the faulty thinking that’s the mental illness part. Ergo the weight loss that leads to system failure is secondary to the mental illness.
But the psychological effects of starvation also cause faulty thinking, so there’s a bit of a chicken vs egg scenario going on there.
Mr Ian, We do have 38/39′s but the staff seem to consider them optional in difficult cases (i.e. it’s late – can’t be bothered to get a SOAD, run out of forms, etc.)
“Excellent” Trust Gets a Good Kicking From the Mental Health Act Commission.
“You can die directly as a consequence of anorexia.”
I bet they put anorexia as the second cause of death on the death certificate; behind cardiac failure or pneumonia or whatever other physical illness the deceased is suffering from.
Like they always put ‘multi-organ failure’ before MRSA bactereamia
Wouldn’t wound to make the statistics look worse now, would we?
mental note to self: scroll up before commenting. Chances are; someone’s already said it
——————————————————————————
“A bit like ‘no one dies of AIDS’ but it didn’t help keep them alive.”
WTF
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
I was too busy ranting to answer the question,
what’s a psychological autopsy?
It’s an investigation, when everybody seeks to apportion the blame to the former-patient.
crazy nurse:
When they say that no one dies of AIDS, they mean that what they really die of is pneumonia or an infection or something that their body couldn’t fight because of AIDS. Of course people die because of AIDS, but they can’t die from AIDS alone. As long as you manage not to get a cold or any other disease, you can live a long time with AIDS.