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The first is this little snippet, from Canadamerica.
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos
A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.
If she had been on Myspace or Bebo I am sure she would have been fine. The insurance company did have this to say.
Manulife wouldn’t comment on Blanchard’s case, but in a written statement sent to CBC News, the insurer said: “We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook.” It confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients.
After the break my desperate link.
In these increasingly financially impoverished times with insurance companies terminating claims to safe money what will the NHS do, specifically the part dealing with mental health?
If anyone bothers commenting on this and thinks of a better link I will steal it and seamlessly edit it in place of mine.
The other story I cam across read as a fairy tale.
Mental health is ‘Cinderella’ of NHS
NEW treatments for common mental health problems such as depression have been held back by a lack of funding for research, an expert has warned.
One in four people will experience a mental health condition during their lifetime and these illnesses cost Scotland billions of pounds a year.But despite this massive burden, researchers have struggled to attract funding to find new treatments to help the many millions of sufferers across the UK.
Why is this being published? None of this is news, we have always known mental health is the special child of the health services. Why now?
Professor Stephen Lawrie, director of the Scottish Mental Health Research Network, which is launched this week, said government and the public had to act now to increase funding for mental health research and help more patients.
A-ha! Someone looking for research funding. The story goes on to link to the recent deaths and problems of some celebrities. In fact the whole thing looks like a lightly rewritten press release. Exactly the level of journalistic integrity we expect from the Scotsman now.
We know, after all OSB has been telling us, that the accountants are about to attack. We can expect to see a surge of hatchet wielding managers .
So how are they going to save money. Here are some guesses based on what I have been reading and just some vague suspicions.
- Local bans on overtime and agency staff. (actually being enforced)
- Empty posts being left unfilled. (even by the managers niece)
- No more biscuits at meetings. (Apart from senior management)
- Stationary Audits (Not for those doing the auditing)
- The firing of the manager putting forward these ideas (just kidding)
I also think we can all look forward to many years of sub inflation pay rises, which is fair enough I am getting used to it. Also an increased amount of paperwork trying to trace where the money is being spent. The time spent on which will cost more than any potential savings.
Over to you for suggestions on how to save money.
Something shiny has just come on the television.
A discussion about the forthcoming cuts in the NHS, at a Posh Private hospital recently reached the consensus that the most expensive thing – staff will be targeted and the patients more heavily medicated to cope with the reduction in services.
Nice.
Don’t laugh. This is exactly what the (posh, private) hospital I was a patient in in Dublin did. 2 nurses assigned to each acute ward, with 30+ patients per ward. Anyone psychotic, manic or just disruptive was give mountains of chlorpromazine, haloperidol or benzodiazepines til they could barely walk.
My favourite of the ‘current network studies’ on the Scottish Mental Health Research Network website was this:
Ugh, HTML fail. What I meant was:
My favourite of the ‘current network studies’ on the Scottish Mental Health Research Network website was this:
So if someone’s depressed, and drugs don’t work, they’re ‘treatment’ resistant, THEN you try talking treatments? As an ‘adjunct’? How retro! Surely now it’s no longer 1974 the concept of Treatment Resistant Depression should refer to lack of response to all standard treatments? Surely CBT is accepted as mainstream by now? I had issues with it myself, but there’s no denying that it can have impressive results. (Having said that, clearing out the office recently we found an old (very old, hopefully) thing referring to ‘complementary therapies (including CBT)’ – very embarassing!)
I know Scottish Mental Health Research Network aren’t responsible for the anachronistic concept of TRD, but I shouldn’t let that get in the way of a good rant, should I?
Oh, I give up! The blockquote should have finished after ‘primary care’, but I’m not going to try and get it right a third time!
I like the first bit of the last sentence in the newspaper article: “For a long time mental health wasn’t attractive…”.
I hope to heck such ‘investigations’ into disability claims do not make their way to Australia. I am of course not sure of this particular woman’s circumstances or the validity of her claim, but I can quite scarily see myself in her position. Anybody who logged on my facebook page, would be under the impression that I am a healthy, functioning member of society. Why? Because, Facebook friends extends outside of my immediate circle of intimate friends and family, and I wouldn’t post on there during my bad days (weeks, months) I’m not about to put photos of me lying around the house in my tracksuit pants too exhausted and depressed to shower, let alone leave the house. And I too, have been encouraged by my MH team, to try and get out there even if I’m not 100% and socialise, or take a vacation as a means of trying to distract myself and lift myself out of a rut. To be penalised for these fragile steps back into the real world… well the whole thing is horrific. JMO.
I’m interested to know how they got access to the pics in the first place, as the woman reportedly stated they were in a private album which was meant to be accessed only by friends. So how much do they pay facebook to be able to bypass that little system then?!
Sadly, they probably paid one of her “friends”.
Lets face it put anything up on the Internet and privacy becomes difficult. Especially on site dedicated to sharing personal information.
Like Facebook.
And Mental Nurse …
The Trusts will also look to cut training and probably commissions for new student nurses. So you can forget having more nurses on the floor and you can forget that CBT course you’ve got your eye on.
“and probably commissions for new student nurses”
ah, the cutting jobs without cutting jobs gambit…
Yes indeed – cutting future jobs without cutting current jobs. Or passing on the job cuts to poor schlubs like me, for whom the loss of commissions may mean a loss of employment.
This is happening where I work in Australia:
* Local bans on overtime and agency staff. – (not a “ban”, but it has to be approved by the Nurse Director…right)
* Empty posts being left unfilled. – Yes.
* No more biscuits at meetings. (Apart from senior management) – For some time now. We supply our own.
* The firing of the manager putting forward these ideas – Hell no.
and beakie’s:
*cut training and probably commissions for new student nurses – well, we’ve cut graduate nurse positions, though not training places (the places don’t attract a bursary though, so why would they?)
Increase complexity of expense claim forms and change procedures.
Oh yes I forgot.
All repair, including emergency repairs, must be run past the executive director first.
Not the biscuits!!! Cut anything but the biscuits!!
Actually there’s a new initiative to save £500m by improving the health of NHS staff. That’ll be an attempt to justify cutting the biscuit budget on the grounds of dietary sugar, fat etc. Brilliant. Problem solved, NHS self-supporting in perpetuity at a single stroke.