Brothers and Sisters?

There was a time when I went against the grain, bent over backwards and fought for the idea that mental health service workers and staff were like brothers and sisters to us mental health service users. That perspective is being seriously eroded by the constant battle with members of staff at the local community mental health team and the local day care services to not treat us as if we have no issues and should get out on our bus passes (which are also under threat) and get a job.

At best this is setting us up for failure, and at worst is a number crunching exercise to get us off their books in order that they see to it that they get a promotion or a bonus or some such delight.

Once a person’s emotional life and ability has been disrupted and strained to the point of breakdown, few can salvage a semblance of emotional stability to the point where a life of full or even part time work can be endured. Our nerves get completely obliterated, shattered, and it is quite often irreparable damage. If any staff member has been to college all they have to do is refer to the many texts and reference books on the subject.

What is happening now is systematic abuse of the rights of mental health service users. It is being conducted in the name of ‘recovery’ or ‘anti stigma’; if you can work, then you are ‘recovered‘. The term ‘recovery’ was invented by service users in order to gain a bit of personal dignity which was perceived to be lacking for service users around fifteen or even twenty years ago, when a mental illness was thoroughly misunderstood and people were primarily considered dangerous.

Service users simply wanted others members of the community, staff, relatives, friends to understand the factors surrounding a persons mental deterioration rather than their being solely judged as symptomatic and as having questionable functionality (the medical model was the old fashioned term for it, or medical reductionism).

However the way the recovery model is now being presented back to us is that we have a questionable medical condition in the first place, there is actually nothing wrong with us that a regular nine to five or part time nine to five will be the salvation for. Variations on this occur, such as if we lost weight we would feel better ( which might sound like its true, but this is often accompanied by an unwillingness to understand underlying emotional factors). Or if we went to a local church group or something, anything but have specialist mental health services needs, for fear of ‘stigma’, apparently. This is just all too convenient for the enormous disinvestment and lack of funding mental health resources has had and is continuing today.

The way people with mental health and emotional problems are currently being treated is producing a variety of reactions among the service users themselves, they range from; and by far the most common is one where people wonder how the staff would feel if *they* were being treated in the way in which we are currently being, on top of the severe mental illness. Then there are others who feel there is no alternative but to threaten suicide; then a very small minority who talk about taking their hedge cutter or other such instrument to places where staff are situated in order to use on the staff out of sheer frustration.

Staff members are now expected to ‘enable’ us to do things ourselves as opposed to give us help to do things when we need help, as this would be seen to be encouraging dependency. So what we are finding is that service users are being expected to do the staff’s job for them in the name of 'recovery', avoiding 'dependency' or whatever else buzz words management and staff care to use.

In the area where I live there are no state funded residential homes, the very few that exist are all privately owned and service users have a job to persuade the local authorities to fund places for them at the extortionate rents they charge. These places are often fraught with in-house conflicts and difficulties as the conditions and wages paid to the staff are poor.

There are only two day care centers, and the culture in these places is to force service users out after three months or so. So service users are not being provided with a safe place where they can relax and meet new people, improve their friendship circles and social networks.

The day centers are now pseudo work places where service users are expected to ring in if they are unable to attend on either or both of the precious little two hour slots they are entitled to twice a week. That only amounts to four hours a week, for three months.

At the moment there are still two hospital wards for service users, a home treatment team and a community mental health team. All of these places are poor and inadequate, there are not enough hospital beds to meet peoples needs. The home treatment team is short term and intensive, it has the effect of lifting you up to let you down a short while later, and the culture of the community mental health teams means that they simply want to wash their hands of service users in the name of ‘recovery’.

Staff seem to think that the answers to their poor and inadequate conditions of work lie with the service users themselves, that if we made our opinions known everything would improve for everyone. First of all that is a cop out from the staff, service users are an atomised group, we cannot and never have been a significant organised or cohesive force, nor will we ever be. Our commonality is only through our being ill and nothing else. Any democracy we have encountered has been massively flawed to say the least, at any given service user meeting (at the Day center for example) if we agree on something to be done, it will more often than not get ignored or swept under the carpet.

Service user representatives on management boards (that the government was so keen to encourage), invariably agree with management ( due to the structure ) and have no positive impact or influence on service delivery on the ground. Service user representation is ineffective in aiding service user needs, but hey, some service users enjoy the position it gives them and the few perks that go along with it.

Over the years I have tried my best to encourage changes in the system that would lead to general and overall improvement. But what is taking place now is slanderous abuse of human rights, and worse of all it is using terms invented by the service users in order to justify this degradation.

If you are ill, even with your emotions (or especially with your emotions), you should be entitled to treatment and care. It is being cut so far back now that it has become a sick joke for most people who have suffered emotional problems, we are being boxed into a corner where are choices are becoming very limited indeed.