Alienation Over Mental Health Zero Policy

Acccording to some Users in the UK Mental Health Services are either disappearing or people cannot use them. In 2006 A Cafe in Luton supporting MH users to "socially include them" has had its financial supports pulled. Userwatch was contacted by a User associated with NIMHE this week who told of a story in which two men were crying in pain in a MH group because they could not get treatments off their Trust that fitted them .

Another User tells of two suicides in quick successsion.

A user on the UK survivors message board expressed great worry that the new rules for accessing the proposed Employment Support Allowance (2007) are so draconian that they will lead to suicides. Userwatch agrees after reading some of the criteria.

We note a theme therefore of radical undermining of mental health Users by all sorts of social engineering tricks which miss the hub of the problem for most Service Users - namely getting the right treatment in the first place . The Daily Mail (24th Oct 2006 ) carried a detailed critique with realitistic patient examples by therapist Oliver James on the superficial wave of CBT skimming the UK as an inadequate gloss-over answer to deeper human pain see : Here

A User of a Day Centre in Birmingham in his late 60's told Userwatch :

"What the fuck is going on with this "Social Inclusion" theory- We have been told to go to college and bid for a place or something , to use our own Centre ..If we have wanted to go to college we would have done that years ago "

Userwatch agrees and was also told by another Birmingham User :

"Too many of fitter "mad" are running "mad" policy for those of us who are "madder" and the Govt is full of psychological escapists anyway .. what chance do we have ? "

Asylum as a concept is pejoratively used by the new "Anti stigma" fashion in the UK and those who wave that flag as a "bad thing".. At the heart of services however there has been little asylum that heals and that is still an unaddressed unmodernised issue. If you are different-of-mind enough do not look to stressed underclass communities to look after you .

Equally the uniform application of new labour "push em out to work" ethos powered up by the brigades of the chosen fitter Users who populate NIMHE and its groups now is another cruelty which misses the individuals that cannot fit into society easily . Userwatch doubts there will ever be a social negotiation with really maginalised Users .. They are after all "represented" by others who have their "voice" even if there is no representational constitutionality in that position.

In other words "New Labour agenda-mis-fitting" Users have disappeared down the same black hole as real reform and Patient Choices of treatments has in mental health . Birmingham UK is no exception . We are all in socially warped space . How is your local health black hole ?