PD sufferers have often very deep damage encoded around a sense of "not being seen" and "held" as valued by others...There can be deep attachment disorders and insecurity. There can be post trauma episodes hidden underneath and driving "cutting" and other destructive behaviours. Its a hell of a potentially variable condition to suffer from ...
Parts of the mental health NHS services (most parts) has long held PD at arms length and only seems to have treated it at crisis levels across the UK and then only at a certain few isolated UK shared units which have a very structured day-plan, a group orientated type therapy, as well as a large staff contingent.
The PD services supply across the UK seems according to some to have been designed on a default rationalised but also deeply excluding basis. Mental health NHS Trusts in the UK with little specialisms to offer PD sufferers have purchased-in the treatment time from other areas that supplied this . UK Primary Care Trusts (the "purse string" NHS Commissioners) around the country have been looking at this under guidance from Govt considering the evidence is that some Service Users have only been helped hundreds of miles from where they lived and then only if they were lucky and could travel .
Was all this doing the job of what PD sufferers wanted more broadly ? We do not think so ... Neither do a lot of Users but then the professionals and Govt have short changed PD Users for a very long time ...
We know NIMHE, long criticised by UserWatch, and others brought to attention through Users mainly, that PD sufferers were missing out and being excluded from treatments and this formed a document in 2003 upon which part of the Governments' new policy drive of PD "inclusion" was formed :
Our deep worry is what comes next because though we feel the "therapeutic community idea" where PD sufferers have been embedded for months at time is challengable on the supply and cost side we cannot see planned elements of "Patient Choice" that are properly developed so PD sufferers have on tap more inclusive treatment within the community at a frequency rate that might stabilise them. They have to be able to drive some quality through "Choice" . We are bothered too by the CBT pushing squads everywhere now who are selling CBT as a panacea. Boy will that drop some Users in the shit in the future through mis-application.
There's the rub then, that PD services are being re-planned but uncertainty hangs around adequate replacement services that get out more widely to Users..... Losers or winners ? We dont know...
Along with some PD sufferers we are quite sad about the possibility of loss of services that have meant so much to some Users but we will pull strings too where-ever we are, to try to get the best deals and real patient choices for those in terrible emotional pain .....
We are you, too ..
Mental hospital closure plan
is condemned as 'inhumane'
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 18 December 2007
The planned closure of Britain's leading national hospital for people with complex personality disorders was condemned as "inhumane" yesterday by mental health workers.
For 60 years, the Henderson Hospital in Sutton, Surrey, has provided a unique form of residential care to people with severe psychological difficulties who are among the most difficult cases known to medicine.
Its patients are mostly young women who, after traumatic childhoods often involving horrific sexual abuse, have become bent on self-destruction through prolonged bouts of self-harming, cutting and burning themselves.
The hospital is to close because the South-West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust says it cannot afford to keep it open. Two other therapeutic residential centres, the Cassell Hospital in Richmond, Surrey, and Main House in Birmingham, are also under threat because they are no longer funded as a national service. Instead, they rely on primary care trusts to pay the costs of treatment, which can run to £100,000 a year per patient.
Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said people with the greatest mental health needs were being abandoned and would become an even greater burden on the NHS.
"This is the equivalent of announcing the closure of the Royal Marsden cancer hospital or Moorfields eye hospital," she added. "Sane is deeply concerned that the country's only national resource for people with the most complex mental health needs is to close on the grounds of an inhumane costing system."
Paul Farmer, of another mental health group, Mind, said the Government had increased funding for local services for people with personality disorders but was neglecting those who needed residential care.
"No one is saying these are poor services," he added. "They are good services but the funding system does not work for them. Their patients are people who, without this support, could easily find themselves sectioned. We need high-level, intensive services as well as low-level ones."
The Henderson Hospital was opened in 1944 to treat soldiers suffering from shell shock and found that group therapy was the most effective treatment. Until national funding was withdrawn last year, it had a six-month waiting list. Admissions have since dwindled and only 12 of the 29 beds are occupied.
Diana Menzies, a consultant psychiatrist at the Henderson, said her patients were at serious risk. "The vast majority are a danger to themselves. They self-harm, there is a high suicide rate, a lot of substance misuse and eating disorders," she added.
"Some also offend and harm others. These people will not be able to get the treatment they need."
Research showed the unit had reduced re-admissions and attendances at casualty units, she said. "The cost is £100,000 a year per patient but, if you calculate the cost of the NHS services used before they come to us and after they leave, there is a saving."
Peter Houghton, the chief executive of South-West London and St George's Mental Health Trust, said the decision to close the hospital was "regrettable" but added: "The trust can no longer afford to subsidise the hospital at the expense of other services."
Late Interesting Links CHILD SUICIDE RATE OVER 4000 IN UK
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