Its Official From April 2009 There's No "Patient Choice" In Mental Health UK

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A guidance document circulated by the Dept Of Health which came into force on April 1st 2009 militates against the mechanism of Patient Choice in mental health services .

Patient Choice is, for the rest of the population, a reality and it enables people to have a choice of consultant and hospital.

Whilst it is true that legally sectionable people may have no right to choose a venue of treatment because of their state of mind, the Secretary Of State guidance issued by Katharine Peters member of the Senior Civil Service, Department of Health, on January 2009 does not make distinctions that validate a whole other sections of mental health Users (who are sane though damaged people) who might benefit from Patient Choice and the right to be served elsewhere other than their local Trust supply sides .

The guidance we believe is drafted poorly in that respect. and puts the Govt on a disability discrimination course . It also stigmatises MH Users too into second class citizenhood but then what is new with this UK Govt that limits options - creates "mainstreamed" services that cannot fit many, along with poor supports for many in mental health while shining it all up through their performance glossed Trusts ?

Meanwhile the misery in the community of silienced choiceless Users goes on . Where are the MH Charities ? Busy feeding off the work-driven CBT anti stigma drives they arranged at the table of Gov't, and prospering off the lottery until they can find a new gimmick to put forward as the next "modernisation" wave ..

Reforming mental health meant introducing Patient Choice and equality of opportunity to drive services into better quality by state enabled consumer choice power .

From the Guidance :

Page 2 :

Services to which the duty does not apply
3.—(1) Direction 2 does not apply in relation to—
(a) accident and emergency services;
(b) cancer services or services provided at rapid access chest pain clinics which are subject to
the 2 week maximum waiting time(a);
(c) maternity services;
(d) mental health services;

See also FULL DOCUMENT HERE

Dept Of Health Mental Health Choice Site Goes To Sex Toys & Drugs

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Story By Art De Rivers from NowPublic.com

In researching a story about the link between poor access to treatment choices in Mental Health in the UK, related especially to the Borderline Personality Disorder community , with the case of a sad suicide of a 27 year old woman Kate Logan in mind , part of the research led to the Care Services Improvement Partnership (Dept Of Health run) website .. Specifically to its literature surrounding so called "Choices" in mental health .

Three of the links go to a page topped by "Ann Summers" leading to sex toys, and below are other ads, and amongst them internet drugs that can be obtained online ..What are Government Health Departments playing at ? Who the hell is managing these sites ?

In the wake of Jaqui Smith's (M.P. Home Secretary) husband watching porn at the Public Expense you might think Govt Departments would want their links on their sites to go where they should ..

Try these links the first three documents -

From : Choices In Mental Health CSIP.org Site :

"You can download the 'Our Choices in Mental Health' (framework) and the supporting Checklist which give guidance and ideas on how mental health services should be offering choices to people that use their services.

You can also find out about the choice themed review, and details of the national and regional contacts who are leading on choice.

• Our Choices in Mental Health Leaflet.pdf (PDF 666KB)
  
• Our Choices in Mental Health Framework (PDF 1MB)
• Our Choices in Mental Health Themed Review (PDF 519KB)
• Our Choices in Mental Health Checklist (PDF 270KB) "
  

[End Quote ]

Click To Enlarge Its CSIP (run by DOH) for sure that leads to this

Its worth mentioning that BPD and Personality Disordered people (many of whom have suffered early trauma , seperations and mystification of care-giving) do not have any choices of treatments or consultants in the UK and that is a case for disability discrimination in the UK because the general populace in the UK have choices of who they see as a consultant and where they go for treatment ....

Further Links :


Daily Mail :

"Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's husband was forced to make a humiliating apology this afternoon for causing her embarrassment over an expenses claim which included adult films he watched."

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Mental Health's Pathways to Zero

"TRUST ME I AM A PATIENT"

(Sec of State For Health John Reid 2003)

Those of us who saw it coming even back in 2003 saw that Mental Health Trusts were going to become over-managed corporatised merged machines with naff all real patient choice and a serious exploitation of ex patients (the so called User-Voice workers) who were fooled by a well planned DOH and DWP attempt to turn everyone into new mental health workers - that is to say - before they were ever treated to power to hold their own budget and create remedy directly in their lives .. Everything is State Owned under New Labour - its like a form of slow covert fascism in which individualism can barely breathe ..

Its going to get much worse with new rounds of super-corporatisation planned by NHS Trusts and NHS Primary Care Trusts PCT's in a kind of bad corporate orgasm that has more to do with top staff insecurity than local delivery controlled much more by "real" local people as opposed to limited and self important "focus group" approaches ...

But gone is GP-patient axis of potential power and choice .. Its been undermined by Govt and DOH and bureaucrats alike - all at the expense of producing chaos , unaccountability - local disempowerment and : "we'll do what we like anyway " so long as Govt nods that its okay to be policy bureaucratic and have a few groups that look as if we are enfranchising patient's "voices" ...

Well in mental health circles it worked for a few ex-patients who are now busy in the wash of funds and other "recovery" bullshittery that has become the State's overarching attempt to control all life and choices ..

In health, in national policy terms we simply do not believe enough in the power of choice at local and individual levels that create management of conditions and personal empowerment . A few people in mental health circles have managed to obtain Direct Payments to help out their serious disabilities - others have been burned by the system for even trying ..

But the main thrust of "recovery" in mental health is set to fail many because it is top-down nonsense and the supply sides of any recovery and management treatments are dominated by local trusts and others set on "good management" and making surpluses from nowhere really, but patient care ..... The Trusts Board's are self hypnotised by such financial paradoxes which they do not even react to them by declaring madness . No .. Strategic blindness is all in the NHS so long as you retain your job and your status in a bubble ..

"Masturbation makes you blind" .... It used to be said .. Well we think mental masturbation is the destruction of vision and accountability and shame on the Boards and others for selling out human service for their own farcking wages and privilege ..We see into your bubble .. We have bubbular vision .. And our arses are not soaped up like theirs..

Pathways To Zero ?

The great Pathways to Work experiment is in bubble trouble too and David Freud the ex-banker gambling mastermind behind some of it, as well as Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health (SCMH) and its other shadowy planners like MIND and Mental Health Media , Rethink are all a bit "up the swannie"... Employment Support Allowance (ESA) the new form of Incapacity State Benefit looks set to be run persecutionally and UserWatch believes the evidence will emerge more and more that its just a part of a bad State that forgot to empower people towards lives properly ...

All the reform money in Mental Health in the UK got soaked up by NIMHE across years (that SCMH planned with the DOH) and later its morphling the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) who set up localities to create Mental Health Users who could become the "leads" for others to get work ... What in ? Oh well it was NIMHE then CSIP and other halfway zero activities that had nothing to do with Patient Choice and patient budgets and real patient empowerment .. It was bureacracy and meetings after meetings about DOH policy aims dressed up as the "Patient Voice" ready to be rubber stamped ..

£140 Million has been wasted on NIMHE and CSIP .. The planners and social engineering manipulators have been a-swill with money and influence under New Labour ..The people at the bottom , the Users have been without Patient Choice .

Shame about the credit crunch which has seriously farcked up unreal and top-down anti patient planning . But to be honest we saw no working class people leading anything in mental health locally .. We saw only middle class people in dominion, suited for middle class bureacratic games ..

Working class or underclass as it now is - was going to be cured by Pathways to Work ... Harsh rules if necessary . But the speculative banking sector and the frothy jobs are going - it was a dream based on a credit economy that did not generate reality enough ... How could it ? The manufacturing sector was decimated years ago in a major attempt to disinvent the rather blunt nosed working class use of power ..

The ruling elites and classes in the UK also prefer social apartheid and of course bullying claimants off state benefits and state services .. Its a class thing that goes all the way back to semi abandoned hard nosed performers being buggered or half farcked up by boarding school and ex colonial mentality.... They are islands and can cope - why shouldn't everyone else ? ..

Give 'em a jolt of CBT - a poor man's version of therapy ... ECT , CBT ... Somehow the control agenda has never gone away has it ?

Some of the partners delivering new (ex mental health and mental health) workers for the Pathways to Work ethos are signalling real problems Reed is laying off staff . A4E wants more money up front (1 billion) for its services . And David Freud has jumped ship to the Tories anticipating his hard anal approach will later sort the underclass shits out ....

Somehow we doubt it - very seriously, and we see that New Labour was partly state-fascism because it could not trust truer empowerment at the base of society . Rather we need to be force fed . And naturally that creates simmering underclass social hatred and divisions.. In the next political chapter, the return of the 19th Century will be hailed as the answer again .. It is not . A new conversation of :

"Trust me I am a person and Trust me I am a patient"

is long overdue and in the UK we doubt it will ever happen . Subtle class dominion and hatred is just part of the UK mind-furniture... It just gets moved about a bit, but the kennel outside is kept the same while the middle class and bankers live off social and financial part service fantasy inventions...

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Mental Health Foundation Trusts Lack Patient Choice Vision ?

Whilst UK NHS Mental Health Trusts are making "surpluses" (£3.9 Million For the Last Financial Year at the UK Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust) by shaving off activities such as better patient choice of therapies, it is becoming clear from BBC reports "Elite Trusts Lack Ambition" that a lack of deeper relational vision with patient needs is not just a local phenomenon.

The criticisms and concerns are coming from MP's and the oft quoted King's Fund - but what is best for the patient in terms of choice is being fought over - particularly in mental health by the legions of Dept Of Health related bureacracts that want everyone to believe that they know best and are advised by "experts" . A patient culture however of CHOICE which drives quality is left out of the equation . The patient is denied the expertise of their experience and even evolving that .

The slowness of the so called IAPT programme in the UK (Improvement To Access To Psychological Therapies) is not merely due to the national slow roll out of new CBT trained graduate psychologists but due also to the Foundation regimes at Trusts to "save money" and create surpluses subtracted essentially from patient need .

What UserWatch can reveal is a collection of Primary Care Trusts (Pan Birmingham Commisioners) who dole out money to the hospital based Trusts and Services are looking via on Online survey to Third Sector and charity supply of therapies - to take a measure of what is on offer .. No doubt the DOH with its heavy handedness and current Labour spectacles will try to cobble private supply approaches with perverse over-insistence on "objective evidence bases" in a field which is substantially patient-relational and often about the patient's relational pain in the world which connects to their difficult inner life .

UserWatch talking to patients locally and across the UK have heard a common theme about many NHS psychologists - namely the Psychologists have an irrational belief in an objectivity that tries to embed itself in the relational field of the patient without realising that its own stance creates substantial distrust and alienation of feeling related to .. Try being clinically "Observed" by others . Its paranoia inducing . Its as simple as that . Some psychologist need to be trained in relational psychodynamics which views the patient inside a relational field with them and the institution they are in . Either that, or get a microscope and change proffessions.

The demand locally in Birmingham UK for psychological therapies which match conditions that need mixtures of therapeutic support across the spectrum from severe neuroses (OCD) to Bipolar and Schitzophrenia, to Personality Disorders is still active though too often muffled because of the selective hearing and spending problem that exists at Trust Board levels - i.e. the demands to make savings ...

It is the State we at UserWatch believe that is holding progress back because patients are not allowed to drive therapy-choice and quality through being directly involved in purchase control too .

What is powerfully the case with Labour is their distrust of ordinary people to order their affairs when assisted in the right way . Labour only appear to have a "mixed-up" policy which tries to slowly morph the State supply sides into Third Sector and Charity suppliers and the merit in that is it may suppress the private sector supply costs but it also may put into an iron jacket the patient, who cannot importantly drive the chosen quality of the treatment-supply in style and time scales relevant to their lives ..