Borderline Personality Disorders Treated With Elastic Band NHS Therapy In The UK

This is not a spoof story. In fact its a disgusting story of impoverished Mental Health NHS UK approaches which apparently are not even accountable because these things in the UK do not rise inside the public's attention.

Patient's own reluctance to open up about these things serves to keep the ridiculous amateurish way they are treated out of view. And of course the NHS's de-risking use of "patient confidentiality" serves also to keep the Mental Health NHS services out of view too. In the NHS they do love to be shadows or to control their own PR.

The subject here is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) . A class of the human condition that can brought on in adults by layered experiences of excessively poor early childhood attachments, child abuse and a lack of emotional validation. In later life it can manifest as self harming behaviours, low self esteem, suicidality. It can be accompanied with terrible anxiety at being in the world somehow alone , a lack of feeling of safety, and even panic .

For some people, the degree of this developmental imprint in them is profound . In the UK NHS which is almost broadly anti-feeling-therapy like the UK character itself - it seems to be unable to deal with constructing the more extended emotional skills of emotionally rescuing tracts of people's justifiable rages (about their developments) and very great pain. Broadly it appears to be not helping to resolve deep grief life-experiences. Connected therapeutic crying over time for early repeated trauma it seems is off limits ...

Yet cases are being reported to UserWatch where Community Psychiatric staff have recommended elastic bands to be put on the wrist by BPD sufferers and used to "distract" them away from panic or thoughts of self harm .

I suppose you might call this "Sting-ping" therapy. Don't worry if you do, satire has become a sign of sanity . And at UserWatch we'll give you an astral certificate with our hearts .

The sheer power of disturbing feelings ascending in BPD is rather like an emotional express train and in many sufferers when they have those ascending feelings of pain they need to cut themselves with the anguish . Their's is a case of tears of blood.

Also, an elastic band stinging away on the skin put by the side of real panic is like jumping into an eggshell when there is an American Katrina around the corner .

UserWatch and PatientGuard which is morally hissed off about unreported UK NHS Philobullshitology has made an offer to parts the patient community of which itself is a part, to get more stories out into the exposure of debate with some added feeling ..

So far we have come up with cases of Sting-ping therapy for panic, and used for the distraction of self harming thoughts.

But we are human explorers, and what is also developing are real stories of ICE CUBE DISTRACTION THERAPY . This is where self harming thoughts are treated by cold distraction . In other good old Pavlovian words, "punish" the association with self harming thoughts with ice cubes ..!

Staff of course are obviously being taught this impoverished anti-feeling anti historic trauma - rubbish .

Patient's who are highly dependent will follow anything to relieve distress and discomfort, and that is their disadvantage but no-one can blame them - they are truly wrecked by their internal world of Self and have little compass left and now are dependent on the polar NHS .

In the UK, without quality therapies being broadly available, patient's one way or another are being kept "on ice" - whether that is chemical evasion of human issues in the human condition, or now it seems actual ICE ....

Set this against a lack of empathy software in the new UK Computerised Cognitive Behaviour Therapy roll out (as from March 2007) and we are set with many superficialities as "treatment"

Why can't staff admit they are poorly trained and feel helpless - after all their "hour-age" could be converted financially to a patient steered choice of deeper therapeutic choices ?

Of course this would happen if given the chance . Then patients would be increasingly rejecting the NHS or shaping it to respond properly . There's the rub - the State in the UK refuses to allow the patient reality to escape in quality driving their own experience by challenging the farcical supply side . This way the State keeps patient's more unwell and it keeps the NHS and a lot of jobs ticking . It does not make sense, but in the UK the welfare state has become a form of patient choiceless entrapment.

At UserWatch we think there's a good consumer story here which the BBC and its program "WatchDog" could check out. The minimal psychology in this elastic band distraction therapy is about valid as a snake oil cure based on the placebo effect ..A bit of relief for a time does not a therapy make ......

(Later Note : We discovered the BBC had in fact run a piece on this tosh which was all about the wish fulfillment of services trying to create distraction rather than employing probing deep therapy, based on eliciting destructive feelings . The NHS services broadly use simplistic cover-up tactics on seriously post traumatized often child abused people who have not had their history and feelings properly validated or even worked with - welcome to UK Services-Madland)

History : The Pioneer "User" Voice For Mental Health Social Care Day Centres In Birmingham

It might be sobering to realise for those in the Mental Health community of the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust that a "User Voice" long ago appeared in the shape of the "Pioneer Voice". Michael Elvin mental health patient and Chair of the PPI Forum in 2004 who died in 2006 was prime mover in this.

On the left we see a front cover dated 1994 . Its clear historically that this "Pioneer Voice" was not sustained well by the Social Mental Health Day Care Services themselves.

Michael Elvin was correct in believing that unless the health bureacracies feels safe with a group they can control they will not support them . Instead they will undermine them in subtle ways where the evidence is hard to obtain ..

UserWatch confirms this tendency.....

The Law in the shape of the 2001 Health And Social Care Act, about Mental Health Day Centre consultations over service changes, had altered the balance of power to include Social Care Day Centres like the one Michael Elvin had attended - provided the NHS had entered into a joined up contractual managment agreement usually oulined as the "Section 31 Agreement". Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust and Birmingham City Council had such an agreement from Oct 2003 .

But did this make a difference in Birmingham in 2005-6 . No . As this article is written the services (Social Care and the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust ) were both finally caught with their pants down with evidence supplied that service changes happened at Social Care Mental Health Day Centres without consultation and they were signficant enough to distress a number of Service Users .

The evidence intially was with the Service Users themselves but later it became available to an M.P.. The Overview Scrutiny Committee at the Birmingham City Council responsible for viewing changes in services, demanded in 2007 more evidence of concerns expressed in 2006 by Service Users.

Astonishingly the OSC did not have it and appeared not prepared to investigate on their own behalf . The PPI Mental Health Forum also was very slack in 2005 - 2006 in chasing up what was happening and recording it from the patient's perspective . That was astonishingly and ultimately left for Mental Health Service Users to do

Criticism is deeply deserved of all those bodies involved above that did not protect the simple right of patients to have consultations over changes in their Mental Health Day Care services - that they experienced were "significant" ..

Neither was there any protection given from the Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust's internal and Trust paid "User Voice" mechanism. which has been criticised for its lack of independence . In truth all of the PPI (Patient & Public Involvement) mechanisms failed patients (Service Users). This story has yet to run fully because we hear there are to be further developments in June 2007 which we will report on later ..

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Michael Elvin's 1990 Mental Health Document "Shifting The Balance"

The late Michael Elvin in Birmingham, once a mental health patient, and Chair of the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust Patient & Public Involvement Forum in 2004 had in his possession an interesting 1990 document titled : "Shifting The Balance" intended to give more rights to Birmingham City Council mental health Service Users - or "Consumerees" as he called them.

He was rightly skeptical of such intentions by the mental health services in Birmingham and in this case the Birmingham City Council, to reform their approaches.

They never have really. In the opinion of UserWatch. Service Users are still under the yoke of bureaucracy in various disguises and its various cost cutting driven agendas.

Its striking over 10 years later in 2003 the Strategic Health Authorites also created a paper named "Shifting The Balance of Power" - which was something Michael Elvin was aware of . And skeptical of .

Intended to create a more robust sense of Patient Involvement in health with a future quality driver of patient choice shaping the State enabled purchase of treatments, the sense of "Shifting the balance" has become mangled within new service assimilated "User-bureacracy" (especially in Mental Health) and a lack of real choices, so that the status quo Health Bureacracies are still monolithically in the driving seat ..

Lets have a look back in time through Michael Elvins own words, rhetoric and views taken from his JARMI (Justice And Rights For The Mentally Ill) site that has outlasted his life :

"Our stand is for Justice, Rights, Democracy, and Fraternity

We start with a message about the attitude of Birmingham City Council, United Kingdom:

Birmingham Mental Health Pioneers operated on a shoestring and their friendships laced community care together ... ... shamefully untied by Birmingham City Council.

We are informing in part of our antecedent, so that you may understand our motives and intentions. JARMI evolved to be dedicated to the cause of justice and rights for people with a mental illness because of the numerous occasions people with mental health problems have been let down by society, government and statutory agencies. By "rights" we mean those that are legally enforceable and not wallpaper.

In 1990 Birmingham City Council produced a document with the title "Shifting the Balance" (Click here). It was described as "a strategic review of community-based mental health services in Birmingham. The foreword contains the following:

"This Review of Community Based Mental Health Services has been undertaken because the City Council wished to raise the profile of a large group of people who are seldom noticed, and who have a need to ensure their voice is more clearly heard. The work was conducted by the Strategic Policy and Planning Unit by Alan Coe, seconded from the Social Services Department and Ed Whitton from this Unit."

The key features of the strategy included::

- Participation of Service Users
- A multi-agency approach
- Creating uniformly high service standards
- Ensuring that the needs of under-represented and minority groups are met

Key conclusions pointed to the need for:

- increasing service users participation in the running and planning of services
- ensuring information about services is easily accessible to all
- reducing stigma and creating a positive image
- ensuring there is improved access to leisure, training, and employment opportunities achieved
- ensuring equal access to services for those presently under-represented as service users
- providing support for the development of more community services at weekends and Bank Holidays

The strategy led to:

- the development of a City-wide users movement
- increasing opportunities for user participation
- ensuring bids for new resources have the active support of service users

In the Introduction of "Shifting the Balance" it is stated:

"that the involvement of service users and providers was seen as particularly important if the cultural shift from provider-led to needs-led services was to be achieved."

Birmingham Mental Health Pioneers proved to be a highly successful for mental health service users who wished to be involved in the development of social and health care delivery. The outstanding success of the Pioneers was extensive city-wide networking which increased choice and opened doors for those who wished to grab opportunities and become involved. In 1993 Birmingham social services decided to withdraw funding. This was not a council decision but made by social worker employees. It is the view of JARMI that the reason was because the professionals resented the shift in the balance of power.

In addition, The Search Team was created in 1990 and the Pioneers played an active and successful part. Michael Elvin, in particular, completed original work on the accessing of social workers. Michael Elvin's research was accepted by at meeting of the highest level managerial team of social services attended by the Director and all his Assistant Directors. It is the view of JARMI that this success was resented by middle managers.

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In 1991 The Search Team consisted of special interest groups of which mental health was one. The mental health special interest group was always active and well attended. A particular special interest groups was the Black Community Care Forum which was formed in the Autumn of 1991. In 1992 the Black Community Care Forum had over 60 members. In 2004 the 60 members had been reduced to about 6 members. The mental health special interest group had ceased to be active before 1996. The Black Community Care Forum amalgamated with the Elderly Special Interest Group.

An initiative proposed by Birmingham Mental Health Pioneers supported by The Search Team and led by Michael Elvin was for two service users to become Care Managers.

The following account was published in Summer 1998 edition of BMHP's newsletter, The Pioneer Voice :

COMMUNITY CARE - FICTION OR REALITY?

Are we the enemy? They talk about user empowerment, but what does this fancy jargon really mean? Recent experience suggests that the words are false signposts, erected to lead us up the garden path.

JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES!

The Pioneers are represented on the search Team which is a 'watchdog' for Community Care. A forum for users, carers and service providers. Search put forward the proposal that 2 service users should become Care Managers.

We accepted this proposal and negotiations resulted in an offer of 2 Pioneers to perform the role of Care Managers and participate in training. We were told to recruit 2 people. The project would be called 'Start-Up'.

Here was the opportunity for The Pioneers to embrace a real partnership with the professionals. Our policy is to work with them, so we pursued this partnership with enthusiasm and a belief in mutual trust and respect.

WERE WE NAIVE?

We were told that the project started at the beginning of September. We were told that Birmingham University have the job evaluating the project and were looking forward to service users being involved.

Two people with excellent qualities were recruited. The Pioneers have no doubts that these two people are as capable as the professionals for becoming Care Managers. We share with them the bitterness of disappointment when it became apparent that our partners, the professionals, were not consistent with their initial enthusiasm for the partnership.

WERE WE CONNED?

The fact is that we didn't get the expected go-ahead, even though we had two superb people ready willing. Indeed, communications became difficult and we weren't informed about what was going on.

Eventually in October 1998 , we did attend a meeting expecting to negotiate the release of funds. But, THERE IS NOTHING TO NEGOTIATE, we were told. To add insult to injury a professional said:

"WE ARE YOUR ENEMY"

This sick statement was thrown at us as if we were the scum of the earth. They had revealed their true intentions. The partnerships was dead.

Well, they can treat us with contempt. They can treat us like dogs. But, the professionals, even after a million years have past, will never understand the love and friendship that binds The Pioneers together.

Our cause is just and honourable. Together we shall march into the future with pride and dignity. Our time will come because we always have each other, united under The Pioneers banner.

PIONEERS OUR STRENGTH IS OURSELVES!

We were offered another crack at Care Management last Spring. We were being set up for yet another put down. Do they want us to fail? Are they frightened of us? Perhaps they are drunk with power, arrogance and delusion! "

(Michael Elvin D. December 2006 )

Big BMA Ideas And Under-Served Service Users In North Birmingham (See Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Angle Too)

The BMA's idea in its recent discussion document :

"A rational way forward for the NHS in England "

is , to get politics out of health and have a constitution and and a Governing body . Uh-Oh....

Sounds a bit like a new job security push to us at Userwatch .. The BBC of Health . And why in 79 pages is there no mention of "Mental Health" services?

Perhaps they are right though and the NHS can be "remade" into the image and services of healing people well.

The big disparity in their kind of thinking though is where is the real power of the patient ? At UserWatch we like to use the word "REAL" in a tangy way so its fizzes on the tongue as its supposed to . In their ideas we will all probably be called "stakeholders" or "cakeholders" - or "slice-eaters" or something which usually means fuck all because at local levels we cannot understand the fancy equations by which our services are planned or our lack of services are planned to be erased ..

The BMA do not like maketisation believing in the idea State knows best provided the populace will create the taxation vehicle to pay for all the quality that is needed . They see in themselves in their document as Top Down knows best .. This is old London planning bullshit excerting itself again.

Locality is where we all live and localities must have the power to plan their own fates . The taxation issue is very important to put back to the paradoxical British public who both love and hate their services and who both want quality and not to pay too much for it . That cakery-division started with Mrs Thatcher and has never stopped - in fact it propped up the middle classes themselves who are finding as administrators in the health services they might just have to compete with the rawer quality driver of the market which the patient OWNS .

Do the middle classes want services they can control and use and shape ? If they do then avoid the Top Down Londonistic way forward . Let the local equations of population need dominate the agenda and let the local distribution of health be distributed locally . Pilot the bloody ideas and get the Doctors locally to set up their own administrations and be given money directly from the exchequer to serve their own populations needs . And the Dept of Health ? Get rid of it . Favour local inspection and stronger use of local law . Oh dear it might mean the British dictatorship of Parliament might lose a bit of power. The web will become the massive way to distribute information and knowledge and good practice in the future which is already here . The Dept of Health are somewhere else in 1950 management land.

Meanwhile in North Birmingham we discover that for two years 2005 - 7 there was no Lead psychologist and the clinical team reduced the number of allocations into it for therapies to 2 a month per psychiatrist. This resulted in a peculiar manifestation of a "waiting list" which was (we can only say) artificially constructed to appear that the then reduced demand by Service Users who were being seen was at "parity" to the national average of about 20 weeks .

When this was examined more closley it was found that other Service Users with a need for therapy lay behind this "waiting list" . In those two years the Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust was dealing with "Debt" . In others words not being suppied the money to properly function by Goverment and having to reduce recruitment. By 2007 The Trust entered a surplus of 1.8 million and guess where that came from ? Undersupplying the services to patients by not recruiting the skilled clinicians that were needed . The CEO once announced something like (to paraphrase) :


"We want our services to be so good we would recommend them to our friends and family "

Oh really ....... ? That like many Dept Of Health NHS ideals is as trustworthy as grease ...

We need local control of services and purchasing power of health services like we need breath

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Frank About Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Art Strategy

Congratulations to Frank Barton Birmingham depression sufferer for being able to spread the message of how to do classical type arts in oils and similar mediums. He's a damn good artist known to UserWatch and the eye-eye-gang in Birmingham .

The Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust have promoted Frank on their website HERE.

You are lucky there Frank others have tried for fair promo on the Trusts website and we know they promoted other Art Trust "recognised"organisations .

As usual though, the Trust have their own "business" promotion motive lying just underneath. Its one of those facts of NHS services that they will cherry pick Users to sell the public that they are doing some good and using our money well . That's life.

But there is unease in the Service User Community i.e. those medium and Service User long-termers who feel the services in Birmingham seek to create corrals of Users which are increasingly amoebically digested by the services themselves . The services do love their creeping pseudo-podiums to use a biology metaphor ....

Is there any alternative ? UserWatch thinks there is . There a balance of power problem with the State being in so much control and even in the Mental Health Arts in Birmingham the evidence is of a slowly growing MH arts bureaucracy.

Better if the State created local development grants for small groups of Mental Health Users with an extra grants for an Independent empowerer which are not too embedded within the health bureacracies . Userwatch knows there is practice to support this through the use of group-joined-up Direct Payments. We have the information and strangely enough it surfaces within CSIP the NIMHE quangle-dangler - or "quangling" to experts by experience .

The Art mentor or empowerer could do a few hours a week of helping groups to constituionalise and become admin-fit to run themselves ..

UserWatch sees no problem also in better positive use of Day Centres where small peppercorn rents could be paid for leased-use of a NHS room in which staff agenda's do not have a overpowering place.

Its very easy to enshrine a paper agreement - its done all time when groups rent space from Community Centres..Couple that with chosen independent mentors and voila ! You have an empowering equation ..

The key element here is responsible and empowered patient ownership of space . In Birmingham the supply of that space within the Trust is woven within too many State and Trust agenda's . The State idea is "recovery" and the reality is many Users need a mix of real empowerment and less loud State voices . The mix of State pushed policies coming over as raw benefitless-recovery-ambition and the reality of User-capacity to recove, is still set to show up big contradictions and the pain will paid for in time by the Service Users . We are not theorising at UserWatch, we know of cases where the pain has really hacked in from the State .

UserWatch will monitor all this evolution . And Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust will ofcourse create its own shapes of the Mental Health service related Arts. BSMHT always has its own way ......

UserWatch notes that a public relations firm under contract to the Trust called LTA Communications have been involved in the promotion of Frank and we certainly uphold the promotion of Arts in Mental Health.. The Trust position though on promotion of Users "arts" on its own website is that it does not promote organisational web-links unless they are "recognised" groups..

We have information backing this from one Sandra Kelley the IT Director. It appears true-ish unless of course you include some PDF files available for internal user circulations....We note LTA under contract to the Trust to do a press release about Frank and the Trust on its own website have in fact promoted Frank's individual website though .

That is effectively marketing someone privately whilst promoting the Trust. How fair is that on other User-Art organisations ? We would say its a great idea provided all have equal opportunity to do the same making it a level playing field otherwise there is danger of accusations of favouristism......

We repeat this theme : the MH Services some Users claim are institutionally engulfing of Users when they can use them . It appears the Services often "service themselves" on the back of that engulfment. Whenever this might change is anyone's guess. The real culture shift needed is for Users to purchase services beyond the closed health economy of the NHS Trust . The stranglehold over Users is created both by Govt and by the Services who dominate supply and the health economy. In Birmingham we see much evidence of fitterUsers who apparently cannot get outside of the Trust's health economy ... Is this real "social inclusion" or in fact a few exclusive circles that can be used by the Trust to advertise its "Social Inclusivity" .....Only Alice knows.....

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Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Lone Painger Footage Discovered In Ward Cellar ...

The Wards's Lone Painger

NEWS IN SHORT :


Chief Executive Sitting Bull Turntoe (Tonto's Cousin)

said to be warpathing about .

Feathers on wards seen to be flying

Day Centre Teepee's crushed

By cheap beef policies

Battle of Spittle Figma Horn on way

(Bindians Predict)


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Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Satire -The Ghoulian Weaver NHSS

Ahhhhh the strange ways of Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust in the UK have reached our digital ears yet again ...

In a strange twist of weavery and curley little overlapping social boundaries the Trust not content with employing ex Users in a conflict of loyalty position as the "User Voice", is now advertising for Service Users to go out and get 50 sign ups for its bid to become a Foundation Trust .

The procurement of Services Users for this exercise by the Trust will result in the Users being rewarded if they get the 50 sign ups with £25 worth of Bull Ring shopping vouchers .

Since when does a Mental Health Trust that wishes to morph into another type of NHS service body think that it is ethical to use Mental Health Service Users to bulk up Foundation Trust memberships numbers like this ?

Huhhh ? This is just strange and obviously needs therapeutic treatment......Although some things you just cannot straighten out from being bent . Was Uri Geller an influence in some NHS Trust thinking here ? ..At UserWatch we really wonder ......

Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust Censorship By CEO Sue Turner ?

A source known to Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Userwatch UK Blog has been contacted by the CEO Sue Turner of the UK Birmingham NHS Trust with a request for taking off this picture shown HERE from UserWatch on the grounds that is :

"Horrid and Frightening"

And also it is claimed to be :

"poor art"

Userwatch thinks this version on the left is rather glowing and anyone could possibly get a good tanning off it ..

The serious underlying story goes though , the source has requested that the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust in the UK give fair and equal opportunity (as it does with other local Service User Groups) of promotion to a Mental Health film called the Highcroft Lifebook Film which partly demystifies the State and family influences in one local family's mental health damages over 100 years.

The film partly concludes that the obvious theme of intergenerational deficits of reflexively denied empathy (being in touch with each other emotionally) can create a long line of unhealed and repeated emotional damages .

The film goes on to create a DIY approach to Mental Health Service Users being able to create and make their own "Lifebooks" at home .. Its very pro-independence of a struggle for authentic growth

It seems as if the signals are pretty clear that the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust will not fairly promote the Highcroft Lifebook Film unless and until this picture goes ..

Overnight the Userwatch team has been contacted by a photo journalist and we will see what other parts of the Blog community have to say about this

One thing is for sure . When you challenge the corporate NHS state and its pressure particulary for conformity of "Group-mind" be aware that freedom of thought and expression is all there is left as a real value to live and even die for.


More Later .

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The Battle Ground For Minds And New Slaver-Labour

Computerised Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and CBT itself is set to become a kind of future litmus test for a number of forces currently trying to socially engineer Mental Health (MH) Service Users away from dependency on Incapacity Benefit and MH Day Services ..

The MH charities have partly led the cavary charge against the poor weaponless indians without that much reservation too ..

CBT has been pushed by Rethink and Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health with the golden prize of "modernisation" as an aim, and with flag waving here and there partly through Mental Health Media with poorly demonstrated and questionably effective projects about "stigma"..

This concept is very overplayed but a few people have a vested interest in doing that especially some elite Ex Service Users circles who trot out with expenses paid the same old "stigma stories" at various meetings in the UK .

The MH Charities do not have much else to falsely rally the converted indians to re-totemise and dance around though, and somehow their patient freedom to choose treaments (PATIENT CHOICE) has slipped to the bottom of the totem pole and is going "UGHHH"

These Charity bodies are now full of connections with ex career civil servants DoH or DWP linked , and have a rather grey agenda really, because the real prize of Service Users having control and choices of purchase of treatments that suit continual management or genuine recovery is very very far away . The MH NHS is dominant and towering and is often in league with the MH Charities to cheapen services .

By the time the "litmus" test is done on CCBT and CBT, and found to be wanting in the right colour and depth , New Labour with its anti-benefit anti-MH-patient choice stance may well be run out of steam . It wont stop the next lot from picking up and beating the same drum perhaps ..The Charities are shape shifters too so it won't worry them that much .

The health economics idea behind CCBT and CBT is to use the resources saved by getting people fit and back to work to actualise other improvements in MH Services isnt it ?

I doubt this . Savings will ultimately be used to buffer the false way the welfare state and the new "welfare-charity-state" take control over patient's lives - the status quo will continue with service delivery being owned at a few removes from the patient . The quality-driver of PATIENT CHOICE in MH terms still has not got much of a chance . The Charities want to take over . There are big wages in it too ..

New Labour are not modernising anything with any radicalism in MH - they are reforming and supporting a middle-income, income-tax-protected new administrative class . Its what they are and have become themselves.

The more honest way forward of people really paying for health giving services through re-distributive income tax related ways is not saleable politically. We have conservative middle classes to thank for this curvature of backbone and an ex Thatcherite agenda continued by Tony Blair . He's their man okay ..

The health market could have been democratised by state enabled PATIENT CHOICE and driven into more quality by that mechanism over time - the problem is the NHS is a very large supporter of the middle classes and their economic stabilities. Priority for frontline treaments is giving way also to new User Bureacracy rather than market democracy driven by state enabled PATIENT CHOICE .

The new User-bureaucracies are insidious and pernicious in the way they are supported to partly divert treament opportunities away from other Patients whilst playing with the idea they are somehow more democratic.. Democracy at the point of CHOICE and with closer purchasing power is the better way forwards . The money is already there being played with by the social engineers like the Charities who want more lottery money for "stigma drives" or NIMHE and CSIP who are the DWP-DOH post victorian workhouse orientated expensive services in disguise.

New Labour have condemned many in the MH community to false hope and little real service of any long term therapeutic value . This will collapse into more piles of messy realities one day. But who knows who will be left to witness its subtle holocaust of the spirit . Most of the Charity heads will be retired in Spain ... Roll on Global warming .....Mr S. Atan rules it seems ...


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Computers Licenced To Dispense Mental Health Soapy Porridge

In the post victorian but very surviving ethical corpse of work-to-forget your mental health pains, Computers in health are now to dispense software mental health solutions . OOOOOO Lovely ....

"Soft soaping" patients is more like it : Userwatch bubbles

But the roll out of Computerised CBT or the lather is ON as from March 2007 .

It will have to be measured for its effectiveness according the DoH, and head cook Louise Appleby who has been supplying the whine will instruct NIMHE (the "Innovators") now shape shifting to CSIP into partly being the Waiters who will measure customer satisfaction .

But it wont be : "Waiter there's a cry in my soup !"

Because flying Cries are banned, by the new, be-in control-of your-emotions-software ..

Dont get afraid of your own inner core of vulnerability - Delete it by thought ..

Yeah Sure ....

The job of CCBT procurements has gone to the Primary Care Trusts across Birmingham (like others places in the UK.) They must provide hardware where Computerised Cognitive Behaviour Therapy will be accessesed . The software licences are to be purchased too by the PCT's and because there is no new money for this half baked one size fits all scheme - it will be diverted from elsewhere out of the local health budget . Userwatch wonders where that might be ? Could it be the already poor supply of talking and feeling therapies ? Probably.

Meanwhile the User sector in the local mental health economy in Bham is set to expand again with a post being advertised for a Voluntary Sector worker to co-ordinate communications with the Voluntary sector . The money once again will come out of the local mental health budget . UserWatch questions this . Its frankly daft . A deeper schism is opening up with new User bureacracies (paid for the the Trust out of frontline treatment money) and poor supply of recovery treatments are the reality for many Bham Users .

Oh sorry we forgot there's always your computer to talk to or failing that going to a library to access your CCBT programme to do "Homework" ... That is how it has been put !

What the cogging hell is going on in Mental Health economics? . The supply side is dominated by the Govt Agenda and the User side is contstantly being bought off by the services themselves and used a vanguard to represent others falsely .

This is not Patient Choice realised but in fact "survival of the fittest" in a skewed and distorted state dominated choiceless context and the tests being run is who in the "User" community will orientate around the Catch 22 paradox of User's up the health service's anus the most ?

Maybe we should rephrase that Darwinism into "Survival of the Shittest" ?

What do you think satirically speaking ?

The Highcroft Lifebook Project Of North Birmingham

The "Highcroft Lifebook Project" was borne from a need to express a story of great family pain and make some lasting witness of a theme that inhabits some families and makes some members mentally ill later in their lives.

That theme is early catastrophic seperation and loss (and even abuses) that is somehow carried on like a partly unnoticed but nevertheless repeated lack of empathic early care for children . The Lifebook project points not to conscious fault in the family so much as preserved unconscious defensive repetitions of certain types of unempathic behaviour which carry on to traumatise the generations. And, this is certainly no theory when it happens to some people who can more consciously attest to a trail of family pain that has affected them.

The Intro to the Highcroft Lifebook film preserves the theme of these insights. It is short and to the point and will be built upon . The intro is followed by about another 13 mins of film which shows the actual making process of the "Lifebooks" . The whole theme is to bring the ability back to the Mental Health User at home who wishes to explore making a map of sense of their lives - in their way .

North Birmingham Communty Arts is a User Led Art Group and project which meets at the 610 Centre in Kingstanding. This Group has been given some rights to sell "The Highcroft Lifebook" film in order to sustain its function and growth - NBCA's primary purpose is to create fellowship in Birmingham North where there has been little in the way of creative mental health sustainance with the exception of a handful of people and a few good staff .

NBCA is trying its best therefore to create a better balance of inclusion , creativity , and User autonomy for those with disabling Mental Health problems .

Digital Walk For The Wire Kin Of Ward World In NHS Barbed Birmingham

Crow A Doodle 10000 Signatures Lord Layard !

Will the e-petition for more psycholgical therapy choices on Tony Blair's (PM's) website reach 10000 ?

Ooooooo the climax is a coming ..Or is it ?

Will there be more therapy choices other than CBT ?

Will Choice have wings ?

Will it crow ?

We'll let you know.....................

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to consider other psychotherapy approaches, not only cbt, in the proposed expansion of psychotherapeutic services within the NHS, instead of restricting choice for members of the public to one only model of therapy. More details

Submitted by Sheila Haugh of British Association of the Person Centred Approach – Deadline to sign up by: 03 March 2007 – Signatures: 9,452

UserWatch Receives Summary Board Paper On Therapy

Userwatch has received a short CEO board paper regarding a Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Trustwide audit of psychological therapy services from late 2006 .

The paper which UserWatch will report on in more detail later has used the term "Empathy" and puts it forwards as a future practice to improve the relationship between patients and the Trust's service delivery to them .

The problem though appears to UserWatch to be one of internal-emotional-capacity (i.e. Emotional skill) of the Trust's practices itself .

The Trust is dominated by an old culture of part bureaucratic practice and a predominant insistence on the chemical model which in practice is quite an unempathic model of mental illness according to actual patient experience ..

The Trust describe "empathy" in the 2006 paper " as a form of customer orientated "psychological mindedness". Userwatch would put it another way : Empathy is an internal emotional capacity to receive the feelings of others and show CARE- not to act in a "business role" as if that is the case . The difference is often enough experienced on an internal quality level by patients.

Empathic quality is unmistakeable to patients if they ever encounter it . Its the actual feeling that "one has been felt and received by another human being" ... In that sense its an emotionally providing experience . Its caring and partly healing . UserWatch thinks the Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Trust has a lot to learn about being receptive to patients with empathic skill .. (more later)

The E-Petiton on the Prime Ministers Website LATEST :

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to consider other psychotherapy approaches, not only cbt, in the proposed expansion of psychotherapeutic services within the NHS, instead of restricting choice for members of the public to one only model of therapy. More details

Submitted by Sheila Haugh of British Association of the Person Centred Approach – Deadline to sign up by: 03 March 2007 – Signatures: 8,673

Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Latest Swasticka Image

Its funny isnt it ?

How the latest Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust Board papers record in them that the Trust is going to make a 1.8 million surplus .

This is in the same year that they have put in their application to become a Foundation Trust and at least one of the qualifications is, they show they can produce a sizeable surplus .

So where did they produce it from ? Well (its funny) they produced it from underspending on staff wages or rather, put another way around : need is not met by having the right staff employed for all the patient demand there is .

That is what UserWatch believes.

This just gets hidden in waiting times to be seen and managed in other ways by partly ignoring patient's internal pain and crises and having inadequate systems that allow for the expression and even record of that. One example given to Userwatch was by a Birmingham User who claimed that a team were supposed to be contactable between 9. a.m. and 5 p.m. only to finally discover the person who took the phone messages only worked part time . There have been other examples too .

Are patients at risk ? You bet they are but UserWatch repeats that gets hidden too, in quietly unrecorded ways, and voices that will never be heard properly and recorded because the mechanisms are not robust enough . The Trust have certainly ensured some real unheard voices of pain with their financial squeezes on service capacity .

The "User Voice" just does not exist properly unless its somehow truly backed up outside of the Trust's slick and soapy apparatus ..

The Internal User Voice mechanism in the Trust knows it is hampered but will not strike out for its own independence. That is partly mystifying since they are unlikely to lose out. Strangely the new PALS manager an ex User Voice Co-ordinator is also still doubling up as "User Voice" in the Clinical Governance Committee minutes - a strange state of affairs .

User Voice as the internally paid User/staff mechanism too is also backed as desirable by the Trust Board in the latest Board Papers after Sue Turner gave out a panicky CEO report trumpeting the need to keep it internal after learning the PPI were examining a model of an Independent User Voice ..

Its all "funny" - in a sort of mystifying way isnt it ?

UserWatch learns that in 2006, the same year as the big push to get patient's "socially included" but without any funding support for any patient groups to form locally , the Birmingham New Hospital Project under Trust control has created a three year "arts plan" of sources of funding which amount to 324k. This year's input into that arts plan from the Trust is 20k . 10k of that is from the Trust charities fund .

This very centralised arts-plan is really more of an image promotion for the Trust because an alternative might have been encouraging patients joining in local and area competitions or workshops, or the like, to get their own paintings and art put up on the walls on good clean building lines produced by an architect. Give the space over to patients and encourage it to be used should be the ethos. Instead money is going to several professional artists and Userwatch has not discovered one with a mental health direct Birmingham connection.

Giving space over to patients happened in Leeds 2003 when a patient started off crayon groups and informal arts-cafe's . He was finally running 9 groups in 2004 with another patient and he resisted attempts by the Trust to assimilate him too closely ..

Its funny ....But where there is a will to do right by the patient without recourse to diversionary phoney image building - patient's will create more of their own arts "voice, and other voices..

Whatever happened in Birmingham ?

It was dominated by a pre-existing patient culture that wanted jobs with a very controlling Trust and although they are now compromised by becoming staff, it appears it no longer matters to them .

Its funny, but bad faith has a way of catching up with everyone ..Maybe not . Maybe they can laugh it off - its that funny .

Patients though are caught in compromising equations now :

"You can elect to have no voice and be pure in a kind of cornered impoverished way "

Says one in a group of others in Birmingham .

"Or you can wade in the new Labour compromise where patients cannot be more in control of their own health , choices and budgets , and the bureacracy is set to increase and increase on slight but partly unreal rituals of direct empowerment"

Says another ....

They add by nods of agreement as another says :

"Joining in the socially sickly weave of mental health modernisation that robs so many of treatments that fit them as its costs more ........The New Hell Service ..."

Its funny how the services gave up on the patient's needs first without employing one mechanism that would have slowly overturned the NHS dinosaur . PATIENT CHOICE .

Dope-oddy-cus, even with the help of ex patients is set to roam yet for a while.


Perhaps that's funny ...
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CBT Versus CPT (Choice (for) Patient Therapy) The Boxing Match ?

In truth many psychological therapies maketh Patient Choice in mental health.

The petition requesting more therapy choices other than CBT has tonight as UserWatch reports UK time 10.55 p.m. very nearly become 7000 signatures .. (6998)

Mental health is not the most popular issue in the UK so the therapy petition is doing well really . Whether it will make a difference to a Govt with an eye for cheaper mental health is another thing but the hearted sideshow of a little spirit is good thing ..

It has sparked partly ambivalent attitudes amongst some Users in a context threatened by long term Govt attrition which has created an anxiety about availability of resources for Users . Yet the Govt has been criticised for creating a core policy which revolves more around crisis and less around purchase and choices by Users which will sustain the management of their conditions and or as much recovery as they can muster ..

The petition forms an insight therefore into not merely patient choice but also the right to recover with therapies that fit the patient . Who decides ?

Well right now we know who decides for the patient . This is a small moment therefore in the history of what might become possible for more patients if there is a will ..

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to consider other psychotherapy approaches, not only cbt, in the proposed expansion of psychotherapeutic services within the NHS, instead of restricting choice for members of the public to one only model of therapy. More details

Submitted by Sheila Haugh of British Association of the Person Centred Approach – Deadline to sign up by: 03 March 2007 –

Signatures: 6,998 "

WILL CBT COGGY GET A HEART TRANPLANT IN THE UK ? (Bham Source Reports)

The e-petiton started by Shelia Haugh on the Prime Ministers own website is fast approaching 5000 signatures for alternatives to the Govt's "one size fits all" Cogntive Behavour Therapy approach .

The concern behind the petition is the Govt's favouring of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy CBT which is being singly latched into its mental health get-back-to-work drives to the virtual exclusion of all other types of therapeutic approach.

It has been pushed hard under the banner of "choice" by the partly discredited NIMHE who have morphed more and more into the semi invisible CSIP (Care Services Improvement Partnership) who have also hailed CCBT (the computerised version of CBT (as evidence of "Patient Choice")

The claim that CSIP has become a sycophantic civil service made up of ex Service Users swayed by the original fire of claimed innovation is often reported to UserWatch.

Criticisms that CBT's wide applications are superficial and cannot help emotionally based depressions and the trauma of life events have been voiced by many patients and various therapy practitioners alike.

Users on UK survivors, an open public forum are having their opinions about the e-petition issues too :

" It should also be a fundamental human right to have therapies or assistance that are found helpful to the person.

The trouble with NHS therapies is it is one size fits
all-industrialized medicine, just like a factory."

Says one HERE

This was echoed and added to by another HERE

This User also spoke of the worry of the contradictions in the mental health system that can often define people as "well enough" beyond crisis care only to make them face a social and benefit system inadequately fitted to integrate and understand the continuing stresses they face if they even try to fit into the mainstream of society again ..

CBT application has been defined by up to 10 (maximum) sessions of thinking-based self control therapy (over triggering thoughts that reactivate bad feelings) for the moderate or mildly depressed followed by what ? Work and recovery ? Its the Govt's ideal .

Perhaps in some limited truly mild cases where thought is enough to block the energy of unresolved affect or draw back controlling focus on of some fragmenting patterns of negative thought and feelings, anxiety etc., a little thought-tinkering will do. But not so with large affective energies and traumas revolving through peoples entire systems often for a lifetime who never have any therapy. Several cases of these are known to UserWatch in Birmingham , and further afield there are many many more ...

The difficulty too is, in NHS Trusts the largest part of any therapy-budget will be devoted in future to CBT mainly or drug based control. There are whole sections of patient-type missing out on various form of psychological therapy to help them

CBT is really meant as a cheap measure for the psychologically screwed up"workless classes" on incapacity benefit who in truth do not have the privilege normally to have a therapy that will help resolve emotional pain and difficulties. Some of the incapacity benefit arguments are discussed on the British Psychological website HERE

The CBT applied model flounders around coping with the concept of feelings as the centre of a human being. Cognitive mechanics is all - to tighten the nuts up . UserWatch believes this conceals old fashioned victorianised social stigma and the national UK taboo against openly shown difficult feelings.

Reactive depression, one of the maladies which CBT is supposed to treat, is as its name implies, a reactive event. It is not caused or mediated into existence by "thought". It is caused often by reflex to survive pain and suppressed affect (feelings) which are attributable to various very negative external life events and are not solely residing within the orbit of cortical and neo cortical higher functions of the brain but are stored as suppressed affect in the feeling areas of the limbic system.

That "feeling system" needs re-engaging and resolving by using the internalised past for inner levels of recovery . Tears are part of the journey of the recalled self with that therapy because people with serious hurts when listened to , cry ... They grieve . That is not in the British CBT lexicon . It costs more money too, so the "workless classes" are to be treated to a "spanner for the head over heart" so to speak ..

One example of painful but resolving therapy UserWatch knows of is of a soldier in Northern Ireland. He suffered various life events of pain and loss as an early childhood development which was later added to because his best army mate was shot and killed by the side of him dramatically . He became seriously depressed and self violating until he could find the therapy (not on the NHS) which helped him feel the vulnerable self he had been taught to deny for most of his life . When the soldiering armour gave way to tears and grief over many sessions that built his tolerance up to his own emotional pain for suppressed internal events, he then found he could live with himself and let go of more of the events which were otherwise sending him mad. Ofcourse the British love denial ...... The mental health NHS is based on it ..

Related to the CBT poverty of application though, there have been criticisms of unjoined up mental health services without the capacity to follow through that were voiced in Birmingham after a "Suresearch" (Birmingham University) piece of research commissioned by the Patient and Public Involvement Forum in 2006 showed patients that came through immediate crisis in Birmingham often faced a very hard times indeed beyond .

The defrayal of costs for their support into the community and with adequate choices of therapy-back-ups could have been assured by now if NIMHE had never existed (65 million up to 2006) which has probably cost £80 million now ..

The Govt with NIMHE and its morphling CSIP is targeting the vulnerable with cheap resources and expensive bureaucracy and everyone including Service Users are mixed up contrarily within the new careerist illusory equation. NIMHE was a the career-carrot for many who are playing the game that old timers used to see on the wards. Those who "got well" quicker were those who did the washing up of the tea cups for the staff.

The Govt's approach will fail most patients, because the Govt's approach is anti-local, anti-individual at purchase level, anti depth and partly anti human, and it is systems-delivery driven on the basis of all Top Down planning thought is unlikely to get to the local and personal heart of the problems. Its a Govt of denial .

In fact it recreates the worst of the old staus quo on the wards recasting it into new form of oppression which has bureacratised the patient into a slickly denied Govt partnership of new social madness ...

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Mad For Arts : Culture Online Gives In And Advertises Flickr.com

(Above The Post Culture Online Censored Feb 6th 2007 was put back on the 7th after protest but navigating to it is almost impossible anyway )

SPECIAL MAD FOR ARTS & CULTURE ONLINE REPORT

From Our Correspondent On the Mental Health Arts Feb 6th 2007

The long running saga of the MadForArts (run by the Community Channel) Mental Health Users "rebellion" through parts of 2004 until Feb 2006 when MFA finally closed its narrowly run and restrictive "mental health arts " website, was partly about User's not forming the service THEY required.

The Govt funded site was Top-Down in flavour.

Culture Online its backers, allowed the Community Channel, the main project managers, to try and turn Mad For Arts into a model of a traditional media "virtuous circle". That was a phrase used in one of Culture Online's own reports . This meant the fairly (and ideally) TV-like pacified user-audience were fed a diet of prizes for choosing "public arts". They were supposed to debate the public arts as well, like good little online museum goers. It was all very "socially shaping" to create more museum attendances. That was one of Culture Online's open aims ..

This "Prizes for public arts choices" was a bone of contention amongst some mental health User artists since many mental health User artists who joined the MFAS "arts" website were mental health Users who were not supposed to be stigmatised against. Mental Health Media, subcontractors of Mad For Arts and the so called originators of the now largely "disappeared" anti stigma toolkit in 2004 were supposed to ensure that.

In fact Mad For Arts Users were victims of stigma since their arts were not chosen to be judged for some prizes.

They were second best to "Public Arts". That was voiced a number of times by Users amongst themselves and openly . The criticism was suppressed though .

An attempt was made by mental health Users of the Mad For Arts website to broker a way forward and cash money (£150 in total) was put up in Feb 2005 by Users themselves to plug this stigma-gap left by Culture Online and the other Charity subcontractors Mental Health Media and Rethink.

It fell through because the Community Channel had vilified the critical Users and barred them on spurious claims from the Mad For Arts website. Even the MFA moderators had stirred up arguments against them on the website ..

Later on as the Mad For Art website had its further trials of in-fighting amongst posters and further complaints by several Users that even reached the minister David Lammy M.P., the originally barred Users offered better art and mental health sanctuary to their User-colleagues on the failing Mad For Arts website at the free account giant site

http://www.flickr.com/

Mad For Arts however did not give in with its obdurate attempts through 2005 beyond its intial funding, to remain in place taking up more and more funding . The Charities which backed it, Mental Health Media and Rethink, were also still in the picture for a time but Rethink withdrew because Mad For Arts could not get any further funds. It took enough though .

By about the March of 2005 Mad For Arts had taken up some 370+k of public funds and now Userwatch can report that has risen after contact by a source to 424k . The VAT is still being enquired about through the Freedom Of Information Act . That figure comes from a document signed by Nicholas Holgate the Dept Of Media Culture And Sport, Chief Officer .

There will be more to report about figures in the future of this costly Culture Online sponsored failure .

There was a late 2005 - 2006 Users migration over to FLICKr and that was, to repeat , initiated by Mental Health Users themselves being contacted by the original Users who had "emigrated" to the then Canadian run private site (later purchased by YAHOO) and all the mental health Users were making friends and many contacts .

The ex Mad For Arts Users who migrated later in 2005 had also formed their own small groups :

Here and Here and Here


And they have merged into the wider community too. Flickr is more hygenic unlike Mad For Arts which saw moderators crawling all over it with a degree of anxiety according to some Users which was necessitated by its uncompartmentalised design .

Users (some Users often joked) were made up into MFA "sheriff's" or police. It was a kind of typical anxious U.K. BBC modelled board - too small, overcontrolled, slightly Blue Peter-ish and it created a feeling of claustrophobic classes all over again ..Prefects, and the British liking for social ladders of importance. It was in fact infantilising .

Flickr was experienced by the migrated Users as freedom from that with the power for any User to delete anyone or their comments on their own spaces without interfering with other's rights to belong to Flickr elsewhere .. In other words the User-sherriffs were not so immediate and active . They did not have to be . Flickr's board was designed right . It designed out conflict far better than the Mad For Arts 100+k costed website

One of the original Users barred from Mad For Arts got in touch with Culture Online as Mad For Arts was closed down in early 2006 because it had no exit strategy that helped those who had depended on it. That User asked a Culture Online officer about putting Flickr.com as a reference on the remaining website for an avenue of arts-link opportunity for other Users who came by and saw the rump of the Mad For Arts website ..

Culture Online never did that . Why would they ? It was like accepting criticism ...

Now the State and the Charities that tried to own the public and mental health Users have been left behind but are trying to catch up and own some of the action even though they help to shut others free speech down .

Mental Health Mad For Arts Users though were followed by the project manager of the failed MFA project Jennifer Topping who they recently discovered had migrated also to Flickr after her Barbados holiday which she posted a few snaps of on Flickr in April 2006 - perhaps to keep an eye on them and tell the culture carcass examiners who should maybe be called "Vulture Online" where the Mad For Art "revolutionary maggots" had got to so it could feed its limp de-feathered frame once more on the example of their free efforts ..

Culture Online now has given in flapping after quietly gaining space from its critics which it could not own up to , and it is now advertising Flickr.com and My Space . The site on which this information is posted though claims to be a "Blog" .

Noooooooo.........Its a Vulture Online .....


In fact by going HERE YOU SEE its Culture Online's own feathery little "friendly-ised" site :


Culture Online

55 Blandford Street London
W1U 7HW

T: 020 7487 7200
F:
» Click here to e-mail Culture Online
» http://www.projectsetc.org



No references ofcourse on this "Blog" site to Culture Online's learning curve, the pain it caused others by helping to deny free speech, and the waste of public money it spent on the Mad For Arts fiasco that still needs looking at ..

Finally Culture Online are still part of a London-culture that tries to suppress open discussion about its networking functions and costs . The top picture of a screen capture of a comment placed on their "Blog" was not published by them tonight even though that was attempted twice before another comment post was allowed by the same poster - because it was judged to be less critical no doubt .....A day after this protest and after a further unpublished protest on their own "Blog" it was published but navigating to it is a thicket job...

So democratic criticism is moderated now in the UK . That's clear . It was the same on Mad For Arts . Nothing changes .

SEE THE IMAGE HERE ALSO


Did we-the-Users of Mad For Arts convert Jen Topping to a version of freedom from Top Down media rule over an "audience". Partly I think Users had a lot to do with her growth whereas she just ran a tight ship that became intolerant of criticism that finally even evolved her...

From the Guardian Jen Topping and below :

"It's all about creative swiping: about reinventing, mashing up what's been done by others, to match your audience and your budget," says Jen Topping, now head of Channel Four's Video on Demand project. Until recently, Topping was head of new media at the Media Trust, which provides professional communications skills to the voluntary sector.

There are three key ways SMEs can keep costs down, according to Topping:

· Follow in the wake of larger organisations that can afford to test new technologies: see what works for them and adapt it

· Use free or low-cost software creatively

· Use blogs and podcasts - cheap to set up and run - to reach out to new audiences.

Topping believes organisations need to understand and get into new media techniques in order to widen their appeal and reach new audiences, particularly younger people. Charities need to reach out to new volunteers and donors; small businesses need to reach out to new potential buyers.

"These younger audiences cannot be reached using traditional media," she points out.

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The Unaccountable Face Of Mental Health Charities ? And Other News

UserWatch Birmingham UK reports also to the USA :

Mr Des Curley describing himself "a concerned citizen" is prepared to protest SEE "PLEDGEBANK" Sign Ups So far HERE outside the Charity Commission for a day regarding their alleged unaccountability and the unaccountability of some of the mental health charities whom they are supposed to view and partly regulate for "Openess" and "Public Confidence"..

Mr Curley's arguments with some mental health charities and their heads have never been properly investigated he claims and some of his evidence that UserWatch is aware of has not been viewed properly.

His allegations are that an ex charity head has been involved in creating several dubious websites the most recent of which he alleges contained pictures of pornography and references to drug taking .

The issue appears to be that Mr Curley claims he can prove that the charity head concerned in 2006 altered the "registrant's domain status" (record of the ownership of the named website) after Mr Curley had discovered the content of the site.

Mr Curley claims the content remained the same but the ownership of the site was put under someone else's name . Mr Curley claims there were several sites attributable to the one charity head ..

Mr Curley has never been offered an interview by the Charity Commission to demonstrate how he obtained his evidence and what credibility can be attached to it after proper view.

Mr Curley's stories surrounding this charity saga are on another seperate website Here

On other matters the mental health charities particularly Sainsburys Centre For Mental Health has rather biasedly applauded the roll out of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

UserWatch regards CBT to have limited and superficial applications . CBT regards "thought" as being able to control "affect" (emotions). Whilst that is partly true, criticisms are growing in the therapeutic community that it leaves out empathic skill and longer term healing of feelings and there is no amount of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy which will use "thought" to heal broken and damaged feelings of trauma and extremely bad childhood developments - rather deep grief from those damages needs to be "worked through". Yet the NHS has been turning into a cheap one size fits all option .. A sovietising supermarket model.

The caring-asylum deeper-care approach that might have been a truer modernisation of mental health by giving way to CBT drives to get people back to work, has embedded within it an old "workhouse" style approach. The stigma concealed within it is :

"your feelings do not count - get to work "...

Immediacy of a required functionality dominates .

Userwatch supports Patient Choice, patient pace and "Treatment first". Its a more logical approach and anything else is a waste of resources by ill fitting patients with therapies that are likely to be anti-feeling and anti-healing and will cause a emotional rebound effects in time .

The mental health charities that have soapily agreed and skated about with Govt CBT drives, anti-asylum approaches, and little patient choice combined with work-for-all NIMHE drives may well be surprised to learn that a large petition is a-building on the Prime Ministers own website .

This petition late last night was 1900 strong, today at the time of reporting it is 2400 strong. It is supported by doctors and mental health service users and staff .. Where were the charities? Long time buck-passing soapily, no doubt ..


Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health also needs close scrutiny. It registered the UK. Dept of Health NIMHE (National Intitute For Mental Health Education) and was recorded as the domain owner of the NIMHE name ! Mr Curley discovered that . Userwatch has seen the proof.

SCMH clearly has very close connections with the Govt. One of its employees specialising on Work and MH disability matters Dr Bob Groves seconds in to the DWP. An ex head of SCMH , Andrew McCulloch was a senior civil servant working for the DoH and is now the head of Mental Health Foundation which is trying to use other mental charities to form a National User Network .

This cross organisational partly Govt-spectral development is not to be welcomed because "Patient Choice" and locality power of MH patient-development is partly undermined by the charities who soak up large funds and create lost opportunites at local levels for smaller patient groups to launch themselves. MH Consumers and groups of MH patients when given purchasing power will make choices that do not need top down costly bureacracies claiming representation over them.

The mental health "Users Voice " in this regard has become the political plaything of the NHS, Govt, and the mental health charities . Everyone wants their piece of the career user-action..

The mental health charity sector need a serious transparency overhaul . Who they represent needs to be scrutinised and the sooner the better ..



Reference Material From SCMH below :

We Need To Talk

The case for psychological therapy on the NHS

Anna Bird

31 October 2006

ISBN13: 978 1 903645 91 8

FREE

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We Need To Talk examines the provision of psychological therapies. The report argues that evidence-based talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy are as important for the nation’s health as any cancer drug or surgical procedure. Evidence shows that they can help millions of people in the UK who experience common and severe mental health problems.

The report calls on the Government to provide psychological therapy through the NHS in line with NICE guidance. It also says that the NHS should introduce waiting time measures for access to mental health treatments.

We Need To Talk is a collaboration between five mental health organisations: Mental Health Foundation, Mind, Rethink, The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, Young Minds and published by the Mental Health Foundation.

Download We Need to Talk PDF (1,070 KB)

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