Does Jesus Wear Welfare Gloves - The Story of Dennis On The Cross

Dennis (name changed) is in his 60's now . He's a white haired, ghost faced, thin mental health service user. He is a Christian too .

He used to volunteer to help others less fortunate than himself - always seeking reforms in the NHS UK mental health system to enable others to have a life even though they were often unwell.

He appears to be half broken by life . He has a halting manner of speech and his consciousness seems to sway in waves of being here, and then "there" - somewhere else . He cannot write and has always wanted to . No-one has helped him to learn and he has always needed help - and probably re-parenting really .

The land of Dennis's old pain is his "somewhere else" . Old pain triggered by the stress of trying to live in the present and it often sets off stressful guillotining of his conscious grasp of the present . It cuts his ability in two . His ability to even speak properly ..

He spent time in the old fashioned asylum years ago . His life never formed really well - sometimes his care was in serious doubt as he grew and his personality just did not glue.

Here a Dennis there a Dennis everwhere a Dennis, Dennis ......Of interrupted care, and interrupted identity formation .

You hear it inside his speech and it all makes sense, so much sense, when you know his story . Him . When you finally feel , him .

The continuous discontinuity . Dennis the paradoxed child - here and there without any care. But haunted intelligent eyes that saw so much and desperately wanted to glue it together . For expression. Reflected expression . Struggling with his own tongue and stuttering .

Those haunted eyes show hurt and if you dare to feel them, they really hurt you too ....

Frustration and anger is part of his life coupled with a broken ability to express himself . It's far worse in the UK mental health system if people cannot express themselves fully, or because they cannot, they may show rage and torment in their twisting faces . That is sometimes a recipe for misunderstanding and being ignored, or even being dismissed by busy staff .. Dismissed, and that dismissal is so easily another small unit of rejection that accumulates with others and then goes into crisis .

Dennis had problems too with the health of some of his family and his own life and finances - his own ability to keep the remaining glue in his life split apart many months ago ..

A few night ago he turned up on my doorstep. It was late and the Birmingham city lights lit a dull overhead orange sky and you could hear the hum and low wide traffic swish in the skies over the city . I was busy with family affairs and our own health matters. I had to give him some taxi fare to go back to a home he felt could not trust, and I gave him some money to eat .

But another part of me knew I had to turn him away too . I held his hand and shook it before he got into the taxi . It was freezing . Freezing and I don't know how he bore the cold. It was like turning a child away .

I have health problems too and I could not have been out in that dark cold night without getting ill. Panged by conscience and shame I contacted the mental health services a day later . I've heard nothing back . I will chase it up . I worry about Dennis . I recall he came shuffling into an art session I put on for others . He had his ragged dark blue woolley gloves . We gave him all the biscuits he could eat . And more to take with him .

He'd been with us on a previous art session when he was more functional. I tried to help him conceive of writing in another way . Going back to basics I told him not to try to "write letters" but to draw them ....

"On a cave wall Dennis..... On a cave wall ..."

He laughed ... But I told him :

"Dennis trust the primitive child in you to make the art of writing from drawing and make it fun and no longer a stress ........."

He only came to that one "writing" session at that time . Then turned up months later - all broken up .. A colleague felt alarmed . Dennis was so broken .

Yet I could communicate with his brokenness. It was as if I had a tragedy in front of me like another Piccasso drawing inside an organic soul . Angulatedly broken but actually inherently sensible because it depicted slashed care and dislocated times .. I felt them .

Dennis could not cry it all out . It had taken him over .

Dennis was then the ghost, the living ghost of all his fragmented times .. Mostly without the ability to speak them into a bridge of sense . And no ability to write. Oh how he wanted to write, but could not .

I photographed Dennis's gloves ..

I am ashamed he had no better gloves . I am ashamed he cannot write into being, parts of his life and precious tragedy we all need to hear .

I am ashamed that NHS mental health services have missed his needs so often ..

I am ashamed he is like a helpless Jesus begging into our souls with ragged welfare gloves on ....

British National Party And Birmingham North UK

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The BNP leaflets are going out into Birmingham North UK

see larger image

Art De Rivers : Reporting From Birmingham North

For years in Kingstanding and Erdington, two areas of Birmingham North UK people have been saying the sitting MP Sion Simon was not a particularly good M.P.

On February the 3rd he announced his intention to resign as an MP .

Birmingham MP to quit Commons in bid to be first mayor

Sion Simon MP said he was initially sceptical about the need for mayors

Birmingham Erdington MP Sion Simon is to step down from Parliament and as a minister to campaign to become the city's first elected mayor.

He will give up his seat at the next election to lobby for the city to adopt the elected mayor system.

Mr Simon, 41, told the BBC: "The answer to Birmingham's problems simply don't lie in London.

"I'm certainly committed to putting myself forward and becoming the Labour candidate."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

So what's the local story :

The running local Erdington/Kingstanding joke was to call him : "The Invisible Man" .

And that was even before he got a Junior Minister's portfolio with the Dept Of Culture Media and Sport .

Some local people have said his responses back to constituents took months and they were not happy with that . Others were aware of his research and journalist background with the Telegraph and the fact that he wrote in the local Great Barr Observer every few weeks trotting out for local consumption ritualistic support of the Labour Party whose policies did little for areas of either Kingstanding or Erdington which together formed the "Erdington" constituency where he is the sitting M.P.

Kingstanding is peculiarly locked out of easy access for productive work for working age people most of whom are still the ex-working class. Now often an underclass or "workless class" they often express they feel like aliens in their own city of 50% immigration .

"There has been a failure to address people who : are already here" - they will often say .

There has been waves of immigration into Birmingham UK and the last was the E.U. Polish who came to the UK for work . Some worked in nearby Erdington Town Centre shops - some have returned to Poland since the Zloty and standard of living has has risen and the prospects of work look good there.

People in Kingstanding are more aware of how thin the economic ice is for the underclasses stuck in their own non-job arctics and economically immobile districts. There's no where to walk or work without drowning in no prospect pool.

Engineering factories in days gone past used to furnish most of the Erdington and Kingstanding jobs : I.M.I. Witton, and Forgings and Presswork in nearby Perry Barr , Tufnells , and other companies have gone .. There are shops in Perry Barr "One Stop Centre" and service sector workers for Govt , Local Govt and a few small unusually successful firms are left to pump the local economy and a lot of the rest of it is pumped by Gov't benefits..

Into this all too common half economic mirage of an economy with the weave of financial failures of the banking system and the UK comes the British National Party .. But why might they be successful in Kingstanding or Erdington ?

The answer is not hard to see and hear . The new white underclasses of 20 years or so have recognised they have no economic and social place or at least they "feel" it has been eroded. The Labour Party is the party of the middle classes .

The locals are not about to analyze capitalism either, and its mass movement of money and productive capacity to China and India . No.

What they will do is see they are sharing resources with others who they deem are incomers and have less claim on those resources . The local claims are that Somali's got houses and benefits by sending their kids into Birmingham UK from Holland where they already had places . This claim has circulated for years . The UK Children Act was used to gain a foothold - so locals say - and it resulted in Somali adults finally arriving. There are 14000 or so now in Birmingham. That is their story . They point to a story of a local white woman with kids who needed housing and who spent time living in a car locally .. That's the tale you hear .. Like it or not .

They point to the Birmingham Social Services using money meant for old people to service the needs of those who came in for asylum . "Kids first" they say "they used the kids .."

That is what they say .. These are old stories you can hear locally .

The failure to debate immigration into the UK openly, sensibly, and really vigorously is part of another bigger failure : namely the failure to debate and fix upon the major message of our times : Massive economic change and how to adapt .

Politicians sidled around these issues - with the implications all being covered over by borrowing and living off credit and false-money .. Money that disappeared because it had no basis in easily collateralised reality coupled with more immanent realizable cash value i.e. not at 10 or 20 gymnastic derivative document removes ..

Where does health lie ? It lies in engagement and breaking the silly moulds of spinning truth into webs of false promise . Give everyone the hard message especially those in the main middle sectors of society who have burgeoned over 20 years - 10 at least in the UK with no deep laden industrial productivity .

The UK has to compete with China and India and it has to do it without a huge aspiring unproductive "aspirational class" which grew under Labour but produced little but bureaucracy and "media"

In Kingstanding and Erdington there is a latent talent of working class craft and muscle ..Include it better, is the message .

Or the language of the British National Party will take over, because they see all the emotional disaffection and the way it expresses itself towards others .

They will use it and in B'ham North their leaflets are going out through the Kingstanding letterboxes - this is one obtained today .

Obtained in Birmingham North Feb 10th The BNP Leaflet

Source: userwatchuk.blogspot.com

Does Sion Simon stand a chance of becoming the Mayor of Birmingham as he shifts sideways into that promised land ? Ask the people in Kingstanding and Erdington ...

In December, Mr Simon was forced to apologise after it emerged he rented a second home from his sister, in contravention of Commons rules.

He promised to repay a sum, thought to run to about £20,000, saying it had been an oversight.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Cost Of The Quango Tango Dance Is Revealed In UK

A financial therapist named Ravid Freud once said :

"If you dream of a five legged creature dancing awkwardly with a pirate bandana on and one gonad dangling - you'll know its a U.K. Quangling dancing the fandango quango tango - or something like that .. And its big mouth will be eating money greedily .. And no it does not like bananas and apples ... It eats paper, uses lots of paper, and even excretes paper out ... Its also known as Raper-paper beast .. To experts of course...

And the people who have to clean it up eventually are called Civil Pervants .. Yet the cost of this extra paper dancing is very high indeed .. No wonder the Amazon forests are dwindling with all that extra pulping going on to feed the dancing Quangling"

QUASI AUTONOMOUS NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION = QUANGO

"Brown's quango infatuation costs taxpayer £46.5bn - Willott Thursday, 04, Feb 2010 12:00 Today, the Government published new figures showing that the annual cost of running quangos has risen to £46.5bn – a rise of nearly £10bn since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. "

Source: politics.co.uk

But what does the Health Service Journal say : (subscription only)

"Spending on quangos such as Monitor and the Health Protection Agency has increased by almost £10bn under Gordon Brown, the Cabinet Office revealed yesterday"

By 2008 it was revealed that the UK version of NIMHE - National Institute of Mental Health had cost over £100 million and it has now morphed into another body known as the National Mental Health Development Unit (NMHDU) whose job it is to capture mental health stats across the country. A rumour suggested it had a £40 million budget. Who knows exactly? Well maybe when the Freedom of Information material comes back we'll know .. Another offshoot of NIMHE known as the Care Services Improvement Partnership CSIP has probably cost 40 million.

There has been some evidence the NMHDU is funding (like NIMHE once did) a selective elite of fitter mental health Users become careerists known as the National Service Users Network (NSUN) for some work . Users when asked in parts of the UK are not sure how many real members it has, as opposed to its front end claim of being "National" and connected at set up , more to other charity heads .

What is clear is it has used up £750k of a grant 500 k from Comic Relief and 250k from another Foundation . What for, is difficult to grasp . Perhaps it will get in touch and account for itself ?

It was helped by a figure from the Mental Health Foundation known as David Crepaz Keay who once worked for Mental Health Media and left there suddenly in 2005 . Perhaps he can get in touch with a lot of detail and leave it here about the audit trail of all this

In the past it appears in mental health there has been quite a lot of inside influencing occurring at Government level on advisory boards with the construction of bodies like NIMHE - the truth about this has been shadowy though. A freedom of information request to the DOH in 2005 took 3 years to process and finally showed that named "advisors" on the SHIFT board ( a DOH/NIMHE body dealing with mental health anti stigma) were often ex charity or charity heads or charity officers .

The Dept of Health had resisted giving their names . Some of these have morphed from one position of advantage to another and the two large mental health charities partly involved, MIND and Rethink went onto to capture £20 million in grants, for work that relatively few of the public appear to even know about much or even care about .

Has this Charity coalition been an aid to mental health patients or could Patient Choice of (non acute) recovery treatments in the localities in involving market supply sides of recovery help and support, have been implemented sooner without them ? Why was Patient Choice in mental heath skewed ?

MIND itself is now a supplier of CBT in part of the UK . Is all this coalition dancing healthy and did it seriously represent the national mental health patient interest ?

The big question remains as to why Central Gov't felt it had to had to dominate the localities so much, suck them dry of soul, and spend so much money on administration, dubious cross organisational QUANGO projects and social engineering. The truth is people in localities wanted productive lives and direct help for that, not parasitic bureaucracies and their thinking, without real health choices in their lives .

Its clear in mental health that Labour themselves created an impoverished mechanism too of serious patient "choice" in the shape of means tested Direct Payment benefits for mental health Users with social care needs locked impossibly into local council payment control and in Birmingham UK in 2010 with a population of over 1 million there is only approximately 35 mental health Users on them ! That has taken several years to grow, in 2005 there was 1 MH User in Direct Payments to help them obtain social care for their needs .

Yet Central Gov't wasted huge amounts of money on central driven projects influenced by networks that are still operating through the mental health charities and leftover quangoes . Whatever Government comes into power in 2010 beyond the election in the UK, it needs to unleash local power and re-balance it so that network Londonism and the social engineering cliques of centralising network power there cannot suck money their way and give little for it to local peoples - apart from of course, a lot of energy sapping bureaucracy ..

NHS = Noose Health Services - Four Deaths : Police Investigate

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Health Service Journal (Subscription Only) - on 22nd Jan and the Independent on 21st Jan have reported on four suicides/deaths of patients at the :

Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust

Police are investigating these matters . Some of these deaths are by hanging .

Trusts as from 2007 can now also come under investigation under the provisions of

Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007.

Police said the investigation into the trust, which provides mental health care throughout East and West Sussex, would be "wide-ranging and exploratory". Inquiries began following the death of Sussex Police Sergeant Richard Bexhell, 49, who was found hanged at the Woodlands unit in Hastings and later died in hospital on August 30 last year.

When John Blair, 40, from Hastings, was found hanged in his room at the same unit on October 19, police decided to look back at other deaths at the trust. The other two deaths relate to those of 35-year-old Susanna Anley, who is understood to have suffocated herself with a plastic bag in April 2008 at Woodlands, and Michael Stevens, 53, from Lancing, who hanged himself with a belt in his room at the Meadowfield unit in Worthing.

Source: independent.co.uk

A public statement has been made by the Sussex Trust below . Its worth looking closely at the way this Trust is run financially too. It's not without considerable pressure from Gov't that Trusts are expected to deliver using very lean management techniques which can mean a lack of staff sometimes produced by the desire to keep in budget and also create the magical surpluses which can be used later for "patient benefit". This trust in fact made a £7.4 million surplus which finally reduced after other costs were taken from it to a £3.5 million surplus..

At least one death points to failure to implement policies it has be asked why that was . Staff ratio problems ? Not enough manpower ?

From Health Service Journal (subscription only) :

"Michael Stevens, 53, from Lancing, hanged himself in his room at the Meadowfield unit in Worthing. An inquest into his death last year heard Mr Stevens, a hospital porter, was able to hang himself following a “breakdown in communication” and a failure to implement observation policies."

Statement issued by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in response to story in The Argus on 22 January 2010As an organisation, we value our close working relationship with Sussex Police. We are fully supporting the police with their investigations and will continue to help them. We have over 600,000 contacts a year with people who depend on us for support with mental health, learning disability and substance misuse problems; it is vital that our service users feel confident about the services that we provide. Of the total number of people we support, approximately 10 percent are admitted to hospital. These patients are very ill and sadly a high proportion are suicidal.

There are around 120 suicides of patients being treated in psychiatric hospitals in England. Every suicide is clearly a tragedy and if it happens on one of our wards, we follow a very detailed review process based on national best practice. The four deaths of patients referred to in recent press reports – two in 2008 and two in 2009 – have been the subject of detailed reviews in line with our own internal policies and the requirements of our regulator, the Care Quality Commission. These reviews do not always highlight failings; in many instances it is only with hindsight that it is possible to identify potential changes or improvements. When we do identify a failing, however, we take action and ensure that changes are made to address it. The policies that support our delivery of clinical care are based on national guidelines and reviewed by external agencies including the National Health Service Litigation Authority. We ensure that what we learn from every incident is shared across our organisation and actions fully implemented. In the cases of the most recent, extremely sad deaths, these internal reviews are currently being completed. Following the Woodlands deaths we closed the unit to conduct a full safety assessment and have commissioned an independent review which will be validated by the National Patient Safety Agency. This reflects our absolute commitment to scrutinising every aspect of these tragedies, and being clear and open about any failings that are identified. The inquests for three of the people who died are still to take place. Sussex Partnership has extended our deepest sympathy to the families of those who have died and the results of our reviews are being shared with the families and Her Majesty’s Coroner.

Editors Note: Please see refer to the following statement from our Chair John Bacon regarding the planned resignation of Lisa Rodrigues, Chief Executive Officer. Ms Rodrigues will be leaving Sussex Partnership in August 2010.

Leading NHS Chief Executive to move on after nine years at the top Lisa Rodrigues, Chief Executive at one the country’s largest mental health, learning disability and substance misuse trusts, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, has announced plans to move on after nine years at the top. Appointed to Sussex Partnership in January 2006, having been Chief Executive of initially one, latterly two predecessor NHS trusts since 2001, Lisa can be credited for putting the people who use mental health, learning disability and substance misuse services on the map in Sussex. On announcing her decision to go this summer, as one of the Sussex’s longest serving NHS Chief Executives Lisa said: “I believe that all NHS staff, whether working at the frontline or in supporting roles, should maintain a healthy work-life balance in order to provide the best possible services. “After almost nine years running mental health services in Sussex I will be taking a break from top level NHS management to concentrate on fulfilling some personal goals including a 1,000 mile bike ride with my husband and writing two books”.

Lisa has given Sussex Partnership over six months notice in order to enable a full and open recruitment process for the new chief executive to be undertaken. “Having made such a big decision”, she says “I am very much looking forward to my new life but I will miss Sussex Partnership. The enthusiasm and dedication of staff at the Trust to continue improving services is second to none and a credit to the NHS”.

John Bacon CB, Chair of Sussex Partnership said: “Lisa’s contribution to mental health services in Sussex has been immense. Her passion and commitment for improving mental health, learning disabilities and substance misuse services has seen the Trust go from strength to strength and on behalf of Sussex Partnership I would like to thank her for her tremendous work.

“In the past two years”, John continued “the Trust has achieved both good and excellent ratings from it regulators and now provides services that are well regarded by the people who use them. Under Lisa’s leadership the Trust has prepared with great care for the economic downturn, including producing our new strategy Better by Design and a complete overhaul of management and administrative posts. The new strategy will enable us to continue to improve the quality and efficiency of everything we do”.

Until she hands over to her successor it is still business as usual for Lisa who will continue to lead the implementation of the Trust’s Better by Design strategy and working with staff, partners and the people who use our services to ensure they get the services they deserve.

Source: sussexpartnership.nhs.uk

1. Extra Financial Information From Sussex Partnership Trust Annual report 2009 BELOW :

01/08/08 - 31/03/09

NOTE £000
Income from activities 144,880
Other operating income 7,064
Operating expenses (144,457)
OPERATING SURPLUS 7,487
Profit on disposal of fixed assets 2
SURPLUS BEFORE INTEREST 7,489
Finance income 437
Finance cost - interest expense 0
Other net gains/(losses) on financial instruments 0
Other finance costs - unwinding of discount (19)
Other finance costs - change in discount rate on provisions 0
SURPLUS BEFORE TAXATION 7,907
Taxation 0

SURPLUS AFTER TAXATION AND MINORITY INTEREST 7,907 Public Dividend Capital dividends payable (4,373) RETAINED SURPLUS FOR THE PERIOD 3,534

Notes 1 to 23 form part of these accounts. All income and expenditure is derived from continuing operations.. 2. FURTHER INFORMATION BELOW BY CARE QUALITY COMMISSION 2009

"Is there evidence that the safety of staff and service users is ensured?"

FAIR (see table)

"Is there an infrastructure in place that promotes safety?"

WEAK (see table)

3.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Source: userwatchuk.blogspot.com

See Also : FEB 11th POLICE PROBE /HASTINGS OBSERVER

Black Star Studies Shine On White UK Splits Brilliantly

The strangest thing that has occurred and is still rumbling on through the shadows and hardly detected white matters in some of the white mental health UK community has to be the continuing reactions to the Guardian's Dec 9th article which repeated the powerful claims of researchers who had studied 500 Afro Caribbeans with "onset psychoses" .

Known as the Aesop study backed by NHS psychiatrists it did not support a genetic or biological explanation for either schizophrenia or psychoses instead it showed overwhelmingly that social and family distress and poor parental attachments coupled with the mystifying stresses of living in a white dominated society with its professional middle class medical models was apparently condemning people with hyper distressed lives to "diagnosis" of psychoses..

The point is, the UK CLASS "professional" model of perceiving others is a real factor still, in one set of people describing another set of people as "unmanageable" and worthy of medically labeling "psychotic"

And, Afro Caribbeans are people perceived with effusive personalities and often expressive capacity that can be interpreted too easily as "mad" especially if they are "banged up" in a ward after going into a life crisis filled with layers of previous distresses

"The researchers ruled out genetic issues as the cause, and the previously held suspicions that psychiatrists were more inclined to diagnose schizophrenia when dealing with black males in particular. They concluded instead that the root causes lay in a whole range of social factors that lead to severe social isolation – people living alone, unemployment, and the vexed issue of separation from parents due to family breakdowns in the African Caribbean community amounting to a kind of "sensory deprivation" – all of which have a dramatic effect on people with a tendency towards schizoid personalities."

Source: guardian.co.uk

The Aesop study has to produce more eventual re-percussive effects in the white middle class community and the other white underclass communites - make no mistake about it ..

Not least and perhaps unpredictably, in the charity Rethink which is a mainly white dominated Surrey UK based mental health charity always pre-dominantly looking for the genetic and medical causes of "Schitozphrenia" and which made overtures to the black charity body the Afiya Trust in 2007 that has just featured its head Patrick Vernon in the Guardian on Feb 3rd. speaking about a better deal for black mental health in the UK

"A manifesto for mental health services for people from BME groups is being drafted by the Afiya Trust charity, a move prompted by two concerns: that the government's latest mental health strategy, New Horizons (NH), signals the end of specific efforts to address treatment inequities between some BME groups and wider society; and the appropriation of recent research by the government in the development of its NH strategy, and ­latterly, by the British National party (BNP) to suit their own agendas around race and mental health."

Source: guardian.co.uk

There has been a real attempt by the Mental Health Charities in the UK to form powerful coalitions of influence (Rethink and MIND ) and not always good ones either since they have often skewed the agenda away from truly individualised Patient Choice into Gov't led welfare hothoused "work and recovery" orientated models that missed the real need for individual social support and treatment choices long ago .

From Afiya Trust's own charity paperwork in 2007 we can see partly in the codified language why Rethink was rejected as a partner :

"While contact was made with Rethink, a preliminary consensus was anecdotally elicited from some network members, which informed the decision not to pursue the prospects of working with Rethink. If was felt by a significant number of the initial membership that there were areas of differences in values and principles when it came to the position taken on mental distress (as opposed to mental illness), as well as a difference in approaches to working in some areas of working. Subsequently as the first priority outcome was increasing network membership , the Catch-A-Fiya Network decided to defer partnership working with Rethink in the first year . source : THE AFIYA TRUST REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - 31st March 2007 .. Registered charity No: 1061596 "

So the Aesop study of 500 Afro Carribeans wrongly medically labelled as psychotic is a real star shining brilliantly right into the dark white corners and that means onto the leading UK schitzophrenic charity Rethink too, forever encouraging claims that social stigma on schitzophrenics is rife ..

The biggest dark matter problem too in the UK is Class and its well hidden but the Afro Carribean study has come embarrasingly close to showing it up brilliantly...

Does anyone wonder why the Guardian does not see that ?

Asylum Bin Laden's Jan 2010 Mental Health Warning UserWatch Exclu$ive

IS THIS TERROR-WRIST REALLY JUST A WANKER - YOU DECIDE !

Rumour has it that bosses all over the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust are bucklin' up with old straitjackets to fend off any swift punches to their fat midriffs from Asylum Bin Laden's "Birmingham Brothers"..Said to be hiding around Units practicing User-fu . Wards staff it is reported to us know they are finally facing a User-backlash ..

Disenchanted by bullshit User Involvement which has almost certainly replaced Patient Choice in Mental Health for cultures of tamed Users who keep the status quo going, the "Birmingham Brothers" appear to have their roots in the saner side of madness which wants to tell the system to : "Fuck off!"

Staff who contacted UserWatch have claimed "Fuck Off!" Notices, also have written on them on the buildings owned by the Trust .

"WE WANT PATIENT CHOICE " and :

"THE SELF NEEDS ITS OWN HOMELAND - GO FUCK YOURS!"

UserWatch will report on any further outrageous tapes sent to us ..We are naturally closely liaising with the West Midlands Police's Social Paradoxes and Comedy Unit ..

Our sympathy goes to Sue Turner the CEO who some claim has created a watchtower of best welded steel for an office ..... Mind you its transparent - but only if you are inside it ..

UserWatch Correspondent

Mental Health Irish Petition Against ECT Without User Consent

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By Art De Rivers NowPublic.Com

ECT : Electro Convulsive Therapy has been controversial for some time and has attracted opposition to it in most countries .. Mind Freedom in the US has campaigned against its use in the case of Ray Sandford

Now there's an Irish Petition : (CLICK HERE)

We the undersigned support the deletion of section 59b of the Irish Mental Health Act 2001 which relates to the involuntary use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Section 59b presently states:

(b) where the patient is unable or unwilling to give such consent—

(i) the programme of therapy is approved (in a form specified by the Commission) by the consultant psychiatrist responsible for the care and treatment of the patient, and

(ii) the programme of therapy is also authorised (in a form specified by the Commission) by another consultant psychiatrist following referral of the matter to him or her by the first-mentioned psychiatrist.

Please note that this Bill and this petition does not interfere with the right of people to choose to have ECT administered if that is their wish.

Source: delete59b.com

ECT is not a therapy in any sense that a patient is consciously in charge of a consciously led and gradual process resolving mental health problems.

Its a process of shocking the brain and arguably blocking off depression and its causes, and replaces depression with a degree of memorylessness with little further access into what is causing the depression .....

Its like an electrical amputation of part of the Self .. Some people may wish it though so finally even as the Irish petition notes, there has to be a choice

Seeing people after ECT is often like seeing "zombed" out selves that re-awake into the present ...

When underlying causes pressure consciousness again for connection into meaning, albeit disturbing meaning sometimes and depression again ensues a person in charge of the patient (under Irish law ) could seek a second opinion to repeat the pattern of "therapy" ...

The corners of old psychiatric practice and tools of degrees of emotional butchery of the Self still exist campaigners believe .

How many of you have seen people ultimately benefit from ECT ? Perhaps a very few .

I have seen people seriously lose memory and personal time because of this process . I have known of people claim of being forced into ECT process and I have known those who had ECT face the demons of memory under their psychiatric "depressions " and render the ECT practice , for them , obselete.

The compression of the emotionally damaged self and denial of it will always create "depression" as an emotional after effect .. Electrical shocks can keep it at bay too but actually it needs connecting back into its own human story , where it can grieve and wail out its distorted and unravelling story of pain and then grow the acceptance that life is terribly terribly flawed .....

Sadness is not an evil. Sadness is the Self collecting its own brand of accepted wisdom.

Psychic pain though has to be treated carefully when processed into human connection and there's the rub , there's the real problem across western cultures in so far as we need more practitioners of restoration of the human narrative and therapy supply that enables the Self to emotionally grieve into acceptance its damages ..

That costs money . But unless we pay, it will cost part of our cultures paying in illness we never listened to deeply enough ..

Many will stay ill of mind because part of their mind is not allowed to be integrated back into the personal-Self ..

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Mental Health Main House Birmingham PD Service Official Consultation

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ITS AN OFFICIAL CONSULTATION

Well of course it was on the cards for a long time, but the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust has dragged its feet for a quite a time on altering services to fit more people in the community who suffer in the personality disorder spectrum (PD)..

Self harmers have self harmed and many have felt suicidal and often been alone or with ragged self help services in Birmingham UK and people have languished in the community with very little hands-on therapeutic help . We know that at UserWatch - we have heard it for years, and every year ..

Virtually all the resources for PD and Borderline PD locally were pushed into Main House ("specialism") and its outreach component Bridger House for those with "Tier 4" (a severity measure ) levels of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) .

Over a few years Main House has dealt with less than 15 people per annum.. This is in a population of over 1 million people in Birmingham UK ..






The question from those with other so called "Tiers of severity" (2 and 3) is , it appears to be a self fufilling service prophesy that people will get so bad and BECOME Tier 4 if they are not seen and helped far sooner ..Or they will die ..

BPD and PD have the highest suicide rates of all mental health suicides recorded in the UK (77 %) . Sadly that speaks for itself since UK services have often left people to themselves and offered just a bit of primary care drugging or "social inclusion" - or this and that, tinkering dressed up as "care" ...

Its often been a slow long death watch by some CPN's or Care-Co-ordinators.

What possessed BSMHFT Board delaying for so long a new Birmingham wide PD community orientated service as opposed to keeping a failed business model that had made money (because at one time it did) since the new push to help more people in the community with levels of Personality Disorder has had at least Dept of Health momentum for years since 2004 when a keynote document was produced ..

"Personality Disorder No Longer A Diagnosis For Exclusion "

That report surfaces again we see but its been a languishing part of the UK version of NIMHE's spread of dubious interest groups dressed up as patient reps .

It was a totally obvious report to write and showed up the previous know-it-all mechanical staff insight biased DOH patient anti-stance and critically showed nothing new but simple human sense :

I.E : If you don't hear damaged people in the community and allow them some ways to navigate pain, memories and feelings of child abuse, and relationship difficulties that evolve from poor or spoiled developments - you make them socially excluded and very unwell. The system of UK mental "health" actually therefore we have seen time and time again actively creates SOCIAL UNWELLNESS ...

BSMHFT has been hanging onto Main House because it did attract revenue- years ago - but slowly it has dwindled its capacity to attract bed purchases from other parts of the UK through other UK commissioning Primary Care Trusts (PCT's) . Those PCT's are looking to their own local needs and the push for local models of care instead of propping up a "specialist service" ...

One might say rather obviously - that if these other UK wide PCT's do push for more local models of PD help then perhaps the "Tier 4" population of PD suffering will slowly diminish - perhaps it will not, as more people come forwards for help as money is released into new opportunities for at least some kind of treatments , therapy and care local to people's needs ..We will all see .

There are some very good staff in personality disorder services who are eclectic of approach and will not necessarily be rigidly enforcing Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) type therapies on patients in the community who in any case have complex needs and not simple depressions for which CBT has been primarily recommended . [Dialectical Behavioural Therapy tends to be the preferred therapy of choice for many PD patients if they can get it ]

Yet perhaps the biggest lesson about PD comes from another but related quarter regarding better human and locally-inclusive therapy responses and it shows up the way services actually falsely construct themselves "into speciality " around other labels like "psychotic" regarding what has been seen to be seriously distressed and developmentally damaged mental health Users.

The Study of 500 (reported by the Guardian on Dec 9th ) Afro Carribbeans done by South London and Maudsley MH Hospital breaks open the mystification and uselessness of the term "Psychoses" . It is redundant, the study showed no disease process , or gene process but a massive correlation of socially distressed life events which it is arguable the health system just drugged out of the way into more personal and internal social isolation . Do you get the point ?

We have a socially unreal mental health system in the UK ..

Do the services and their personnel get the point yet .. ? After all they did the study and are more than silent about its "diagnostic-tool" shattering implications of the term "psychosis"...

Something else is needed ... Severely Socially Damaged Human Identity ?

People are made into damaged selves by socially and family constructed distress over the long term . Frankly having a (Tier 4 ) service like Main House re-inforces that too . People need intervention via better serious psycho-social-therapy in the community and we need to unravel people at that level there, and resolve issues there .

Think on, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust Board because you are presiding over descriptors of people's damaged lives in ways that are seriously pseudo scientific .

You see , read the study about the 500 Afro Caribbeans . No "psychoses" exists . There's no basis for it as medical label at all . Its a false shibboleth . False science . Its a mystification of hyper distress caused through family separations and social distresses and because it is, its arguably "mis diagnosis" .... And that my white brothers and sisters on the BSMHFT Board is legal territory ..

But that study begs looking at other descriptors (not diagnosis tools) of human damage and have a guess what ?

Those 500 Afro Caribbeans studied fit into the PD spectrum of human damage that for so long has been treated as "un-treatable" .. Yeah ... The services have helped perpetuate bad health and bad descriptions but most of all its killing people at a distance - either existentially or literally ..

Murder by mystification ? Suicide that is profoundly disguising not being seen , unless through a pseudo science and services that medicalises or invalidates many humans in the UK ....




Further reading :

Learning the lessons:

"A multi-method evaluation of dedicated community-based services for people with personality disorder"

Sion Simon MP Faced Cash For Christmas Trees Questions

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Sion Simon MP Asked About Christmas Tree Purchases

The mental health UserWatch delusionary dog's (Piddlekwik) wet legged habits on the Royal Parks trees provoked us to get questions asked about Sion Simon MP's Department's costs of Christmas Trees ..

Piddlekwik does not exist to those who cannot see him by the way .. But they made a film about Harvey didn't they ? ... So do not mock us, you stigmatisers ..We just have special sightedness ..

Sion Simon is the MP for Birmingham Erdington UK and is often called locally : "Mr Invisible" and he is also the (Under-secretary for the Department of Culture Media and Sport ) ...

Its seems Sion's Department can furnish Christmas trees in royal parks but he personally really did not robustly support the needs for instance of the Erdington community (where he is the M.P. ) in trying to get the Rookery Park House in Erdington, facilitated into arts and community use.

Maybe he can refute that in the Great Barr Observer ?

A local interest group in that type of community facilitation has been around for years trying to improve community arts facilitation and it never never happened at the Rookery House Park right under Sion's nose, and his nearby offices ... Sion of course locally is reckoned to have been parachuted into the safe Labour Erdington seat because he has shown his loyalty to the party (in some kind of way ) and is quite ambitious with a keen journalistic-researchers edge .. Local people we have heard from, complain to us , that his responses if they ever get them to concerns, take months ..

On the 5th January Sion answered questions in Parliament quick enough about Christmas Tree costs ..

"David Davies (Monmouth, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many Christmas trees were purchased by his Department and its agency in each of the last five years; what the cost was of those trees in each year; from where the trees were sourced; what account was taken of the sustainability of the sources of the trees; and by what process the trees were disposed of."

"Siôn Simon (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Birmingham, Erdington, Labour)

The information requested is as follows:

(a) Department for Culture, Media and Sport
	Number of trees purchased	Cost (£)
2005	n/a	n/a
2006	4	565
2007	3	446
2008	3	559
2009	3	559
n/a = Not available.

The Department's Christmas trees are purchased each year from sustainable sources within the United Kingdom, through its facilities management contractor. The trees are composted after use.

(b) The Royal Parks
	Number of trees purchased	Cost (£)
2005	17	1,700
2006	14	1,000
2007	13	1,600
2008	19	1,700
2009	17	1,200

The Royal Parks' Christmas trees are purchased each year from sustainable sources within the United Kingdom, through its nursery contractor. They include those placed in offices, playgrounds, memorial gardens, outside in the parks, in catering outlets and those passed on to other stakeholders. Some of these costs are therefore recharged to contractors. All the trees are disposed of as part of the Royal Parks' green waste recycling scheme. "

But what of Sion's own expense costs as a MP ? - they did not come out too quickly did they ? The Daily Mail reported on them though ... Take a look below .. It's just as well we did a little research about our office dog Piddlekwik and his piss taking on Royal Christmas Trees.

We feel we have improved all readers mental health by making them smile too ... UBT UserWatch Behavioural Therapy is free, and we do not take expenses from the public.

£21000 Owed by SION SIMON MP

Credit goes to the Daily Mail
Dec 18th 2009 Edition.

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Mental Health : Borderline Personality Disorder Man Detained In Morocco Drugs Claim

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Phil Lockwood

By Art De Rivers - NowPublic.com

Known to some personality disorder sufferers in the UK, Phil Lockwood a Borderline Personality Disorder Mental Health sufferer who has campaigned for better UK services, has just been detained by the Moroccan authorities for possession of cannabis .

At this time it is not known from the Moroccan authorities how much cannabis he was in possession of, but a Facebook group claim it was a small amount .

"He is currently in surprisingly good spirits... so lets help him stay that way. He faces anything from 2 months to 2 years for being caught with a personal amount of cannabis - although if he is charged with commercial smuggling, this could be anything from 10-20 years.

Philip Lockwood was caught trying to leave Morocco on the 30th December 2009 with a small amount of cannabis on him.

Philip suffers from borderline personality disorder, and has been successfully controlling his condition by using cannabis for a number of years.

He is currently being held in Inezgane prison, near Agadir in Morocco. At the time of creating this group, he has had no British consular assistance or contact, and is surviving in the prison purely on the generosity of the others

Privacy Type:

Open: All content is public. "

Source: facebook.com

It was known amongst his UK compatriots that Phil Lockwood was involved with some kind of trade with Morocco . Apparently buying leather goods at wholesale prices in Morocco and trying to sell them in the UK . He was apparently trying to stand on his "own two feet" as work prospects in the UK were poor .

His friends and supporters on Facebook are concerned for his welfare and are asking that the UK consular officials in Morocco are contacted to support his well being .

"He is currently being held in Inezgane prison, near Agadir in Morocco. At the time of creating this group, he has had no British consular assistance or contact, and is surviving in the prison purely on the generosity of the other inmates there. In Morocco, you have to have people on the outside provide you with food."

Source: facebook.com

Supporters of Phil Lockwood can contact the British consulate through a consular official:

E-mail: Rabat.Consular@fco.gov.uk

See the Consular Website HERE


Moroccan Telecom search on UserWatch re: Phil Lockwood Story



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Mental Health Art - Saying Goodbye To 2009's Mental Health NHS Services

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Ahhhhh those really grate choiceless services of 2009

Thanks ADR for the art ...

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Mental Health : The Rise Of The Service Payers?

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Mental Health Users online on UKSurvivors Forum and elsewhere UserWatch notes have described themselves often enough as "patients", "Users" etc ...

Yet the formal truth is (as opposed to the politically correct long colonic cleaning journey of User-involvement) is they are first and foremost : "Service Payers" - who would have thought that?

Then rethink it perhaps ..Its true, and at least suggests another kind of balance of "patient-power" .. Where it goes from there though gets difficult .

Restoring the relationship (and proper balance of power) of accountability on public services to those who pay for them has to be based on who is in charge of needing to see how paid for services operate effectively or otherwise ....All "Service Payers" should be able to see detailed costs . Audits are normal for any form of business or organisation - unless they need hidden "slop-pery" and depend upon a lack of critical vision into them, and perhaps always can depend on an endless political pot of money .

"Partnership" is not possible with mental health services in a political context where everyone is supposed to be part of the State - this is sloppy nothingness, fantasy manipulation , and leads to fudgery and elite "Users" groups that pretend to be the User-Voice , locally and even nationally ....

"Service Payer" as a proper set of terms is based on implied immediacy of effect , strongly implied boundaries of being able to hold services to fuller account because you pay for them . And, to hold them to account with a real degree of proper independence and right to critically examine . The right to critically examine is easy to uphold - publish outcome measurement and accounts , and minutes of all committees barring patient information, and do it transparently - this is the age of the internet - but it has seen more methods of secret and closed governance within the NHS ..

Real patient choice should follow being a "Service Payer" too .. Try experiencing any of that with NHS public services in mental health . Its an uphill job ..But being able to have outcomes and costs also made transparent is, to repeat, a simple "Service Payer" right too.

Mental Health Users - patients etc , are actually all taxpayers (Service Payers) for public services . All of us ...Even long term mental health "Users" and even if they should be on benefits since they pay V.A.T. and other related taxes which are not hypothecated. So its for sure that they too pay within the tax take for mental health services ...

In 2010 and further on some can see this position and terms of "Service Payer" being re-invented in the political and social future because the last 10 years has seen little than a more selective and elite "Mental Health Userati" in the U.K. highjacking the planning and policy levels of mental health, and the grant cycles of the lottery, together with the mental health charities who have skewed their campaigning vision towards work related outcomes for mental health and not directly at Patient Choice ..

"Trust me I am a patient" did not happen in mental health - it was selectively tampered with and voices eradicated of the truer form of empowerment based on more direct control of patient recovery services .

Mental health services were always framed within the "sectionable" secondary care system too - and not seen to be part of the condition management primary-seconday care system. Patients were simply more de-voiced if they were located just outside of secondary care systems and more within the primary or community systems of care .

What did the mental health charities create ? No patient choice mechanism in mental health has been developed that is of much use at all . No real ownership of services has taken place because the link between being a Service Payer and Patient Choice and its rightful creation of a proper balance of power where services know their place has not occurred .

User Groups sprang up only to be highjacked into dominant charity and govt inspired "mental health promotion" or "work and recovery " related agendas - where was the idea of mental health recovering or managing patients, choosing their way forwards ? It was rendered impoverished.. They were locked out of real choice . The most acute example of that is the (personality disorders ) PD spectrum areas of very little treatment and with the highest suicide rate of all mental health related suicides .

The money to pilot Patient Choice really seriously in 2002 - 4 was highjacked by the U.K. NIMHE's creation and continued existence over several years (£120million - 2004 - 9 ..) and by eliter fitter Users that were mostly its staff or back door supporters.

They have not gone away . They have started to come back post-NIMHE in other forms and UserWatch will be doing more exposures of that later .

Could there be a new more realistic mental health service flag to wave which declares :

"I am a Service Payer because I do believe and will fight for the stand that a patient must have informed choices of fully transparent services and what they have to deliver, not others shaping services so the patient voice is magically wiped out inside the magical notion of a "Nationalised or other User Voice " created by an elite of partly secret collectives, the Labour party or others in charities they have collusively organised with .

I trust patient's potential to make informed choices - not political parties, or their idea bending social engineering philosophies that look after parts of a new bureau-admin-class "Userati" , and the staff that support them ... "

At UserWatch We think its time for the "Service Payers" to rise again as a proper reality that demands open accountability and transparency into service effectiveness and for the services to become services again not masters in disguise as partners.

Services in mental health should be opened up to market choice with competition like life itself. Power of purchase must be given to patients and their GP's. - that context restores patient democracy and power at a level where it can be properly experienced by individual patients .

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Mental Health Art Sugar-Droid Escapes Chrismas Syrup Land

By Kind Permission of Art De Rivers .

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New Mental Health Media On Sanity Island Spots Solar Hares ?

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Click on it to enlarge :

Look what we do for you at Christmas ...

Where else would you get quality mental health bullshit...