Friday, October 30, 2009

Ahhha ! The UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey Report Oct 2009

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By : Art de Rivers Now Public.com

Mental Health Watching In The UK/US .


FOR FULL DOWNLOAD OF REPORT IN PDF FORMAT SEE BELOW

Also available at : Justice4Kate.co


(UserWatch Editorial Comment : Just well done everyone who was involved in this)


This UK Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey was first reported about on NowPublic.com and the report stage is a first of its kind for the UK . As of today it has been sent to Dr Lynne Jones M.P the Joint Chair of the All Parliamentary sub Committee on mental health and the Care Quality Commission .

No taxpayers were billed for this survey . No large mental health charities were involved . No lottery funds were used up. It was consulted upon , done, designed and completed by the good spirit of P.D. service Users of the UK NHS services . It was truly User-led. It was politically independent, though the Socialist Health Association freely hosted the survey on Surveymonkey.com

Over to the Press release which has all the details :

"The User Led U.K. Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey was designed Online after consultation with UK Service Users and Phil Lockwood a volunteer advocate and support who runs a P.D. forum. There is a concern about loss of life (a suicide rate of up to 77%) in the P.D. spectrum community - (See the UK Dept of Health's "New Horizons" Page 72 quoted in the Survey results)

The UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey was hosted in May 2009 by the Socialist Health Association and with Martin Rathfelder's help who also helped promote it . It was also aided in promotion by the National Association of LINks members and their Chair, Malcolm Alexander .

The report and independent stewardship of the survey was completed by Paul Brian Tovey an Independent Mental Health Monitor and Service User. There was no cost to the taxpayer. All effort was voluntary.

By Oct 2009, 134 UK NHS Service Users had completed the survey . The vast majority of the Service Users were women (102) . Most respondents (97) mainly self attributed the often co-morbid condition-description of Borderline Personality Disorder to themselves.

The NHS mainly offered medication to most of the respondents (109).

The respondents (109) in Question 11. however, mainly wanted therapies and good social supports and when asked in their own words trended strongly towards a mixture of those. The NICE guidelines of Jan 2009 states medication should only be used in crisis.
The respondents when asked if the NHS was adequate for their needs stated :

No - 52% (70 Users)
Sometimes - 43% ( 58 Users)
Yes - 4.5% (6 Users)

When asked if respondents had Care Co-ordinators and Care Plan Approaches (CPA's) which included crisis plans (NICE guidelines support this particularly of Borderline P.D.)

59% (78 ) stated No .
33% (44) stated Yes.

It is a cause for some concern. There are many more findings in the survey with Users expressing the problems they have had with services in their own words .

The Care Quality Commission will be contacted and information offered to them .
119 NHS Trust or service locations were also named in the survey .

The full User Led UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey Report is attached."


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Friday, October 09, 2009

Mental Health Arts : The Ghost Smoke Children By The Star Mines

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Align Centre
Art By Silvis Rivers


Have You Seen Centauri Judy ?


If she spoke in wisps
With an alphabet of fog
She'd shiver a little and warn
Like Judy always did
Of the mad life Uranium Dog

You'd have to listen
From the cold circus of the ship's
Lights

Nearby the trackway
Of the smoke ghost's frights

And say

"Did you see Judy of Ward Centauri ?

Does she see you sometimes

And join your loss and story ? "

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Mental Health Art : Judy of Ward Centauri

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Art by Silvis Rivers




The Swordship Named Self Harm


On Ward Centauri
Where the yellow rockets fly

Where we all went super liberal
And all-abnormality
Sees eye to eye

Judy made it sometimes
So the planets
Could both laugh and cry

And sometimes one was wheeled out
Because tectonic pain
Made it collapse and die

She'd take the razor rocket
To the planet of Flutter
She was the sharp red captainess
Of the super space cutter

She discovered deep abuse
And the child-planet of Groom and Charm

And she sent in the swordship
Named Self Harm ....

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Thursday, October 08, 2009

Mental HealthTabour And Lory Freudian Policies


Mental Health Future Policy And Other Illusions ..


The blue and red weaves of the Labour and Tory parties are a kind of mauvey brown or is that maroon ..... Ahhh now there's a word "maroon" ...Hmmmmm... Have the parties been marooned? Are they both the colour of severly de-oxygenated blood?

David Freud keenly analysing where his financial footfall can balance on some unsteady policy books has "hoppted " for the Tories now .... He'll probably meet Tony Blair at David Cameron's tea and raid on welfare incapacity benefit piggybank parties ..

The anihilation of the UK working classes functionality for the fattened out torified middle class "aspirers" of the 1970's and 80's , 90's etc has only really seen the underlying contradictions of economics and over accredited narrow self interest finally at work . Who cared about contradictions though and social failures when there was endless invented money about? Governments did not really . Though they made noises and dances with selected groups .....

Bubble island UK has burst and has quickly put on its new fantasy cling films. Oh dear, its all see-through ..

Ahhh , now we have to re-invent what we got rid of .... The "working class" ... Or working underclass ... And in mental health UK that means you too , you crazy diamond... Only psychosis can protect you from the madness ... Jeese ... Get a handle on that ... World Ward 3 has begun ..Shellfire hallucinations are now common. Bang bang in your head . In some parts of the world they are totally real ..

At the Tory Party Conference Oct 7th 2009 - which really could have been the Labour Party conference, the economic elephant in the room of an unproductive country caused by politicians assenting to major shifts of oiled-capital and the invention of credit to get us through the productive void, has not really led to analysis of our mass neurotic economic UK unreality ... UH OH we are productively factorless - or is that factoryless ? Careful we might start recalling history and feel traumatised by our idiocy ..

We needed Sigmund Freud not David Freud and his welfare fix wizardry of words at the Tory Party Conference of Oct 7th . But he's not completely off target, except it might be noted the class cruelty of top down UK batter the benefit-dung classes, has yet to shape itself fully in the UK in its administration of "blame" and shame on the "benefit classes" - yet to become the slave classes as the western capital empire partly fails for decades yet - and loses its purple togas

That is , unless we all accept a different world of sharing and "fairing" and somehow we sail out of the nineteenth century expansion-empire world view into a thoughtful and feelingful age that newly discovered Bubble World will be over unless we slow down and accept human need and "locality as reality" .

"Global" is truly sick , heated up and very well Nino-ed, and can only exist in its mass shifts of money and production on the back of oil and final eco-hell.. The world cannot expand to meet our need to be fat and top cat everywhere .. There's not enough chip oil and burgers unless Mars is colonised and you can breathe carbon dioxide ..

Hang on a bit ... I have realised we are probably acclimatising already to Mars ... Do you wonder if we will meet the God of War there ? ..I bet he will have tatoos of all the politicians that took his advice . Maybe he came down amongst us already though ... Who knows? Everything is mixed up ... The "Tabour" party too are now the "Lories"... See what I mean .. Words are no longer obedient either .. Journachism has arrived ... I have been attacked by it too.

The UK has deep problems stored up over decades by suppressed class conflict and rivalling needs and class aspirations without a deep form of economic and social collateral of simple care that made us all genuinely fitter for a life and a reasonable death . It simply did not believe in meeting real needs in its services and even in its national and local economic policies to preserve local balances of production-capacity and health giving services. Plenty of people were kept in service jobs but in health plenty of people (more than ever) die or are harmed :

BBC 7th Oct 2009 :

"More than 5,700 patients in England died or suffered serious harm due to errors latest figures for a six-month period show.

The National Patient Safety Agency said there were 459,500 safety incidents from October 2008 to March 2009 - the highest rate since records began.

Patient accidents were the most common problem, followed by mistakes made during treatment and with medication."


Mental Health is but a small but important reflective section of the quantum social physics of social failure without therapy and redress. The Observer recently points out there's only 400 or so trained up therapists of the 3600 that are supposed to be in place to help the mentally health affected off Incapacity Benefits....

Oh well , put chemicals on the weeds and stingers near the margins . Keep em down and do not learn from them that your whole society is riddled with socially pointed crazing contradictions bluely concreted over :

Family life in the UK that does not meet childood developmental need that is not truly opened to examination , wider social relations that are not open to examination , class relations that are not open to examination ..Economic structure that reflects it all and has not been open to examination but promoted illusions instead .. Conformity to false social and economic adaptations and over-compromised individual and social needs remains a problem that has become more sophisticated politically, socially and individually .. So it appears without human solutions but with instead politically correct charities and "industries" keeping a "pc" poverty-industry alive with new corporate agendas that mean they swill in Gov't and lottery cash.. Short term performances will be the new fashion in the futures we will make because we do not wish to sustain better socially therapeutic support for the "un-adapted" ..

Disabled classes , be afraid . Unless ofcourse you are one of the "Toppies" all head and half heart ready to embark on controlling the rest of us for yourselves .. But oh dear , some of us are rolling our eyes and are aware . We see the crippled satire we have made ourselves into ..

Cutterflies from Internal Centauri do roam the skies .. Razor bladed butterflies .

Art sees and mirrors, but it needs a life-aware narrative and your consciousness to come to life ..

That is good mental health .. Anyone got some? Over to you David Freud ..





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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Mental health acute inpatient service users survey 2009 Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

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UserWatch Provides the Links for the Inpatient Survey at BSMHFT HERE and others below .

Good luck when you try to fathom out its full meaning since its been designed for intellectual androids and the "blade-runner" sheep (dreamt of by androids) probably went to sleep in their dreams knocked out by narcotic overcomplicated details floating around in this survey.

Its NOT User friendly .. But then what truly is in the mental Health NHS ?

WE DO NOTE THAT IT APPEARS THE TOTAL NUMBER OF INPATIENTS ANSWERING THE BSMHFT SURVEY WERE ONLY 138 MAX .....(!! ??)


The mental health acute inpatient service users survey 2009 was coordinated by the mental health survey coordination centre at the National Centre for Social Research

SOURCE

National NHS patient survey programme
Mental health acute inpatient service users survey 2009

The Care Quality Commission


About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission is the independent regulator of health and adult social care services in England. We also protect the interests of people detained under the Mental Health Act. Whether services are provided by the NHS, local authorities, private companies or voluntary organisations, we make sure that people get better care. We do this by:

• Driving improvement across health and adult social care.
• Putting people first and championing their rights.
• Acting swiftly to remedy bad practice.
• Gathering and using knowledge and expertise, and working with others.

The mental health acute inpatient service users survey 2009

To improve the quality of services that the NHS delivers, it is important to understand what patients think about their care and treatment. One way of doing this is by asking patients who have recently used their local health services to tell us about their experiences. This report provides the results of the first survey of mental health acute inpatient services in NHS trusts in England (including combined mental health and social care trusts and primary care trusts).

This report shows how each trust scored for each question in the survey, in comparison with
national benchmark results. It should be used to understand the trust’s performance, and to identify areas for improvement. Also available on our website is a set of tables showing the national results for the survey, and a briefing note highlighting the key national findings.

These documents were produced by the Mental Health Survey Co-ordination Centre at the National Centre for Social Research. Previous surveys carried out in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 focused on community mental health services. They are part of a wider programme of NHS patient surveys, which covers a range of topics including adult (non mental health) inpatient services, outpatient services and non emergency ambulance services (category ‘C’ calls).

To find out more about our programme, please visit our website (see further information section).
About the survey

The survey of acute adult inpatient mental health services involved 64 NHS trusts providing mental health inpatient services. We received responses from more than 7,527 people who used services, a response rate of 28%. People were eligible for the survey if they were aged 16-65, had stayed on an acute ward or a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) for at least 48 hours between 1 July 2008 and 31 December 2008 and were not current inpatients at the time of the survey. Fieldwork for the survey took place between April and June 2009.

(1. Although 66 trusts took part in the survey, two trusts did not have enough respondents to enable inclusion in the publication.)


Interpreting the report


The benchmark scores are calculated by converting responses to particular questions into scores (2 see below ).

For each question in the survey, the individual responses were scored on a scale of 0 to 100. A
score of 100 represents the best possible response. Therefore, the higher the score for each question, the better the trust is performing. Please note: the scores are not percentages, so a score of 80 does not mean that 80% of people who have used services in the trust have had a particular experience (e.g. ticked ‘Yes’ to a particular question), it means that the trust has scored 80 out of a maximum of 100. A ‘scored’ questionnaire showing the scores assigned to each question is available on our website (see ‘Further Information’ section).

Please also note that it is not appropriate to score all questions within the questionnaire for
benchmarking purposes. This is because not all of the questions assess the trusts in any way, or
they may be ‘filter questions’ designed to filter out respondents to whom following questions do not apply. An example of such a question would be Q29 “During your stay in hospital, did you have talking therapy?”.

The graphs included in this report display the scores for this trust, compared with national
benchmarks. Each bar represents the range of results for each question across all trusts that took part in the survey.

In the graphs, the bar is divided into three sections:

• The red section (left hand end) shows the scores for the 20% of trusts with the lowest scores.

• The green section (right hand end) shows the scores for the 20% of trusts with the highest scores.

• The orange section (middle section) represents the range of scores for the remaining 60% of
trusts.

A white diamond represents the score for this trust. If the diamond is in the green section of the bar, for example, it means that the trust is among the top 20% of trusts in England for that question. The line on either side of the diamond shows the amount of uncertainty surrounding the trust’s score, as a result of random fluctuation. Since the score is based on a sample of inpatients in a trust rather than all inpatients, the score may not be exactly the same as if everyone had been surveyed and had responded. Therefore a confidence interval(3) is calculated as a measure of how accurate the score is. We can be 95% certain that if everyone in the trust had been surveyed, the ‘true’ score would fall within this interval.

2Trusts have differing profiles of patients. For example, one trust may have more male inpatients than another trust. This can potentially affect the results because people tend to answer questions in different ways, depending on certain characteristics. For example, older respondents tend to report more positive experiences than younger respondents, and women tend to report less positive experiences than do men. Because the mix of patients varies across trusts this could potentially lead to the results for a trust appearing better or worse than they would if they had a slightly different profile of patients. To account for this we ‘standardise’ the data. Results have been standardised by the age and sex of respondents to ensure that no trust will appear better or worse than another because of its respondent profile. This helps to ensure that each trust’s age-sex profile reflects the national age-sex distribution (based on all of the respondents to the survey). It therefore enables results from trusts with different profiles of patients to be more accurately compared.

3A confidence interval is an upper and lower limit within which you have a stated level of confidence that the true mean (average) lies somewhere in that range. These are commonly quoted as 95% confidence intervals, which are constructed so that you can be 95% certain that the true mean lies between these limits. The width of the confidence interval gives some indication of how cautious we should be; a very wide interval may indicate that more data should be collected before any conclusions are made.



When considering how a trust performs, it is very important to consider the confidence interval surrounding the score. If a trust’s average score is in one colour, but either of its confidence limits are shown as falling into another colour, this means that you should be more cautious about the trust’s result because, if the survey was repeated with a different random sample of people, it is possible their average score would be in a different place and would therefore show as a different colour.

The white diamond (score) is not shown for questions answered by fewer than 30 people because the uncertainty around the result would be too great. When identifying trusts with the highest and lowest scores and thresholds, trusts with fewer than 30 respondents have not been included.

At the end of the report you will find the data used for the charts and background information about the patients that responded.

Notes on specific questions

Q28 and Q29: The information collected by Q28 (“During your stay in hospital, did you ever want talking therapy?”) and Q29 (“During your stay in hospital did you have talking therapy?”) is presented together to show whether the provision of talking therapy met the requirements of the person using the services. The combined question is numbered in this report as Q29 and has been reworded to read: “During your stay in hospital, did the provision of talking therapies meet your requirements?”.

Q40 and Q41: Information from Q41 (“What was the main reason for the delay [to discharge]?”) has been used to score Q40 (“Once you were due to leave hospital, was your discharge delayed for any reason?”) to show whether discharge from hospital was delayed by potentially avoidable reasons. The combined question is numbered in this report as Q40.

Q45 and Q46: Information collected from Q45 (“Have you been contacted by a member of the mental health team since you left the hospital?”) has been used to score Q46 (“About how long after you left hospital were you contacted?”) The combined question is numbered in this report as Q46.

Q9 and Q14: The results for Q9 (Were you able to get the specific diet that you needed from the
hospital?) and Q14 (Did you receive the help you needed from hospital staff with organising your
home situation?) are not shown in this report. This is because there were not enough trusts with
sufficient number of respondents to enable this data to be presented.

For further details, please see the ‘scored’ questionnaire on our website, which shows the scores
assigned to each question.

Further information:

Full details of the methodology of the survey:
http://www.nhspatientsurveys.org.uk

More information on the programme of NHS patient surveys is available on the patient survey
section of the website at:

The 2009 survey of mental health acute inpatient services results, questionnaire and scoring can be found at:


The results for the 2008 survey, which focused on community mental health services, can be found at:

http://www.cqc.org.uk/usingcareservices/healthcare/patientsurveys.cfm

More information on the 2008/2009 Annual Health Check is available on the Care Quality
Commission’s website:

http://www.cqc.org.uk/ahc0809


BELOW :

Mental health acute inpatient service users survey 2009
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

CLICK ON ALL FOR ENLARGEMENT
















Mental Health Personality Disorders in The Birmingham Community Get a Look in ?

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By a U.W. correspondent


It's early days , it always is , in a Groundhog-day type of way , in the Personality Disorders community that is often promised some kind of better resources but tends to get excluded even when its promised to be "Socially Included"

Does anyone recall the Dept of Health paper :

"Personality Disorder No Longer A Diagnosis of Exclusion" ......

Ahhhh those days of promise and flags of dangled hope...

(We have asked others to host the PDF resources ("Personality Disorder No Longer A Diagnosis of Exclusion") elsewhere under Users and sympathisers control because we see they have disappeared from some websites post-NIMHE and its national demise - although the DOH do have a link too to those resources )

Who knows maybe something will come of this PD Learning Network meeting (see above)

However, we hear rumours that some staff at the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust NHS "Main House" (A "specialist" PD service) together with others have formed a Community Personality Disorders Service at Ardenleigh near Erdington Birmingham UK . The piece of rare evidence we have is a form for a "Learning Network Meeting" to be held on the 23rd Nov 2009 At Carrs Lane Church in the Birmingham City Centre .

This information we think is not being distributed that well and appears to be given out rather selectively ..

Whatever happened to information and distribution of it embedded in Patient and Public Involvement ethos ... ?

It appears its partly being eaten up by the practice of pseudo-democracy where you can hardly tell the difference between the bureaucracy and those who it has captured to examine services ..

Blurring accountability has become everything under New Labour .. In mental health its still rife with cross organisationality of NHS provisioned mental health charities (inside conflicts of interest) and ex Users and other careerists that has taken the place over and above Patient Choice and Patient's truly being in charge of their own recovery services.

The hidden costs must be massive but as usual unauditied .

The PD services must become opened up to choice of therapies and the driver of an autonomising patient culture that creates good practice by individual pace and innovation which fits. It must involve GP's as a solid axis of purchasing power that is not solely derived from the overcontrolling agenda's of the Dept Of Health . Real choice fits people not because its ideological but because people need control , the growth of autonomy - and a range of possibilities that fits different degrees and types of damages in people's personalities .. The State can only screw that up if all the supply side money is in their planning dominion .

The Community Personality Disorder Service - at Ardenleigh Erdinton Birmingham can be contacted on 0121 301 6855 for further details about the above meeting .

For those of you who want to view what was said about Personality Disorders being unfairly excluded from help in 2003 SEE HERE




Monday, October 05, 2009

The Mental Health Zerophant of No Therapy In The UK Is Seen

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Cartoon By That Thoroughly Bad Kakatoo


Yes its been seen wandering across the UK ...

Partly invisible perhaps but it's led to heavy marks in the grounds of many peoples souls ..

Many have been been crushed by the footfall of tons of grey existential and emotional nothingness. Certainly in Birmingham they have with its appearance-culture of "therapy" ...

However , greyly it wanders and dumbers along the NHS mental health services too, often undetected .

Journalists are seeing it now though . Maybe they have had a brush with it too and their grey ink spilled on it .. Haha .... Revealed !!! At last there's a national Zerophant of therapy discovered ..

26th September 2009 : The Daily mail reports on thousands of UK PTSD affected troops crushed by the after effects of war :
"The National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) described 'overwhelming of evidence' that ex-servicemen do not get the specialist help they need, with thousands who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) struggling as their family and work lives collapse."
In their cases often the elephant crushes them inside prison where they have found themselves after being unable to re-adapt to life .

Ahh but do not worry there's the £ 173 Million Improvement To Access In Psychological Therapies Programme in the UK (IAPT) ... Or is there ?
Sunday 4th October 2009 : The Observer reports :
"It has also emerged that the lion's share of the £173m budget for the programme will not be ringfenced as mental health experts had originally believed. Instead the remaining £100m yet to be allocated will be spent however NHS trusts choose."
Already criticised for its "one size fits all approach" - because of its drive to create Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as an answer to depressions - it is looking uncertain in the new banking incapacity economy being propped up massively, that the UK cannot afford to eke out even CBT programmes .

"Experts said that in the jaws of a recession this will "inevitably" mean the money will be transferred from the programme to other more "visible" frontline NHS services, a move that will have a drastic impact on its efficacy.

The possibility is likely to dismay the programme's supporters who believe it offers a vital alternative to the tens of millions of antidepressants, such as Seroxat and Prozac, that are prescribed by doctors in the UK every year. Using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which helps people challenge negative thought patterns, the programme, which will run until 2011, has been heavily promoted by the government as an antidote to "Sicknote Britain"."

So maybe its drugs drugs and drugs again ... Somehow time's never change and the Zerophant walks on right across people's lives .. Oh... except for bankers whose eyes are crying joyfully with their new liquidity at everyone's expense .
In the Personality Disorder circles UK wide - therapy is a rare commodity . Drugs are first choice at NHS Trusts and although the UK Wide PD Spectrum Survey is still being written up as a report - it can be revealed that overwhelmingly NHS Trusts offer drugs and the survey shows that .

And what's the choice of post traumatised people with PD or more severe borderline versions of PD ?

Therapy ..Of various sorts ..

The suicide rate in those with PD is very high . Often post traumatised from childhood rape or abuses those with PD and versions of it in the UK kill themselves . 44 - 77 % of UK suicides (taken across years ) are PD types ..

The shock in Britain now too is PD types after several attempted suicides can elect to create a advance statement as in the recent case of 26 year old Kerrie Wooltorton to die in hospital with no help.

Gone is the criticism of the failing NHS therapy system to dig deep and risk resolution . Its easier to see that "incurable" emotional pain is a self administered death sentence explained away by a UK anti-painful-emotion society that has only just in 21st century started to create nationwide programmes that may well now be crushed ...
"Miss Wooltorton had an incurable, emotionally unstable personality disorder and a history of self-harm, and had in the past been sectioned and admitted to Hellesdon Hospital.

At the time of her death she was living in her own home in Hellesdon Close, but was having some treatment from Norfolk and Waveney Mental Trust. She had previously accepted life-saving treatment to flush a toxic alcohol from her system up to nine times in the year before her death."
Kerrie Wooltorton's death is not that far removed from the helpless state of so many struggling with deep inner pain that must be humanly received , reflected and held empathically with a depth that must touch and give witness for as long as it takes to approach healing .

Incurable ? Yes many pains in the human condition are - but managing the damage with some life preserving empathic therapy and help that supports suffering become resolving grief and loss is a way .

Do Mental Health NHS Trusts do this well ? Ask Kerrie Wooltorton . Ask the soldiers in the UK prisons . Ask the PD sufferers ..

What of Birmingham ? Their roll out of the IAPT programme - or associated to it is supposed to come on stream with 79 "IAPT" therapists (12 low intensity and 67 High intensity ) but the real issue will be measuring its effectiveness over a few years . The Dept of Health look as if they are almost paranoid about trying to measure it . How do we know ?

Observer Sunday 4th Oct 2009 :

"Insiders blamed the way the programme had been introduced for some of its "teething" problems. There has also been confusion over how NHS trusts are recording their performance. Last month the Department of Health issued them with new guidance on targets, the fourth time it has done so. One person familiar with the programme said it did little to encourage a relationship between practitioner and patient and that "some patients ended up spending more time filling in forms than being with someone".

And :

"Iapt is a great idea whose implementation seems to have gone wrong," said David Pink, chief executive officer of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, which has argued for the scheme to be expanded to include more forms of therapy. "Now there is a danger it no longer seems to be improving access to psychological therapies."

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats' health spokesman, said it was "utterly outrageous" that the government did not intend to protect the programme's budget. "It will inevitably be curtailed as a result," he said. "The same thing will happen this time round as in the last recession – mental health will lose out because it's an easy target."

What is the real problem with the UK ?

the Dept of Heath remains too overpoweringly centralised in Mental Health matters and the Gov't pay too much heed to big charities like the Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health , Rethink and MIND. These charities are on a stigma-adventure and money spinning exercises that often are rooted in a culture of clever ex civil servants morphing across to the charities and influencing policy far too much . The work orientated CBT therapy recovery plan (much applauded by the charities) for mental health was always top down in its design and not led by a proper culture of GP and patient purchase power of local market tested therapies which could have formed the basis of a growing patient driven culture of experience and practice which GP's could have intelligently noted and shaped over time .. But quicker than the Dep't of Health !

The Patient is still in choice-lockup ..Totally cogged off and unoiled while the evidence shows the big charities have been swilling about in money totally spolied, with stigma ideology that does not uphold real campaigns for patient power of choices of therapy treatments . Varietyless CBT and the like are what exist .

What a waste of lottery money too its all been , £18 - 20 mllion on a class of people at the top Charities that are just better off by skewing vision away into the rigma versions of social engineering and away from bad top down services they actually helped to plan .....User Involvement is perverse and its selective-inclusion only . Patient Choice is not . Its about real need being met for all paces and types .

Stay away from mental health Charity hypnotists and snake charmers .. See the Zerophant and the semi invisible themes you are not supposed to notice ... Be real about need . Wake up . Feel the Zero . Own it .


Monday, September 21, 2009

In Memory Of Madness And 911

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Coming Back In From Asylum Centauri


10 or more days after fate
Time's fire ships
Are off course
And are sometimes late

Radio and gamma waves
You know,

Interfered

But we could tell that two fear planes
Had speared

There was a building which held
Like a squared up male
And one which shook into
Powdered hail
And was a giant tree
Collapsing trail
As the fire axe of angers made it buckle
And made it fail

We touched the Time Ship's hot glass
And we saw all white dusts
And the rain of shale
And powder beings in a last steel mass....

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

UK Wide Personality Disorder Survey Gets Top Spot on Google Blog Alerts


UserWatch Gets Top Spot !


Googlebots help UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey !

Still active HERE


The PDS urvey is still active for UK Users and encompasses PTSD , Borderline PD , Dissociative Identity Disorder , PD and complex PTSD (that includes combat stress)

Its still at 131 Inputs .

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Monday, September 14, 2009

Mental Health UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey Goes to 131 Users Inputed

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UK PD Spectrum Survey puts on the numbers

The PDS Survey is still active HERE

This survey is intended to capture indicative data about the Personality Disorders Spectrum (PDS) experience in the UK . It is primarily aimed at the experiences of Service Users who have had the following labels on their condition . Personality Disorder , Borderline Personality Disorder , Post Traumatic Stress Disorder , Complex PTSD , and Dissociative Identity Disorder. This survey is intended to be followed up depending on input from UK Services Users . It will also form a foundation for taking any concerns and directions generated, to the Care Quality Commission in the UK . It will also be shared with NALM (The National Association For LInks members) . The survey is independent of all bodies and created by Service Users in the UK. Entries on the survey by participants are anonymous.

Carers or advocates may complete the survey on behalf of a Service User.


Friday, September 11, 2009

Mental Health NHS Homicide Report Shows Devastating Failures

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The full Report released on Sept 10th 2009 is downloadable now from the Strategic Health Authority is available HERE

The Report details a sad case of a Afro Caribbean man terrified of police and "MI5" intrusion into his life . By chance on the local street he walked into the police team sent to determine an approach to him . One might say events cascaded from there into the killing of Det Constable Swindells . Glaister Butler a paranoid and ill man felt he had to protect his own life by carrying a knife . He was eventually disarmed under threat of firearms .

From the Report :

"On 21st May 2004, on a canal towpath in Birmingham, Glaister Earle Butler lethally stabbed a police officer, Detective Constable Michael Swindells, who was, with a large number of other officers, trying to detain him. At the time Mr. Butler was a patient under the care of the Small Heath Assertive Outreach Team [AOT], following his discharge from in-patient treatment at Highcroft Hospital in October 2001 "

The Report does well to document failings described as :

'Pretty devastating'

Sue Turner, chief executive of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust, apologised to the family, friends and colleagues of Det Con Michael Swindells and also to Butler for the shortcomings in his care and treatment.

She said the team was responsible for a "pretty devastating set of shortcomings" and promised that vast improvements had been made since.

The Report highlights the negative significance of treating a man with paranoid problems for years by reliance on the medical model alone and it emphasizes looking into a whole system approach assertively regarding the financial and social forces that he lived within, including his past stresses of being black and living inside a social system that was at times difficult .

From the Report we see a desire to shake some insights into the "community care" systems of mental health care delivery in Birmingham and elsewhere - its highly probable that some improvements have been made, and the Gov't have implemented Community Treatment Orders (CTO's) which mean much closer monitoring of medication can take place . Whether or not this may lead to other forms of patient-abuses is not known since CTO's are a fairly recent policy addition in the UK .

The Report also highlights the lack of a coherent social model "care plan approach" (CPA) which ideally would have taken into account Glaister Butler's aspirations and abilities (to help him train or learn) since he was a highly skilled design draughtsman at one time . That he needed help was simply missed and not monitored enough by a team .

More from the Report below :

13.4 Unhappily we suspect that many of the problems we have identified in this Inquiry are not confined to one Assertive Outreach Team in Birmingham and that there may be a case for a review of practice elsewhere. Unless the report is published in full this benefit may be prejudiced.

15.3 The Trust and the Strategic Health Authority should consider whether the issues in this report require a review of policy and practice in community mental health services generally in their respective areas and, to the extent that they consider that such a review is necessary, ensure that it is carried out and publish the results.

15.4 The Trust and the Strategic Health Authority should produce and publish a statement indicating the extent to which they accept the findings and recommendations in this report and the action taken to implement those recommendations which they accept.

17.2 CPA documentation during this period was sparse and did not detail sufficiently Mr. Butler‟s needs or what support for them was planned

25.4 The result was a focus on a medical model of care rather than a social one and a failure to devise exit strategies and targets for each service user. They did not seek out new ways of tackling difficult cases such as Mr. Butler‟s.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

A4E Embark On New Arts For Emma Competition - Rudolph Sues - Pathways To Work In Trouble



"Art For Emma " or A4E - the one time Action For Employment broker of Welfare To Work is now in legal arguments with several well known fantasy personalities .

"Rudolph is fuming" Says Steve Claus of the well known Christmas Unlimited firm who are always in the red .

"His nose is his brand !" Says Steve loudly .. "He is having therapy at the moment for his feelings about nasal identity theft . "

"And Emma's mixture of Oz wings , bats and fairy persona does not fool him "

He knows he has been targeted ..

Another character from Oz known as Ms Wicked W. O' West is putting posters up about yellow brick roads and Pathways to Work and screaming bitterly about being outdone on the dark oppressive magic front ...

We can reveal exclusively she has threatened to open up a new competitive front shop to "Poundland" - known as "Wickedland" where people can be turned into bats or toads as they work

Meanwhile back to Really- real- Land in the world of corporo-weave lets have a look what "Third Sector say about Pathways to Work and the response of some charities who associate into A4E .

Uh oh :

Full credit goes to John Plummer on "Third Sector" for the report below :

Job cuts at major charities including the RNID

Several large charities have withdrawn from key government welfare-to-work programmes because they are not proving financially viable.

The RNID has pulled out of eight New Deal for Disabled People programmes and three Pathways to Work programmes, worth £500,000, following a review of sustainability. Fourteen staff have been laid off.

The Department for Work and Pensions established the initiatives to help people on incapacity and disability benefits find work. But rising unemployment has made targets difficult, the charities said.

Michael Adamson, executive director of individual services at the RNID, which had subcontracted work from prime providers, said the problem was compounded for charities because they dealt with the most hard-to-reach groups.

"We could not sustain the contracts at the prices available," said Adamson. "We need to get a fair price for what we do and recognition of the distance from the labour market of some of our clients."

Action for Blind People shed nine staff last week after ending Pathways subcontracts with private providers A4e and Work Directions and employment charity the Shaw Trust.

Elizabeth Percy, acting head of regional services at Action for Blind People, said the contracts could have generated £121,000, but the recession and the complex needs of its beneficiaries left it with no choice.

"It's a fair blow," she said. "It's income that we rely on but it just wasn't achievable."

The RNIB, which passed on Pathways contracts in England to Action when the two charities formed an associate agreement, has abandoned one Pathways subcontract in Wales.

Last month the Shaw Trust, the largest voluntary sector provider of employment services for disabled people, blamed the DWP funding structure for its £2.8m annual loss.

Employment minister Jim Knight said prime providers were responsible for managing subcontractors.

"Providers may have underestimated challenges and set high targets but we are working to improve performance," he said. "Many of the contracts run for three years and, due to start-up costs, providers would not be expected to make a profit immediately."

Special Note : Mental Health factors in Pathways To Work type projects includes a programme being rolled out by Mental Health Foundation 's David Crepaz Keay in Wales . That is one to watch for those interested in auditiing how grants are used and to what beneficial effect. Who benefits ? Is the tool of enquiry and question to form .

We think there are other ways to achieve social inclusion through skilling up Users in mental health without major money going to administrators. That is all too what happens with so many projects that use various forms of the lottery or other grant streams .

From Issue No 7 by http://www.cypswansea.co.uk

"David is an eloquent and passionate campaigner against discrimination on the grounds of mental health history. With over twenty-five years of involvement as first a user of mental health services and later as a campaigner, he is also an advocate of service user voices being included in mental health service planning and delivery. He is currently leading a major self management initiative for people with a severe psychiatric diagnoses which aims to train approximately 900 people across Wales. He is also amongst a small group of service users/survivors leading the development of an England-wide service user network"

Monday, September 07, 2009

A4E 's Brilliant Eye Patch Marketing Idea


A4E Cheek Practice Session On UserWatch


It started as a cold in the eye cure . "Action for Eyes" -

But Emma (Pictured above with a DWP Polly the Pollicy Parrot) realised there was money in other patches ........

It is rumoured she employed Golley and Slater the marketing firm at one stage to help A4E's expansion into pantomime jobs ..

We wish to point that Golley is no relation to "Golly" who used to be obtainable as badges from Robertsons Marmalade tokens before he was savagely accused of racism ..

At any rate with the help of Polly and Golley now Emma Harrison is sailing the UK dubloon infested welfare waters but we do not know if Spanish pirates are involved ..

Neither do we give credence to rumours that A4E is making people on welfare walk the plank, into the shark waters of the Bugger-all sea where the whales of a job do not exist ..

There is also no proof Emma is related to Long John Silver either - the eye patch is purely for medical reasons and we defend her right to wear it !!!!

UK Wide Personality Disorder Spectrum Survey Goes To 129 User Inputs


To take the survey hosted by the Socialist Health Association

CLICK HERE

This survey is intended to capture indicative data about the Personality Disorders Spectrum (PDS) experience in the UK . It is primarily aimed at the experiences of Service Users who have had the following labels on their condition . Personality Disorder , Borderline Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder , Complex PTSD , and Dissociative Identity Disorder. This survey is intended to be followed up depending on input from UK Services Users . It will also form a foundation for taking any concerns and directions generated, to the Care Quality Commission in the UK . It will also be shared with NALM (The National Association For LInks members) . The survey is independent of all bodies and created by Service Users in the UK. Entries on the survey by partcipants are anonymous.

Carers or advocates may complete the survey on behalf of a Service User

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Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Mental Health UK Wide PD Spectrum Survey Jumps To 121 Users Inputed

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Survey Now at 121 Users inputed

To take the survey hosted by the Socialist Health Association

CLICK HERE

This survey is intended to capture indicative data about the Personality Disorders Spectrum (PDS) experience in the UK . It is primarily aimed at the experiences of Service Users who have had the following labels on their condition . Personality Disorder , Borderline Personality Disorder , Post Traumatic Stress Disorder , Complex PTSD , and Dissociative Identity Disorder. This survey is intended to be followed up depending on input from UK Services Users . It will also form a foundation for taking any concerns and directions generated, to the Care Quality Commission in the UK . It will also be shared with NALM (The National Association For LInks members) . The survey is independent of all bodies and created by Service Users in the UK. Entries on the survey by partcipants are anonymous.

Carers or advocates may complete the survey on behalf of a Service User.

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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Welfare to Wealth And A4e's Nice Little Earner

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We are noting that the People's YouTube media is striking back at the smooth ideas of polished up Welfare To Work. We have posted up two here apparently originating in Scotland .

There really has to be better programmes and direct grants for helping people back to work and training, and more of it under the control of people on benefit because currently there are no negotiating structures they can trust and properly own. The State is in overarching dominion . We think many "welfare to work" programmes are dubious at the outset and there is a need for very tailored training packages for people who are often knackered out damaged people .

But Britain, or part of it, does love to create new prejudice and hatred against some classes of people - has it ever been any different ? The functions of massive shifts of capital and the hating social morality wars thrown at the "jobless" do not match the reality of a redundant country that encouraged free market individualism for the "aspiring classes" and no planned local stability for people's lives ..

Laissez faire = equals fuck all care ...

Welfare to Work equals attempts to buy time for the admin classes to remain mostly Govt supported because of the country's overall incapacity to work and deal with money properly ..

Jeese it was a banker who advised the Govt on all this Welfare to Work stuff and where is the banking sector now ? On taxpayer incapacity benefits..

We see top down rule everywhere in mental health and little ability for patients to negotiate their fates properly . Dominion admin corporo-classes rule .. Why ? Where do the themes join ?

Individualised purchasing power of services being negated and too much wealth at the top of a society going only into selective pockets is a grand belief which creates a kind of weakened de-localising socially controlled slave economy in the real economy, and we already know all about the mental health economy of paid off Users that screwed up the possibility of roll outs of choices of recovery therapies because NIMHE Service-User-bureaucrats took away 100 million over its years from 2004 - end 2008 ...

Britain creates classes of disempowerment really efficiently ... Its finally self undermining .

And look at Emma the CEO of A4e .... If ever there was a moral to the tale its this : that take from the bottom and reward the rich and recreate the symbols of landownership all over again from whence the class society became more sharply pointed ... Does anyone recall there was once a Labour party that opposed these equations ? Now we need another set of politics because work-sectors have been undermined for decades . We need a vision that the politicians do not have and we are all faltering in a world which wants to remain with its economic advantages and classes intact. Something pretty big is going to break and maybe its all of us ..

When countries get economically seriously stressed fascism arises, and a degree of welfare fascism is here already ...... Each step we take is chaos moving into more chaos - it makes some people rich . A4e at best is suffering from good motives clashing with corporate size and power and in a few years Emma Harrison may well be gone...Corporatism kills the authentic heart .



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Friday, August 28, 2009

Welfare To Worry And Welfare To Work Contradictions

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The Welfare to Work (Welfare to Worry more like) "entertainment" started off with Channel 4 creating a series called "Benefit Busters" .

Its turning into something of an expose of an economy driven by welfare cannibalism that makes some people and companies rich and the paradox that you cannot create work in a workless recessionary environment in a country too that has lost most of its production base .
You can of course create a very stressful and punitive enviroment .
Last night in the UK we were treated to a story about one man who managed to get a placement with a gardening firm which lasted little more than a week . A4e the "Welfare to Work" company who helped manage this have been awarded a £700 million Govt contract to get people off benefits and into work . Emma - the Chief of A4e was interviewed and had it put to her that the quality of the job placements when temporary were just disruptive to peoples lives. There was even discussion about "zero hour" contracts where clients would be signed up to work for hours the company could not guarantee consistently .
Emma looked thoughtful and could only hold the moment by saying she would investigate matters and try to get advice from those who might be fitted for that .
In the first programme Emma's country estate was shown with one of her employees a rumbustious motivator and semi salesperson saying words to the effect of :
"If you have got it flaunt it "
Yes it was flaunted okay and Labour voters everywhere apart from the post-Blair aspirers must be storing quite a bit of extra class hatred by now - its certainly Welfare to Wealth for some .
Here's what a Channel 4 viewer said of that :

"At 8:51 pm on August 23, 2009 bobgil wrote:

Best laugh I have had for ages. I thought I was watching an office style, black comedy. The Chief executive owning a country estate was ‘priceless’. You really couldn’t make it up! I can’t wait for the next episode."


The man who got the gardening job and treated to a £90 grant for some smart interview clothes went back to the Jobcentre after his job crashed and he was laid off and it took 3 weeks to re-engage his benefits .

Yet the taste for people being in the virtual "workhouse" in the UK is a long lived ghost . In the disability community many realise you cannot negotiate with a system that will not create better trust in the client and their needs . Needs, led by clients are often abandoned or are weakly diluted and training grants for special measures are not available . The stick of Miss and Mr Whakkity at the Welfare to Work training offices have now been fashioned for the leftover Victorian hatred of people on hard times, and the ghost of Charlie Dickens drinking a can of lager is watching it all ..

The part delusion that work for all exists that can sustain people continues in a western world and UK of un-rejigged production and activity ..Capitalism has undermined local stabilties .

Gov't supports most things in reality - including the failed banking sector which still behaves as if it is private when its now living on State benefits too for its disabled incapacities . The meaning of this crisis is still not reaching the brain of post industrial prejudice towards the helpless and the workless though . The paradox is kept to a kind of shared social denial of half-insights and "quantised easings" when the true "quantity" of truth is moaning uneasily in the gutter in those who are delegated now for socially dark angers about being on welfare .

The whole system is on welfare ..

Charities that once saw opportunities now see losses . They believed they could turn the policy of getting people back to work into help and also of course expand themselves financially . There are some pretty highly paid charity staff out there in the UK now yet the social experiment to create more and more people at "work" has become flawed by major contradictions in the West's economic systems

"Shaw Trust accounts show crippling cost of DWP contracts

By John Plummer, Third Sector Online, 10 August 2009

Charity blames Pathways to Work programme for huge deficit

The Shaw Trust made a £2.8m loss in 2008/09 compared with a surplus of £7.4m the previous year, according to its annual report.

The charity, which is the largest voluntary sector provider of employment services for disabled people, blamed the loss on the huge start-up costs involved in delivering Pathways to Work programmes on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions."

Click here to find out more!

The story continues and more Charities are looking for ways out of the Dept of Work and Pensions large experiment driven by the Govt's social inclusion theories . Client groups are unlikely to get what they need for real help but some may benefit . How many ? Who knows ?
Lets hope someone is taking a serious audit of all this and weighing up whether money spent in Welfare to Work new dash and welfare tongue-lash-for-cash companies is truly effective.


"Major charities ditch Pathways contracts

27 August 2009

Two major charities have ended their role as sub-contractors on the Pathways to Work programme because they were no longer financially viable.

RNIB, along with Action for Blind People, have ceased to work as sub-contractors for prime provider A4E and have warned that there may be redundancies as a result.

Meanwhile RNID have also pulled out of most of their Pathways contracts, but intend to be involved in the new DWP funded Work Choice programme, previously known as the Specialist Disability Employment Programme."