everything i’ve been doing feels silly and childish to the critical demanding parts of my brain, but they WORK, and if i skip cooking to eat ready meals or takeout in order to be able to eat a meal or i spend three hours doing lil sudoku puzzles to keep my mind occupied, that’s a night well spent

working in mental health when you have a history of mental health difficulties is hard and relying on the small things is so important

and i appreciate its not the only discipline under attack by any means, but it’s a much quieter and subtler gutting than other areas such as climate science or sociology, and i’ve not seen it have the attention that it needs. globally we are about to take a step back 50 years in mental health care

“person centred care” “mental health” and “evidence based” are phrases written in almost every paper i have read on clinical psychology in the last 12-24 months, and they’re included on the banned list - they are CULLING OUR FIELD

i really have been in the trenches

imagine working somewhere that not only has a functioning coffee machine, but they use GROUND BEANS instead of instant

there’s a CAFE ????????

you have ??? funding ??? adequate staffing levels ??? complete departments ??? functioning wellbeing resources ?????????

cutting benefits for those with mental illness is not acceptable, even if a rare percentage of those do commit violent crimes when unwell. nothing can justify that, and nothing can justify damaging stigmatising articles clearly published to promote a very curated narrative

hell, they’re punished just for having the appropriate staffing levels to ensure service user safety! but that’s not the fault of the service users, and to demonise vulnerable groups of people in likely their darkest times is beyond words

mental health units are treated like factories, staff are expected to “fix” service users within 30 days and push them back out into the world without any consideration for their care after discharge and are punished for taking the time to actually work with service users to start a path to recovery

mental health services are poor, i’m not understating that - there are countless occurrences of failed service users, families, carers etc. but how can services thrive or even just function when they’re held hostage by lack of funding and unreasonable demands of productivity overriding patient care?

sectioning is based on a psychiatric evaluation of either being a risk to self or others - patients unwell enough to be sectioned are considered unable to look after themselves point blank. they themselves are most at risk of harm. to publish this now is sensationalist and irresponsible demonisation

because the messaging is clearly “mental health patients are dangerous and the NHS is failing the general public by not keeping them locked up” rather than the truth: the NHS is failing their vulnerable patients because it does not receive the funding or resources it needs to do it’s job

65 murders a year by known service users is an awful statistic, and i’m not undermining the grief of all those involved, but when considering there were 7000+ suicides and 60,000+ people sectioned in 2023 alone - is this the story we should be promoting in the current climate?