One of the reasons that The Independent is my newspaper of choice is the way it has campaigned on mental health issues. Still very much a taboo subject, it is too often only mentioned in the press in connection with some terrible crime committed by someone who is mentally ill. The Independent, on the other hand, has run informative articles on all aspects of the subject, from the recently defeated bill to the experiences of service users. And not just the kind of service users who hit the headlines but the every day people one rarely hears about. The 1:4 who suffer some kind of mental illness during their life time or to quote a recent article, the 3.5 million Britons taking anti-depressants.
The two articles that have caught my attention lately both appeared in the Independent on Sunday, Madness: Britain's mental health time bomb and Prozac nation. The first deals with proposed cuts in services to the tune of £20m in order to help cover the deficit in other parts of the health service and the second with a proposed expansion of 'talking therapies' as a better alternative to drugs. Forgive me for being cynical but my reading of both translates as the Cinderella service is going to get even poorer.
Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that it would be a mistake to improve the availability of so called 'talking therapies'. On the contrary, I am all for it. My argument has always been that I do not want to be medicated, kept on 'hold', but to find a way of either curing my depression or of learning to deal with it without drugs. I will also admit that anti-depressants are often helpful and there are times when they are the only option for many people, including myself. It is just that it does not seem to me that the government is interested in offering an effective mental health service, but that it is more concerned with saving some of the £400m p/a bill for anti-depressants. I cannot see how improvements in choice can be made without investing more money in mental health services, not less. For a start, to recruit, train and employ the 10,000 new therapists it has been suggested are needed is not going to happen for free.
My own experience as a service user is not a happy one. I get 15 minutes every 3 months or so at a clinic. Counselling is only available if I approach a charity. I cannot have a cpn because there is a shortage and my condition is not considered serious enough. It was not considered serious enough even on my discharge from hospital after taking an overdose. Twice over the years I have called the clinic during what was, for me, a crisis. The first time I was put through to a member of the administrative staff as no one else was available and finally given an appointment for 3 days later and the second time I was told to go for a walk. Two or three times I have left the clinic extremely distressed. No one appeared to either notice or care very much if they did. When I have tried to question both my diagnosis and treatment, to discuss symptoms, etc., I have been made to feel ridiculous and more or less told to stop reading or investigating and to accept what ever they say without question. No treatment other than drugs has ever been either suggested or discussed. The only constructive and useful help I have received has been first of all through college and now university.
I used to think it was me. That I was either failing to communicate or that the way I feel is so insignificant that I should really stop wasting every ones time and deal with it myself. It is only during the last couple of years that I have come to realise that this is not true. Many truly caring people work within the mental health services, unfortunately they are overstretched, underfunded and the resources to do their jobs properly simply do not exist.
Maybe the sheer scale of mental illness in this country will finally jolt the authorities into real action. Maybe a service will evolve that truly offers choice. Perhaps one day effective 'talking therapies' will be available to all service users who want or need them as well as support, drugs, cognative behavior therapy and whatever other useful alternatives there may be.
Maybe, but I am not going to hold my breath.
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