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MENTAL HEALTH, SOUTH-WEST DEVON - NEWS & VIEWS!
November 2007
JANET & PENNIE’S MONTHLY SERVICE USER/CARER NETWORK GATHERINGS
These meetings are usually held at our offices in Dartington in the afternoon, all welcome! We normally have a speaker who tells us about what they do and takes feedback, questions, comments and ideas; then we have a chance to catch up with what everyone’s doing and what’s going on. Light refreshments, travel expenses, help with lifts, are all available.
Friday 9th November, 1.30 – 4.15, at Newton Abbot Hospital, St Michael’s Therapy Centre, with Lyndy Pooley, who’s a trainer working with service users and carers across Devon and who’s coming along to update us on the ‘In My Shoes’ training and share views and ideas on staff training. [We’ve postponed Iain Tulley’s visit until January (see below), he sends sincere apologies, but he’s been called to an urgent meeting that day by the chief executive of the Strategic Health Authority.]
Monday 10th December, 1.30 – 4.15, at Lescaze offices in Dartington, with Dr Sean Lynch, consultant psychiatrist in the Devon Partnership Trust – coming along to share ideas about service users & carers being part of psychiatrist training at the Peninsula Medical School.
Thursday 17th January 2008, 1.30 – 4.15, at Lescaze offices in Dartington, with Iain Tulley, Chief Executive of the Devon Partnership Trust, who’s coming along to update us on what’s happening and what’s new in the Trust and to hear views and ideas.
POEMS, STORIES and ARTICLES WELCOME !
Two more pieces from Nick Hewling, this time on ‘recovery’, are attached to our newsletter – we welcome other articles, poems, stories too, so do get in touch if you’d like to share something with other readers, and also if you’d like to respond to Nick with your own thoughts.
[See also ‘Call for Learners’ Voices’ below.]
MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO GET INVOLVED / HAVE A SAY
‘SHAPING MENTAL HEALTH CARE FOR THE NEXT DECADE’
Wednesday 14th November, 10.15 – 3.00 at the Riverside Centre, Exeter [travel expenses paid]. This is an important event for people who use mental health services and their carers to influence the strategic planning of mental health services across the South West. In July, newly appointed health minister Lord Darzi was asked by the government to carry out a major review on the way the NHS delivers patient care. This regional event is about discussing the main themes that have been identified for the review and finding out what local people feel are important issues for mental health services. Contact Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) South West, 01278 432002, or talk to Janet, who’s also going along. For more info about the NHS review, go to www.nhs.uk/ournhs, or ask Janet/Pennie.
‘LINks’ CONFERENCE, RIVIERA CENTRE, TORQUAY, 8TH NOVEMBER, 10-4
Local Involvement Networks [LINks] are being set up by the government to replace existing ‘Patient & Public Involvement’ Forums – they’re intended to give people a better say in how their local health and social care services are planned and run. This event in Torquay is for local people to gather information and share ideas about the new set-up in Torbay. Talk to Janet/ Pennie or ring Hilary Jones, Torbay Council, on 01803 208420. We also have a useful brief overview of LINks, or go to the website: www.dh.gov.uk/patientpublicinvolvement.
‘DIRECT PAYMENTS’ CONSULTATION
Denise Fardon, Direct Payments Services Development Project, wants to hear from people who receive services from Social Services (or care for those that do) and to find out:
· Are you satisfied with the services you receive?
· Are there services which you would like that are not available?
· Have you experienced difficulties with taking up direct payments?
Please ask us for a short (one-page) questionnaire – or get in touch direct with Denise on 01392 383107, or email: . (We can also pass on your views.) There’s also a brief factsheet on Direct Payments availble HERE http://www.devon.gov.uk/fs8_direct_payments_110407.pdf
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PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES – ‘WE NEED TO TALK’
Are you concerned about waiting times and access to NHS psychological therapies in your local area? There’s a short questionnaire out seeking your views about this – it’s part of a campaign by Mind, Rethink, YoungMinds, the Mental Health Foundation and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, who want to see the government invest more into psychological therapies. Ask us for a copy (to be returned by 9th November), or go to the website: www.weneedtotalk.org.uk
[As a footnote - on 10th October, World Mental Health Day, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced a £170 million expansion of psychological therapies by 2010 to provide better support for people with anxiety and depression in England – though this will mainly provide for ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapies’ [CBT]. See also below re Computerised CBT]
CALL FOR LEARNERS’ VOICES
The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) is keen to give voice to the creativity of people who’ve experienced mental health difficulties. They’re looking for personal writing, poetry, artwork & multimedia, for publication in a special mental health edition of ‘Adults Learning’. They can offer £50 for each piece that they use. Contact Susan Rees on on 0116 204 4256 at NIACE, 21 de Montfort Street, Leicester, LE1 7GE; .
INFORMATION & NEWS
SELF-HELP / SUPPORT IN SOUTHWEST DEVON
Please ring Janet/Pennie if you’d like a copy of our latest updated list of self-help/support across South West Devon.
COOL RECOVERY, SOUTH DEVON
Do get on the mailing list for the monthly ‘COOLNEWS’! – ring Cool Recovery on 01803 299511.
COMPUTERISED COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
We’ve got hold of a new leaflet about ‘Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’ [CBT], which is now available in Teignbridge (by referral) – it aims to “help you to explore your thoughts and beliefs about yourself and your world and looks at how we can change them to help your mood”. Some people find CBT very helpful – do ask us for a copy of the leaflet.
‘BE HEARD’, MID DEVON
We received a message a little while back from Paula Kovacs, on behalf of the ‘Be Heard’ committee, to say that this charity closed at the end of September 2007. We were very sorry to see them go. The Devon Spiritual Emergence Network (DSEN) is still thriving, though – you can get information via The Bridge Collective, Exeter, on 01392 433358.
PLYMOUTH FORUM 4 MENTAL HEALTH - 07986 670151
The Plymouth Forum 4 Mental Health works to “raise our members’ hopes, to enable them to pursue their aspirations & their interests and have meaningful lives”. The Forum is a network of mental health service users and carers, with a monthly meet (first Tuesday, 5.15 – 7.15, Burgess Hall, Catherine St.), & newsletter. .
INFORMATION ON THE WEB
· Our November Planner
· “Recovery, what is that?” & “What does ‘Recovery’ mean to me?”, two short pieces by Nick Hewling – SEE Below
· Teignbridge ‘Listening Event’ flyer & Devon Partnership Trust press release on St Michael’s Unit closure
· ‘Taking Stock…’, by Iain Tulley, Chief Exec, Devon Partnership Trust – SEE BELOW
· Devon Partnership Trust ‘Redesign Bulletin’, October 2007 – SEE BELOW
“Recovery, what is that?” & “What does ‘Recovery’ mean to me?”, two short pieces by Nick Hewling
(These two pieces were written for the ‘recovery stories’ part of an upcoming report from the Community Care Trust [South Devon] on ‘recovery outcomes’. They were written at different times and in different moods.)
Recovery, what is that?
Don’t ever believe you’re over it, or you’ll not see it coming the next time. I’m a Manic-Depressive, been in and out of hospital for twenty years. Picked-up on the street many times, held in police cells, sectioned half a dozen times, been on locked wards. Had every sort of therapy. Lost jobs and relationships over and over again. Long depressions, sometimes normal, short highs - then off my head seeing things, hearing voices, believing things I never would if I was right in my head. Drugs that just sedate you, lithium that flattens you out and takes away the good times. Soon after you get yourself straight, it all starts again.
Some staff are okay, they don’t understand but treat you like a human being. But as soon as you get to know them, they’re gone to another job. Not allowed to get too close to them though. It’s a job, they get paid, trained to care. You tell them your thoughts and feelings and you see it in their eyes. You look mad to them and I suppose I am, sometimes. They want you to get involved, help-out, volunteer. They don’t realise you do it every day on the street, in cafes, pubs, on buses. You can’t be in the towns at night anymore, not if you need to be outside. We’re on the edge of towns, the edge of the countryside, like we’re on the edge of our own minds. We’re where the roads meet and divide again, making a connection for an hour or two. Walking forever, keeping a steady rhythm, eyes straight ahead - resting on the horizon, if only we could see it. Just wanting to be in control of our thoughts.
You’ve got it for life, you just have to learn to endure, sooner or later the worse goes away - until it starts all over again.
Or Maybe I’m Wrong? Perhaps I let them label me, went along with the ways others told me I was ill? Perhaps they don’t know? Was I crazy when I went into hospital, or did the hospital make me mad? Did they treat me badly because they don’t know how to do it well? I know some of them were scared of me. The medication is sometimes all they have to control the Zoo. We do their heads in, we cope with it twenty-four hours a day, they leave after eight hours. Do they know how to stop a friend from being psychotic for an hour or two, by the way you talk to them, look at them, sit with them, walk with them?
The illness makes you scared to do things, to try to get close to people again, expecting everything to go wrong. Do I set myself up to fail? How do I learn to have normal relationships, if not from normal people? How do I learn to give, unless I also learn to receive? I can’t recover what I once had, if the people caring for me remain strangers. I don’t know what’s best for me any more than the staff do - otherwise I wouldn’t have been like this for so long. Unless I like and respect them I take no notice of what they say. It’s all about fear, fear of the wrong things and the wrong people.
What does ‘Recovery’ mean to me?
I have been a mental health ‘service-user’ for twenty years, but now I am thinking of giving up this career and finding something better to do! In an attempt to reframe or redefine the story I tell myself about who I am, I have been trying to drop the notion of illness, and in my behaviour - try not to ‘act’ like a service-user.
My experience has been that for all practical purposes, you can set aside any notion as to the causes of mental disorder, the signs and symptoms that might be thought relevant, and what the appropriate ‘therapy’ might be. One can simply state, that the most important consequence of mental distress is the breakdown of lasting personal relationships and the inability to form new ones. You become afraid of other people. Misplaced fear of others is the problem. Your chronic social isolation means you no longer know what ‘normal ’ relationships are and how to conduct them. Your world is that of other clients, who like yourself are acting the ‘role’ of mental patient, and with mental health workers who have been trained to act towards you in a ‘special’ way - all mental health relationships are ‘abnormal’. Often service-users, when recalling periods in hospital, say that what made a difference were the chance ‘connections’ they made with domestic, catering or administrative staff who showed them simple human kindnesses - the very people who had not been trained to ‘treat’ you in a particular way!
Now staff are in search of a new role. Their response in the unreal situation, is to ‘throw the ball’ to the client, redefine themselves as facilitators, coaches and mentors; but with the client leading the way towards their own ‘goals’. The desired outcome is ‘social inclusion’; once the client has developed the resilience and individualism of everyone else, they can take their place in the ‘healthy society’ the staff imagine they wish to belong to. But the idea that new learning and fulfilment will follow from staff and clients training themselves into new, defined and specialised roles is nonsense. What staff and clients need to do is to start meeting in normal social situations and begin to recover their past skills in conducting ordinary human relationships. You meet as strangers, without prescribed notions as to what the outcome should be. Trust and shared confidences should only develop over time (it is rare to make intimate disclosures to a stranger), and the giving of advice is appropriate once you have got to know someone well. Equally, if you have got to know someone well and may have become emotionally attached to them, it is damaging to be rejected (discharged). Having been treated as abnormal by society, we need to be treated as normal in treatment - how else are we going to learn!
Training should be in normal social and communication skills. Focusing on the individual, or a ‘person-centred’ approach only serves to emphasize difference - exacerbating ‘social disability’. Individualism (pre-occupation with self) is just what we as clients have had too much of, and our experience should be a warning to the rest of society. I don’t want ‘goals’ (to set myself up to fail), or to be in ‘control’ (living in ever decreasing circles). It is quite possible to live without ‘hope’; it is about letting go, being in the moment and therefore open to new experiences - then new learning is possible.