A question for Care in the Community Workers [Mental Health]?
Question:
Since the major institutions closed do you think care in the community has been an overall success or a down right failure?
Bearing in mind confidentiality, are there any anecdotes or stories you would care to share, whether it be positive or negative.
Do you think it is a multimillion pound money spinner or a valuable tool that benefits it's service users.
All answers appreciated, sorry if this question appears more than once over the next 2 weeks as I'm doing a little research on the subject and want to obtain as many views as possible.
Answers:
I found it usefull having community mental health nurses visit me (from the crisis intervention team). However I still had to arrange my care after that, they did not go on to refer me to something longer term that will help me in the future and not just short term. They were great whilst they were around but I did go on to take a second large overdose within 2 months of the first and they were not called out to me again as what I need is LONG term therapy. They couldn't even refer to that from A and E, I still had to go through the gp, and it is still unsure what help I can get!
I have suffered terribly with depression and anxiety for as long back as I can remember. I was always too shy and sensitive and tearful. I have been to counciller after doctor after psychiatrist after psychologist who had managed to do sweet f*ck all for me and it was not untill I first started seeing a community psychiatrict nurse two years ago, I had been seeing her for two weeks when she deduced that I was not mentally ill, just lacking a certain hormone from my body, I started taking the hormone and have been a different person ever since, I am now 27.
Alot of them just dont care. All of them were all Indian men and Im not being racist or anything but what does an old Indian man know about how a young white woman is feeling?
The system certainly failed me!
I worked as an MFT in a community based mental health service provider for 2 years until I quit last spring. The job broke my heart. We were to provide mental health services to children involved with child protective services-children in foster care or children who might in the future or may have in the past been in foster care.
It was a dismal failure. These kids need more than 45 minutes a week of (expletive) talk therapy-they need families, they need consistency, they needed safety and medication and an education. They did not need me showing up once a week spouting stupid questions to help them to "deal with" their past (as if that were possible or even an appropriate goal-who among us has come to terms with painful events in our pasts without MAJOR work as an adult, and how do you ask a kid who has suffered abuse his or her whole life to do that in one forty five minute session a week) ...or throw ridiculous cognitive behavioral techniques at them, as if snapping a rubber band against your wrist, for example, is going to take away the rage and pain from being sodomized repeatedly by your parents since birth...
It was depressing, it was a lie, and finally I quit. I still believe in talk therapy, but only for the "worried well". I think the answer to these problems is in a realistic drug policy, severe penalties for child abuse (including severing parental rights immediately) and -believe it or not-orphanages. Only by creating stability for these kids, even if it's kind of crappy stability, can we hope to fix them. Sending them to live with maybe 10 foster care families on average in 1 year is NOT the answer. in home "mental health services" is a JOKE and a WASTE of tax payer resources and finally, an affront to the very dignity of those it purports to help in the community.
I'm studying to become a counselor (LPC) in a southern mid-western state. We lack in care here. There is only a couple of counselors in our entire county. There is a place for the youth that get into trouble and an outpatient facility based on income. You can not just look in phone book and find one. You have to research and find one for yourself. The next county over has around 45 (LPC's). I believe that there is a great need for people that need counseling of some sort in this area and the help is just not here. Although, it's a rural area. The state I live in has one of the highest divorce rates, highest teenage pregnancy rates in the country. And I don't think that is going to improve any time soon.
Who Cares?
You've got mental health problems! If you want views look out different windows...
A Tosser
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... boring!
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