firemonkey

Having once lived for many years near Richmond Park & often cycled/driven over the very spot where the tragedy happened (the Richmond Town entrance/exit), I've been following this story regularly.

We should not be surprised at what is happening in the mental health care sector in the UK because health care has ceased to be a service and is now a commodity, which of course means that it is subject to market forces.

The 're-branding' of various mental diseases is much akin to the marketing ploys used by business, it's all part of the same culture. Mental illness is not an attractive entity, but it has to be catered for, and it is easier to pretend that it is just another 'product' for 'customer' consumption. When I say "easier", I mean that the powers-that-be are using window-dressing to cover up the huge flawed defects & anomalies of this market-and-target-driven system of health care.

The phraseology and jargon that is now used by politicians, health officials, et al, should be enough to make anyone realise that the NHS is being run as a business, and will therefore NOT cater for the real needs of patients, because that would simply be too expensive.

I honestly believe that it might have been possible to make the health service work efficiently as a publicly-funded service, but I think it is too late now. We have all been indoctrinated and educated to believe that the only value worth living by is to be totally independent and not rely on the state or anyone or any other organisation to help. I think independence is a good thing and am fierce about my own independence, BUT it only goes so far - there comes a point when people become ill, and then they need society to be a cohesive and supportive entity so that they can get back on their feet again, and I am willing to pay taxes to support such a system. (I am deliberately leaving out references to the 'spongers-fraudsters-idle/work-shy', not because I don't think these people exist, but simply because I believe this is so over-played in the media, and because this is a separate issue which does not affect the principle of whether or not you believe in health care as a publicly or privately funded system.)

Finally (if you have not given up on this rant yet) the so-called political correctness that deams it necessary to stop calling a spade a spade, is NOT imo because we are all so sweetly concerned about not wanting to offend people; it is all part of the cult of the "new-speak" bandwagon which appears to make it much easier to deal with a problem if you first diminish its reality by reducing its seriousness - and what better way to do that than by calling a spade a shovel, in other words, "re-brand" it into a marketeable item. Then get other health care "providers" to bid for it, and the politicians will have solved another health care problem "seamlessly" by providing "community-care".

The fact is, the community doesn't care - the community services are too fragmented & underfunded to care, and will continue to try to meet government targets by providing only the most basic health care, and at the same time probably have to complete masses of jargon-ridden paperwork about diseases they no longer recognise because they have all been renamed.

I apologise if this appears to be a political rant - it is not - I am PASSIONIATE about the NHS, not necessarily as it was previously run, but as a PRINCIPLE of the humane & compassionate society I would like to believe that I belong to. If you spend enough time reading these boards, it is not long before you realise that humanity is suffering greatly, and that perhaps the single most important thing in anyone's life is their health.

Yvonne