Need Ideas Please
 

The director of the mental health clinic in my county and I will be meeting to discuss how the mental health system can change. I have some good reasons why I am unhappy with the mental health system in my county but would like to hear any complaints you all have with your system that I may also find wrong with mine that I can discuss. My goal is to improve the system for the better of it's clients.

barbara king

Hi befuddled2

Well i am giving you my UK version of this, but i guess its pretty much the same the world over.

The saddest and most obvious problem with mental health care is
1. the sufferer is unwell, confused, debilitated, anxious, isolated and desperate for a cure,
2. the health professionals [not all i hasten to add] are usually healthy, logical, in control, mindful and hyper alert, probably to busy to be anxious, Specialists in their field, and try to fit each individual into a text book pigeon hole, [whoops cynical me]

When patient and doctor can be given a level playing field,,,,mental health care may improve,

I have often seen doctors who barely look at you whilst writing their notes down, offer little or no bed side manner, and strangely enough for such a sensitive medical spectrum, have little or no...EMPATHY.

In the USA it may be better, but then you pay hard cash for a the understanding you may or may not receive.

PATCH ADAMS got it spot on.....treat people with care kindness, understanding and humour....and it would go along way in stripping the taboo of mental health

and it may also help the patient. Kindness goes along way in health care

far further than egotistical patronising arrogance that a lot in this medical field suffer from.

Rant over good luck in trying to shape the future even if its just your county health care system [from acorns to oak trees i say loudly]

David

Thank you David. I am going to use what you said as to the state of mind the patient is in compared to the health care provider. It is like that here also in the USA.

barbara

one of my clients was locked up for 30 days because her pdoc thought she was manic because she was talking fast.
She said she was not manic. 30 days!!!!!
and the scarey thing is that her pdoc IS MY PDOC!!!!!:confused:

they let my neighbor out after 6 days following a suicide attempt....talked her way out, no therapist no antidepressants.....then they canceled her follow up appointment one month later....insane!

my girlfriend was over medicated and had been treated for bipolarism for 7 years following a suicide attempt. they kept giving her more meds to counter act the side effects of her meds...she was up to 8 pills...she finally got off everything when she decided to have a baby....
She is not bipolar! her suicide attempt was situational depression.

rebecca riley died at age 4 from overdose of psych meds from her parents...
most kids who are in the foster parent system are on medications...
anti psychitic meds are the number one drug seller.
WE can even use seroquel for depression....excuse me it is sedative!
lets sedate someone who is depressed!

sorry for my rant
bizi

Hi Bizi If I got locked up for circumstances like that,I'd turn into hot vapor with anger. That would really get my goat!:mad: I'd certainly would not pay for it if it was forced on me.

The payment where I go,has gone up 3,to 400%. I'm already angry looking at,and trying to figure out these bills.

Why do they raise the billing when you get on Medicaid? :mad: Venting,venting,venting. BF:hug::hug::hug:

Two years ago i suuported a Heroin addict at work.

He went to see his GP to say he was feeling depressed and was getting fuzzy head feelings as he said [fell a sleep for several minutes at a time but thought nothing of this]

He was conerned that he had been to the doctor on several occassions but could not convey his concerns as the Doctor just SAW+TREATED a heroin addict and subsquent Methodone addict.

He said the doctor was brash and cold towards him, dismissive of anything he tried to say.

So i wrote an introduction letter that he could hand the Doctor as he went into his appointment. The letter just stated that my client was concerned about other aspects of his life and health and found it difficult to talk about it. I also included that this person was feeling sterotyped and not seen from a holistical view point.

The letter was not rude, or innappropriate and my client was delighted that his view would be relayed.

The outcome was for this doctor to blow is stack.....He reported me for the construction of the letter claiming he Had mental health as his primary background in medicine. He was irate that i, and his patient had dare to question his style or proffessional behaviour.

Well the complaint went absoloutely nowhere, he recalled the complaint but chose his doctor patient right...to withdraw service. [he removed my clint from his GP list]


My client changed Doctors [but now felt guilt ...so still did not convey his issues with his new doctor]

He left where i work into his own home about three months after.

He was there eleven weeks, and was found dead in his flat face down.
He had died of an epelctic fit apparently. [were these the fuzzy head feelings he described i thought?]

TREAT THE PERSON AS A HUMAN BEING AND NOT AS case diagnosis

David

I mistakeingly went to an orthopedic doctor about my shoulder injury. and had a list of all of my hospitalizations down on a piece of paper instead of having to write them all out. it was a long list.
So when she came in for the first meeting and exam...she spent more time quizing me about my drug induced hospitalizations than assessing my shoulder.
It infuriated me but said nothing, she did not listen to my concerns and formed her own opinion, I asked about an mri and she said there was nothing wrong with my shoulder, but after the exray it showed something was wrong so she ordered the mri, she could not have waited 5 minutes after an exray to make her diagnosis????? I left her office knowing that I would never see her again.
I had my mri and went into her office to pick up my erays and saw another ortho. I did not list my diagnosis nor my meds...I figured I would share that info later if I needed a surgery or other treatment.
bizi
hurumph....:mad:

Hi,
 

I remember you writing about this at the time Bizi. :hug:

Norsk10
 

Dear all,

I am new on this site and not greatly computer literate so I do not know how to "jump around" these sites.

The thing problematic about medicine, all fields of it, is that the causes of diseases are not known so treatments are more or less trail and error, even if modern clinical trials are used to determine if this or that chemical helps a certain problem. They are all disease altering drugs (or even surgeries) so not too much can be expected of them.

Physicians, by their training, are associated with fairly reputable mentors and physicians learn from them. No one questions them. That is not bad, but the mentors do not know the causes of diseases either, but that conditions new physicians to think more of themselves and the knowledge they have than is true. That makes them not feel guilty when they are paid...just works out that way. They are truly doing their best, usually, but the level of medical knowledge "out there" is not so great...not as much as we give the medical community credit for.

Think this way: in 1850 physicians did not know the cause of one disease: unless a person had a laceration, fracture, or sprain. Then the microbiological revolution was started in Holland with van Leewenhoek, but it took until the 1850's for the Germans to start learning about bacterial diseases. By the early 1900's the cause of most bacterial diseases were figured out and antibiotics were invested in the 1930's, but thereafter there has been no great insights in medical science. None!

All the stuff done since the 40's is the development of high-tech things, surgery and chemical therapy to alter diseases. No one seriously thinks about "thinking about" the causes of diseases so that new cures can be developed.

You neurological people...are in luck though, because I have figured out that there is one cause for most neurological and other conditions, from sciatica, to carpal tunnel, to Guillain-Barre' to MS, etc., and all rheumatic conditions have neuropathies as do gastrointestinal problems so you see, all these diseases, and many more, are connected by one underlying cause. I will have a paper published in a few months and when it is I will notify you on this site.

Those who have individual questions can contact me on this site if you want. I am busy finishing the paper and a book, but I will look at the site from time to time.

Yours, Norsk10

Hi DMACK This is very sad. His former doctor sounds arrogant,and cold hearted. The poor person didn't have a proper check up for the fuzzy head feelings,and his doctor wasn't listening.

This is so sad. His life will be remembered by your kind heart. I wish that I could have talked to him. I've been through some dark periods of pain in my life,and have survived. You have a good weekend. Like I said,I'm very sorry for your former client. He deserved to be treated like a human being. BF:hug::grouphug::hug: