Sick – The UK mental health service needs help

Yet more shortcomings of the way people with mental health are treated in the UK have come to light. This is a sick system which is failing. The whole attitude and ethos behind the treatment of anxiety, depression, self-harming, eating disorders and other non-physical based issues is damaging, out-dated, and sometimes cruel.

At the moment the system only really works when people are assertive and proactive in seeking the correct treatment. The problem with this is that people who say self-harm necessarily have low self-esteem, and do not believe their case is worth fighting for. What is needed is the diametric opposite, for the system to help those people who are unable or unwilling to see that they are worth it.

In a recent report by the BBC, a women told of her history of self-harm and low self-esteem which was ignored by teachers and medical professionals alike.

What really came through in the report was a complete lack of understanding, recognition, and caring by those people whose function in society is to help people.

Two specific areas shocked me.

Firstly, that a teacher would tell a child who had self-harmed to “stop being stupid” is outrageous. In this day and age of broken families and cold communities it is imperative that teachers know who to call when a child presents with signs of abuse whether self-inflicted or otherwise. This is a big problem in the UK, and in the rest of the developed world. But it doesn’t have to be. These issues are treatable.

The second thing I found shocking was that no therapy was available for patients on a psychiatric ward. It is arrogant, short-sighted, and dangerous to see the kinds of common mental health issues such as low self-esteem and self-harming as being due to chemical imbalances that can be treated with drugs. People who have grown to help themselves need therapy. Drugs are only a crutch, a stop-gap. There is no way that drugs can permanently change the way you think about yourself. That comes from therapy.

And again, the attitude of a nurse that said “If you really wanted to kill yourself you’d do it properly” beggars belief. In truth the only remedy to that situation is to sack, retrain, or reassign the nurse in question. They have no place and nothing to offer in a mental health setting.

Medical arrogance and under-funding are to blame for this situation. A less narrow minded attitude towards therapy and proper budgeting may help remedy it.

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