Showing posts with label Mind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mind. Show all posts

Thursday 11 May 2017

Even working for a branch of Mind¹, is it safe for one's colleagues to know much about one's mental-health issues (let alone brushes with suicide) ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 May

Feeling like a burden : in the world of employment, what might follow from others' difficult feelings 'as a result of telling them about your suicidal feelings' ?

The charity SANE (@CharitySANE) no doubt means well by urging such messages on us - as if talking is just talking, and without risks, and a disclosure can be 'unknown' afterwards by those who hear or read it :



Sadly, knowledge always has the potential to be power, and - whether or not they consciously intend to view you, and what they are now aware of about you, as weakness - colleagues can subtly start treating you as other [the writer talks from the perspective of having had this exact experience in employment by an LMA*] :



As if they are different from you, as if they need to wonder about you, what you are doing and The S Question, when you are unavoidably and / or unexpectedly out of sight...



As if, frankly, you have become a liability, irrespective of your previous years of service (when they did not know) !





Being employed by a charity, not even a mental-health charity*, is any protection against the effects of what they now know - and never [let you] forget !






End-notes :

 ¹ Usually set up as companies limited by guarantee, regional mental-health charities affiliate to Mind (and become Local Mind Associations, or LMAs), and, although they largely 'run their own show', they are allowed to use the Mind name².




 ² There is, in fact, no such thing as the national Mind charity per se (@MindCharity), and the name 'Mind' (not an acronym, so it should not be rendered MIND) is just a trading-name : The National Association for Mental Health, which is what Mind is really called, just started using it decades ago, and, when it caught on, never looked back.

 Question : Nothing is for ever, not even trademarks, or trading-names, so have we reached the point in time when anyone could start using the name Mind... ?


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 10 May 2013

Mind what's going on ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 May




Not sure what was going on there, as it was the Adebowale report on the Met and mental-health patients...


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Tuesday 29 January 2013

The Language of Mental Health

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 January




I hope that I may be excused for using this Tweet to illustrate a point or two*...

First, for good or ill (and from such things as having mental health services and a Mental Health Act), the words ‘health’ and ‘mental’ are linked, but it is typical that, when we mean mental ill-health we might write mental health, and vice versa.

It might be personal to me, but I hate – I almost cringe – this idea that mental distress should be linked with suffering. Not that people do not sometimes have a very painful, tortured time with voices or with depression, but just that one of the things that people believe, because they are inclined to say (or think) Bloody pull yourself together !, and why make it easier for them to say that those who have mental-health issues are suffering self-indulgent martyrs ?

Interlude : I was at the One in Four conference four years ago, where the topic was that of this posting, and I just wonder how far we have come on, because it is my belief that even the mental-health world is not united in its use of language. You may not have spotted, but I have already used Mind’s preferred term, of mental distress, and one that those who have had contact with services sometimes use, of mental-health issues - Mind’s misses out the emphasis, still so prevalent, on health, whereas the other phrase focuses on the issues. Then again, the preferred words in One in Four magazine are mental health difficulty…

So, there is no common language, which does not make communication any more straightforward, and the word depressed can mean, at one end, someone willing to undergo ECT not to be so numb and to feel something, and, at the other, someone a bit weepy because cooking dinner did not turn out right.
Back at our Tweet, the final thing that I wanted to say is that, when we wish that a friend with measles gets better soon, we do not look for – though it might be needed – some moral improvement.

However, I am not so sure that this sense is not imported into the language of mental health, because, on the sly, there is a belief that there is some sort of malignancy or turpitude in having a stay in a psychiatric unit, even if it is at the level of It’s all right for some ! from disgruntled colleagues or the like. (Talking, instead, about recovery does not make things any more palatable, for me, but creates more difficulties.)
We are urged to talk about mental health, by campaigns such as Time to Change, but do we have the words in which to do it that are not already laden with cynicism, connotation and criticism… ?


End-notes

* Not to pick at the writer of this Tweet, but at what the instinctive choice of language tells us all about this subject



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Sunday 18 November 2012

This is Leicestershire - where comments cannot easily be added...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 November



Comment on : The report provides food for thought for all of us who want to see the best possible treatment, with in-patient units offering the most therapeutic environments


Because I can, I am adding my comment here :


I can say, from experience, that psychiatric units have provided a poor therapeutic setting for at least 15 years, during which nothing much has changed, despite :


1. Initiatives such as Mind's Star Wards

2. The merger of the Mental Health Act Commission with the Healthcare Commission (and a third commission, whose name escapes me) to create CQC, or the Care Quality Commission

3. Much public and parliamentary rhetoric

4. The (patchy and very late) introduction of services for crisis resolution and home treatment, as well as some services for early intervention

5. Any money added to - rather than cut from - spending on mental-health services


What we need is services, i.e. for someone to do something that helps those who are experiencing mental distress. That is therapeutic, whereas these (all too common) experiences are not :


a. Being told that the doctor wants to see you this morning, and waiting in for something that never happens ('Oh, Doctor Jones had people to see at the out-patients' clinic and couldn't get away after all'), rather than being able to go to the cafe or for a walk

b. Coupled with that, misinformation, doublespeak, denial about what someone else definitely said ('Oh, Richard wouldn't have said that', when Richard did), confusion ('Who told you that?', when it was someone who had never been on duty before and who didn't give his or her name)

c. Having no one listen when you report unpleasant side-effects such as constipation, being unable to sleep at night, awkward limb movements, or painful uncontrollable muscle spasms ('Welcome to the world of anti-psychotics such as haloperidol, designed to make you acceptable to the family, friends, neighbours and the requirements of "society in general" who may have had you sectioned or otherwise persuaded into being admitted to become transformed into whatthey approve of !')

d. Likewise with any existing physical-health condition, or a physical complaint that you may develop - these experiences get written off ('The side-effects are worth the therapeutic benefit') or dismissed ('The medication won't do that', even if you later get hold of a patient information leaflet and find it listed') by the doctor, and who are the multi-disciplinary team to challenge him or her (as with any doctor)... ?


Therapeutic environments ? Well, no !



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Friday 23 December 2011

Mind charity shops and NAMH

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 December 2011 (updated 2 February 2013, 11 January 2015)






Seeing Paul Farmer's Tweet, I gave him the opportunity to comment. He did not do so (until 11 months later, when asked again...).




You will know the national charity Mind (it sometimes claims to be the leading UK mental-health charity, but Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation may not agree).

Some places where people live have a local Mind charity shop: the common misconception (which, for all that I know, some obscure notice on the premises may allegedly clarify, if you knew that it is there) is that giving items to or otherwise supporting the shop supports people locally who have mental-health issues (rather than Mind itself, the national body).

Some people also assume that 'Mind' means something, and write it 'MIND', as if it were an acronym, but it is actually just a trading-name that stuck to and was kept by what is really the National Association for Mental Health (or NAMH).


So, to summarize, Mind is really NAMH, and Mind charity shops don't support the Mind named after your area, e.g. West Norfolk Mind (if there is one and you lived there).

Now, other charities, say Red Cross, may be set up the same way - I don't know - but, in Mind's case, it's just several assumptions that it would be easy enough to prevent people making, if it mattered enough to stop them.

Now one wild, further, improbable step: imagine East Cambridge Mind (there isn't one, but let's call it ECM) providing services in the voluntary sector, receiving grants and funding, etc. They might offer somewhere where, using Mind's favoured terms, those with a personal experience of 'mental distress' can come for a coffee at certain times of the week.

Or there might be free counselling, or the artificial buddying known as befriending, where a volunteer commits to meet with a member of ECM every so often to allow social things like going for a walk or having a drink (maybe one then the other) that might seem harder to do on one's own. Services, anyway, that need staff and volunteers.

Mind doesn't employ the staff or manage the volunteers, because Mind (as NAMH) is a separate company. ECM is another. Mind lets ECM use the Mind name by agreeing to let it subscribe to be a Local Mind Association (or LMA).


OK, so Mind where you live will be a company (usually limited by guarantee) registered at Companies House. NAMH is another one, so they are separate, except for NAMH letting ECM have Mind in its name.

ECM subscribes (pays a subscription, amongst other things) to do that, but it remains separate. Two companies, never the twain shall meet, although national Mind does require these LMAs (such as ECM) to meet quality standards. The assessment, though, is largely on the basis of self-certification.

So to establish that, say, ECM supervises its staff regularly (maybe monthly) for that quality standard, what Mind actually does is to get ECM to fill in a series of forms that state how, where and when supervision takes place and is recorded. For example, ECM sets out how the manager meets the employee or volunteer every x weeks, spends at least y hours with him or her without interruption, and makes sure that z specified issues are discussed every time.

No other check is made - it may not happen at all, or, at least as often or as well as certified. As far as Mind is concerned, ECM is meeting the quality standard, just because it says that it is meeting the quality standard. That's fine, of course.


Or might you be saying this?:

Isn't ECM employing or having as volunteers people who work with vulnerable people, some of whom may be vulnerable people themselves, seeking 'to give something back'?

That's true.


OK, so aren't there at least three people's interests to protect?

(a) The person receiving a service through ECM;
(b) The person giving a service on behalf of ECM;
(c) The other staff / volunteers of ECM?

Yes, that's right.


And, in fact, isn't there a fourth (maybe a fifth) set of interests?

(d) The carers / relatives / friends of the person receiving a service (or those who otherwise come into contact with the staff and volunteers of ECM)?

You're still right, and some of those are the ones who are not disabused as to what they are supporting with Mind charity shops, too.


So, if something goes wrong, if a volunteer or an employee (or all of them) is not being supervised, and Mind is just being told that they are, it will want to know and will take action?

No, Mind just believes what it's told - it actually has no mechanism for an employee to go to it and complain of not being supervised, because it will just direct him or her back to ECM. ECM is a company, Mind is a company (NAMH), and, despite ECM subscribing to Mind, Mind says that it has no control over ECM.

It remains an internal matter to resolve with ECM, even if the staff member or volunteer is vulnerable because of mental distress, and is less well placed to challenge ECM's company approach or adherence to quality standards or its procedures. Mind will not help or get involved - the aggrieved person, who is not being supervised properly and / or regularly, must raise a grievance.


But that's OK, isn't it? It fits with the slogan (it's for For better mental health, isn't it?), and is just the model of governance you expect from the Mind name.

Good, knew you'd be happy - merry Christmas!


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