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Low morale and full wards, but still room for profit
• RECENT correspondence on mental health services surprises me. I have become involved in this area very reluctantly because my younger sister has been ill and detained in hospital locally. It is immediately noticeable that there are too few staff for all the tasks required and that the morale of those who are working is very low.
Patients do not receive much attention and are lucky if they see a psychiatrist, except to be admitted, medicated or discharged – often prematurely because of a shortage of beds. Doctors tell me it is now often impossible to obtain a bed for a patient who has not been “sectioned”, which means wards are full up with people who are extremely unwell, making them an untherapeutic environment in which patients are likely to become more ill rather than get well. There seems to be treatment but very little care.
Camden and Islington has a single provider of acute mental health services, the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. It has just published its annual report for 2007-08, a glossy document intended to persuade people of what a good job of work this trust is doing. On the basis of what is described as the recovery model these services are now centred on community care. The trust is taking pride in its reduction of expensive inpatient services. It is these all-important acute services which are so poor now. The trust is set to make a substantial profit yet it seeks to reduce its services still further.
There is something fundamentally wrong when a provider of mental health services falls under the delusion it is in the corporate world. This trust is now spending its money on boardroom politics and management consultants. It even has a communications department to try to manage the news. There is an old adage about the inmates taking over the asylum but in the new world it seems truer to think of the position as madness taking over the boardroom.
SANJAY SHAH
Maitland Park Road, NW1
• THE mental health services have been whittled away, with a clever campaign of misdirection using words such as “restructuring” and “reconfiguration” to explain away the loss in bed numbers, closure of female-only wards at the Grove and Highgate mental health centres, the closure of the Tottenham Mews drop-in centre and the general reduction in community services.
No doubt director of communications David Lee’s prodigious news management talents will soon be needed again as the trust proceeds to close St Luke’s Hospital Woodside, reconfigure the Highgate Day Centre and open a secure unit on the St Pancras Hospital site.
These change have all been made much easier by the silence of the group created and funded to support the users of the mental health services, Camden Mental Health Consortium. It has been particularly reluctant to speak out. But who would expect it to when that might threaten its very existence.
SHENAL JAMES
NW5
• I REALLY find it hard to understand all the criticisms of the mental health/substance misuse services. Both my husband and I have long-term drug problems. Drugs have been at the centre of our lives for many years and because of their hold on us we both spent time in prison.
We’ve got a lot to be thankful for. With the help of Camden’s drug service our lives have been turned around. Occasionally, we slip but that’s always going to be part of the problem. Most of the time we manage to stay straight.
We consider we have really benefited from our treatment. My husband is dyslexic and he has been helped so much he is now able to chair a local charity. This is a real achievement for him.
I have managed to set up a group to help other people with drug problems and this has allowed me to develop my own career as a user consultant and earn extra money.
Too many people seem to want to say that the services are poor. We are an example of where the recovery model has worked well. We would both like to thank the trust for all it has done for us and allowed us to do for ourselves.
SARAH JENKINS
Albany Street, NW1
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