Too Little, Too Late

Following on from yesterdays post entitled “Helpless” I would like to continue part of the discussion that followed in the form of a blog post, as I feel that the struggle to access services for people suffering with mental health problems is an important issue which many people may be unaware of.

Catherine said:

“Your post left me feeling sad and empty inside. Recently I have read a lot of posts coming from bloggers saying that the very people that are supposed to help them, aren’t.”

Catherine, the whole situation leaves me feeling sad and empty as well, but also angry. As you have found from reading other blogs, this isn’t an isolated case, and this is an important issue that mental health services need to address.

“Is this just what happens when you cannot fight for yourself? Everyone ignores you?”

The fact that people find it so hard to access services even when they have someone fighting for them suggests to me that there must be people on their own who are not getting help at all. I suppose this could be for a variety of reasons; for a start, people working in mental health aren’t psychic, so unless a person states that they need help no one will know. But I feel that once a person is known to a CMHT they should be provided with an adequate support system, and this is where they are being failed.

This leads me to Slurry’s comment about the CPN.

“I totally understand what you were saying in that post. In regards to “where is the CPN” etc, if it’s not Mon-Fri 9-5 they don’t want to know, even in those hours they probably wouldn’t want to anyhow.”

Slurry, you’re right, the fact that Community Psychiatric Nurses only work Monday–Friday, 9-5 is less than helpful. But the reason why I asked the questions: “Where is this mans Care Co-ordinator? Where is his CPN? Where is his Care Plan?” is because I don’t think he even has any of these things, although he should have.

The problem is that “Service Users” are not made aware of the services available to them or what help they are entitled to, and even the most caring and supportive of families can not demand the services for their relative that they have no knowledge of. This is a problem that Mr Man and I have experienced ourselves; Mr Man was not assigned a CPN until he had been discharged from hospital after his third admission, in which he had been admitted under a section of the Mental Health Act.

So with regards to the man suffering from Bipolar, the question is this: has he been left without this support because the CMHT wrongly assume that his family, with no training, will be able to cope with the responsibility of caring for someone with serious mental health problems? Or - and this is a far worse scenario - are people with mental health problems, including those who live alone, routinely left without an adequate support network from the CMHT until it is deemed impossible to “get away” with it any longer, such as after multiple hospital admissions, or after the person has been hospitalised under a section of the Mental Health Act?

It is my belief that as soon as it becomes apparent that a person is suffering from a serious mental health problem, they should be assigned a Care Co-ordinator, a CPN, and have a Care Plan drawn up. Surely prevention is better than cure? If this man had a CPN regularly calling to see him, I dare say his condition wouldn’t have deteriorated so badly before anyone noticed. If he had a Care Plan, his family would have known exactly what to do and who to call when he reached crisis point.

It makes me so angry that relatives have to fight so damn hard to get help for their sick loved ones, but who will fight for the person with mental health problems who lives alone?



If you want to be depressed even further, please read this article on Mental Nurse, and in particular the article linked to therein.