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Sunday, June 24, 2012

Bristol Mental Health: is support and treatment for suicidal and depressed people who struggle on to fulfill their duties going to be available only in the private sector?


Having used clinic 7 over many years and been refused any help by (AWP) Community Mental Health in 2003, I have very little confidence in there being adequate service provision in the future, if "clinic 7" goes. I was offered 24 weeks CAT therapy by (AWP) in 2011, after many grim years. This was ended abruptly with substantial pressure to move into the private sector. Sorting out and paying for a new therapistis a big ask in depression and contravenes the most basic NHS principles when suicide lives on your shoulder, tantamount to unethical actually.

With the community teams moving to a new base, it is already noticeable how dramatically less accessible they are. Any suggestion that Community Mental Health will step in should be refuted immediately and is already a joke.

Clinic 7 accepted my GPs referral and has offered support for many years, without threatening deadlines. Clinic 7 doesn't evict you after a preset time or when a patient still is in a bad or even worse place. Remarkably. Dr Malizia keeps trying and I need his confidence that a solution can be found. Dr Malizia has an ongoing input on a regular basis trying to help me cope with this depressive episode, I have minimal expectation of adequate alternatives being offered come September. His experience and expertise does of course have a price but his input has kept me working and paying taxes, so I am sure it is cost effective at a societal level.

No-one I work with has any idea of my health issues; the latter primarily resulting from bereavement which left me bringing up small children on my own.
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Abandoning Clinic 7 patients will cost so much more elsewhere and in the health service, very quickly I suspect.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The community teams have compounded the pressure on their patients by re-organising their clinical teams by postcode and re-allocating care co-ordinators to established patients. Thus many patients now have to start all over again with a new care co-ordinator, so the value of previous established relationships and knowledge are lost. It is a huge deal to have to start back at the begining with someone new; I don't think I can do it! I do now understand why I have been unable to contact my care co-od since the end of May!!!!Clinic 7 has not abandonned patients in this way + is desperately trying not to now.

Anonymous said...

uncertainty is one of the biggest threats to patients with mental health problems; for AWP to keep adding more and more uncertainty to the provision of future mental health services is cruel and they know it