Another year, and I am still here. I did not imagine I would be, but I seem to just limp on, unable to do anything decisive either way. A London friend just rang. I didn’t pick up. She leaves messages, but I don’t play them. I can’t speak to her because I am rubbish at spin and untruths, & I don’t have a socially acceptable answer to give when she asks me how I’m doing. Messages drop off voicemail after a week or so I guess. My friend will stop calling, & I’ll fade from memory. The lockdowns loosened ties with friends that had already been stretched by my move to a new area. I don’t ha ..read more

I’m not sure whether I’ll swim through this winter. I’m not making any plans. But, whatever happens, swimming outdoors & my swimmy friends have meant that, for better or worse, I’ve stayed around for longer. . A friend said to me last week, of someone we’d both swum with and who had died by suicide last year, that he felt awful wondering whether he could have done more to support her. . Maybe. We can’t know now. But maybe, instead, their friendship and the support of other friends had helped her to stay for longer than she would otherwise have done. . It was the first time I’d said it out ..read more

I am being buried alive by professionals. Each fresh attempt to get care, treatment & support for severe & enduring mental ill-health in the past 3 years since I was discharged from community mental health services has led to more & more professionals covering their own arses. There is no way, simply no way, to get NHS mental health services or social care to respond in a constructive way when they’ve decided to exclude you from care – even when they’ve assessed you as needing that care. They’ll do anything to impose their will. You cannot win. If you are at the start of this journ ..read more

Today in Nobody Will Take Me Seriously Till I’m Dead … There was never any need for me to become this unwell and, the more unwell I become, the more services – GP, mental health, social care – withdraw. I have been “reaching out” for such a long time. What those mental health awareness campaigns don’t tell you is that “reach out”, “just ask for help” is a one-time thing. Miracle cure. Get better, or get lost. For the first few years after I came into contact with mental health services, I believed I simply had to ask the right way or find the right door or get onto the right waiting list, & ..read more

Your periodic reminder that a mental health assessment is neither neutral nor is it help. Whilst carrying out an assessment may count as “contact” or “activity” for the purposes of a service’s records, it is not help. If you yank my sprained ankle back & forth to determine whether it is sprained, that hurts. A mental health assessment is not help for the person being assessed. It may “help” the professional to form an opinion or shape a treatment plan, but it does not help the person who’s required to go through (probably for the umpteeth time) their (probably most awful) experiences. Offe ..read more

The psychiatric system has beaten me. I’ve lost. I tried my best to get the help I need. But all that my efforts have done is show me there is no way to hold mental health professionals to account; that the system will protect itself at all costs. There’s no hope for me now. I tried my best – but my efforts came to nothing. So this is it now. This is my life. This … suffering. On and on. The more I’ve been denied care, treatment & support, the more I’ve deteriorated; and the more of my life I have lost. And the more each of the services has withdrawn from me into their own little silos, be ..read more

Social prescribing can only play a limited role in helping folks living with serious mental ill-health   A news story on social prescribing boomed out of my radio on Monday morning – another jolly report about how this was the way to manage long-term conditions in the community. NHS England had announced a plan to roll out the scheme across the country by recruiting 1,000 social prescribing “link workers” to support GPs and help people improve their health and well-being. It felt alienating, because of my own personal experience of social prescribing. On the face of it, social prescribin ..read more

. Please note that, throughout this blog, I make extensive use of twitter conversations saved on Storify – I used that site for years to help me collate my thoughts and save conversations with others. Sadly, Storify closed in 2018 so those links no longer work. However, I have saved all my Storify stories on another site, so the work is not all lost. What I haven’t done is go through the website replacing all the links. Therefore, if there are any particular Storify stories you would like to look at, contact me and I will see what I can do! .     ..read more

. I was so upset yesterday about a breach of my privacy at a pharmacy (not the first one) that I ranted on twitter – and it seemed it struck a chord with other patients. Pharmacists who responded were horrified by the breaches discussed. The conversation continued on twitter all day yesterday, and continued into today. I’ve captured all the tweets in the links below (“All tweets”), and have curated too: My tweets on the topic All tweets, Friday 22nd All tweets, Saturday 23rd What pharmacists say about patient confidentiality What patients say about privacy and confidentiality . Rel ..read more

. On today’s report by the Care Quality Commission on the state of mental health care in the UK My tweets – my thoughts on two serious shortcomings in how today’s report deals with the issue of use of force by mental health staff Including others’ tweets too  . Related links: Documents: The state of care in mental health services 2014 to 2017 – Findings from CQC’s programme of comprehensive inspections of specialist mental health services (20 July 2017) Mental Health Act 1983 – Code of Practice (2015) Positive and Proactive Care – Reducing the need for restrictive interventions (20 ..read more