When mental health professionals need mental health care and treatment

[MHPHS]

Greetings

I am a Consultant Clinical Psychologist.  I am interested in the experiences of UK mental health professionals when they themselves have needed mental health care and treatment.  This includes therapy, counselling, crisis intervention, A and E care for self harm (including suicide attempts), intervention for alcohol and substance use.  All responses will be treated in upmost confidence.  Please feel free to forward this email/post or suggest groups to contact.  Thank you.

edit: by Admin 2009.08.12

If anyone has any views, please do post them or contact me on MHPHS@tiscali.co.uk

[SWM]

I am a UK mental health professional who became a mental health professional because of my previous mental health problems and experiences as a patient. would i be of interest to you, what might you do to me, if i contact you?

What are you interested in this for? what might an individual expect to be getting involved with by contacting you?

I will remove the email address until there is clarity about what you actually want to do with this information that you are requesting from people. this may be a genuine requests and if so you will be able to give sound reason for your request. i would expect a consultant clinical psychologist would have approached this better.

[MHPHS]

Hi SWM and thank you for your reply and for being so open.

Basically, I am interested to see if there is a need to establish better support systems for mental health professionals who are experiencing mental health problems.  I think there is, but don�t want to project my own experiences on to others and being taught to be a scientist-practitioner I am doing some research!

The NHS has established a pilot service for medics and dentists (see http://www.php.nhs.uk/).  Not surprisingly when you look at this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8187286.stm.  

I think other mental health professionals have similar concerns and that impacts on their own needs, but again, want to ensure I am being objective!

And re your experiences of being a patient, I am really interested to hear them.  I sure we could compare notes.  Things need to change and I want to make it happen - for all.  

Thank you again.

[MHPHS]

I started this post and recognise that I should add more about me;

Depression runs in my family and even at primary school I was the lonely kid, the one not like the rest.  But then from age 10 � 16 yrs I was immersed in a sport.  Whilst still rocky times, it gave me a focus and I competed at National levels and beyond.  It helped to counteract the continued school bullying.

But then I stopped the intensive training, my brother went to Univ. and my mum was out and about (with my dad having left and going to another continent when I was aged 3).  I was so low and this culminated in the first overdose.  I was then admitted to a child psychiatric unit, absconded, overdosed again, was found by the police and was then put in the very scary adult psychiatric ward.  

Although very up and down I went on to get two degrees and have a successful career in the helping profession.  But there were still so many lows that I would hide, despite overdoses, for fear of being in the NHS system again.  I cannot describe how it felt to know that you need help, but avoiding the sources of help as it may have made it worse.   Two sides of me, the confident professional helping others, but also the child inside hurt and angry and self punishing.

And then to now.  After being in a job that was going so well for many years, a new guy joined the team I managed and didn�t take too well to me supervising him.  Whilst more experienced I was younger than him and for want of a better term he began to s**t stir.  It all began to unravel and for the first time ever I had to take long term sick leave.  The lack of support that I received only added to my low mood, as did the desire to just exit life.  

I did see my GP, but had a three month wait to see someone to talk to, although in the very service I worked for.  Then in a meeting with HR present, my line manager expressed concerns that, in meeting a therapist in the same service, I may talk about him to someone who knew him.  His lack of appreciation for what I was going through only added to my sense of rejection and failure and I didn�t attend the appointment, though to be fair I was also worried about being in a waiting room with colleagues passing by.  

Then roughly a year ago, I took that overdose.  I didn�t seek help.  It was awful, but if it was to be a slow death I didn�t care.  It was better than the alternative � being an in-patient in the service I was part of.  

My mental health state is much better and I could put all this behind me, but I am prepared to take a risk and tell my experience, so that maybe, I will hear others experiences too.  And then maybe we can create better support services for mental health professionals.

 
 

[SWM]

ok, fair reasons, you may put your email link back in your post if you wish.

it would make a good research topic and i can see how that may impact future research and development in other areas too. i.e. the effect of the helper on the helped.

i wonder if you have considered that in your circumstances you where let down by your employers and your team.

i am not sure what i have learned from my experiences that might be of use to your research.
from my perspective it is not simply the services for mental health professionals that need improvement it is our cultural attitudes towards mental health the ethos within mental health services and treatment of mental illness across the board that need improving. services for all patients need improving, regardless of whether those patients are mental health professionals and regardless of status and class. 

i do however recognise the value of your research for informing, planning and implementing future changes to occupational health services in the future.

[MHPHS]

Thank you for the reply.  I had wanted to amend a post but couldn't find an edit/amend option.  I did try the help section and it said it should be there.  Can you point me in the right direction?

I totally agree that things need to change, most definitely for all inpatients, but that is going to take such an attitudinal shift especially when the medical model still drives many inpatient settings, patients are spoken about in such derogatory terms, are on occasions goaded etc.  The things I have seen and heard in nearly 20 years working in secure settings are unreal.  I tried hard to make changes, but was often scapegoated and suffered personally for it. 

But nothing will (for the foreseeable future) change the absurdity, that when a person is feeling low, vulnerable, awkward around family and friends they are then put into wards with total strangers, have to witness violence, restraint, high levels of expressed emotion and threats to their own safety.  Now that is madness!  And as to attitudinal shift.
 
What I maybe can do is make changes for one group of people, mental health professionals.  Not that they are more deserving than non mental health professionals, but I feel that that could be a manageable task, with others on board of course.  And then maybe the more compassionate mental health professionals who burnout after trying to change the system, will get better treatment, feel more empowered and instead of leaving the NHS, stay and continue to challenge the bad practices.  Maybe ...

If anyone has any views, please do post them or contact me on MHPHS@tiscali.co.uk

[SWM]

i put your link back in the first post.

you can modify your own posts by using the modify link in the right hand top corner of your own posts. opposite where your user name is displayed in each post.

i agree that your work will be of benefit and i can envision many other benefits than those you mentioned. including that of improving mental health care for all. change is hard to bring about and research such as yours will be of benefit to all people experiencing mental illness in the long run.

it is a much greater task to change cultural attitudes especially as the biomedical model is persistentley sponsored and promoted by gigantic pharmaceutical corporations whose interest is not health but profit and who sponsor lecturers and researchers across the globe to reindoctrinate the student of psychiatry and mental health. what chance do i stand in making changes on that level? although i am building This bridge to the rest of the world. i am also working in what i believe is the beginnings of a cultural shift in treatment and provision of mental health care http://www.iapt.nhs.uk/about/.

it would be nice to find other health care professional who are interested in working towards changing the culture of the mental health system, so if you find any point them in the direction of this forum

and of course if i find any professionals who have a story of being a patient and are interested in helping with research i will share your requests with them.