Eviction notice served

floss2

mrsspendalot wrote: »

Just picking up on this .... So outward appearances can be deceptive when dealing with people suffering from all kinds of mental distress.

That's what I was trying to get across - generalisations shouldn't be made. I know she's looking for signs of neglect of the twins too, but to use that as a factor in her decision that MoT was able to "manage her affairs effectively" isn't fair.

And MoT's journey to this point didn't begin when she (finally) got her appointment with the HLO - it started way before that, so again, her "period of time" isn't a fair snapshot to make an important decision on, without all the background history that most of us have been able to learn.

mumoftwins

floss2 wrote: »

Don't forget that the psycho Dr said "outwardly appears capable" so as HLO is not medically qualified, let alone psychi or psycho (well.....) qualified, how can she make a judgement on your actual capability or capacity to do day-to-day tasks. :mad:

And why does she make such a thing of having an immaculate home? Apart from the tinyness of the flat, surely if you can keep your surroundings clean & tidy when you're not quite right in the head, then that is an achievement in itself. What would she have said about someone with OCD who has the compulsion to clean & tidy up - would she recognise their problems?!

Confused hugs!
Floss xx

Changing my user name to - 'not quite right in the head'!:rotfl:

floss2

mumoftwins wrote: »

Changing my user name to - 'not quite right in the head'!:rotfl:

I kind of hoped you wouldn't take offence.....:D
Anyway, it's a bit nicer to think of yourself as that, than all the psycho words in the report!

Am off now.....rugby tonight,, Sale are playing italian side Petrarca and hoping for another win (come on Saaayyyuulll!) so don't expect to see me till the weekend! BTW, let I-T know it's England v Italy (6 Nations rugby) on 10 February, BBC1, 2.30pm.....and we're gonna win (well, possibly, maybe, if Jonny isn't injured )

Hugs to all,
Floss xx

wherediditallgo

I thought I'd post this for those who may be interested in how CMHTs are involved in mental health care. If anyone has any questions, they are free to PM me. Sorry for the length of the post, but hopefully it will be of help. I work in Acute Psychiatry (18-65 age group), so I can't speak on what happens with Children & Families or Older Age Psychiatry providers.


Anyone can approach a CMHT for help. They can be referred by someone else, such as a GP or anyone interested in their welfare. That person doesn’t have to be a medical professional – they can be someone such as relative, neighbour, friend, colleague or partner. The person with mental health concerns can also refer themselves to the CMHT, without going through someone else first. No-one can actually stop someone contacting a CMHT for help, though some may try to make it difficult.

A CMHT is made up of CPNs (community psychiatric nurses), social workers, psychiatrists (SPRs [specialist registrars] or SHOs [senior house officers]) and a psychologist, & the mental health provision is headed by a consultant psychiatrist. Included in that team will be a Senior CPN & a Senior Social Worker – these seniors will supervise the other CPNs and social workers within the team. There may also be a worker from a child-related organisation, to give input/advice or take referrals where an adult requires mental health care & has children who will need to be taken into account. This person won’t be employed by the team, but will be from an organisation who work with them, such as the NSPCC.

The CMHT that I work for is based with a hospital, & that hospital has a 24-hour duty & assessment service available. Members of the public can come to the duty service without an appointment and ask to be seen (they may have to wait a while if it’s busy), & at the very least they will see the on-call psychiatrist. That person will make an assessment of the person based on how they appear, & that assessment will be passed to the CMHT to discuss in more depth at their weekly team meeting. At that meeting, someone will present the case to the team & it will be a collective decision as to what action is taken. It may be that the person is offered an initial assessment with a psychiatrist and either a social worker or CPN, followed by further regular appointments in Outpatients. In those instances, they’ll be allocated a care co-ordinator, & this person will be their link with the team, & the person they contact when they need help. That person may be a CPN or a social worker.

It may also be that the assessment done by the duty service means that the CMHT decide the person should be referred to another service (such as one for drug misuse, or an eating disorder clinic), as the CMHT may not be able to provide the help that they need. The CMHT will let the person & whoever referred them know, & will either make the referral themselves to the relevant organisation or will give them the details for them to make contact themselves.

Our CMHT offers a “booking by choice” appointment system. This means that the person will be offered two appointments & asked to choose which is the most convenient for them. They will be asked to bring any current medication with them to the appointment. If they do not attend the appointment & do not contact the team prior to the appointment to say that they cannot attend, they may be offered another one. However, if they miss a second one, their case may be referred back to whoever referred them to us and no further appointments made unless a new referral is received. In a case where they referred themselves to the service & then miss two appointments, they will usually receive a letter confirming the dates of the appointments that they’ve missed and informing them that their case has been closed, & will remain so unless we hear from them again.

If someone feels that they should have got help from the CMHT & didn’t, they can take up the matter with the care co-ordinator who may have been allocated to their case, or they can contact the Senior Social Worker or Senior CPN who supervised them. If a care co-ordinator was not allocated to them, they can either contact the doctor who saw them, the Service Manager or the Complaints Department of the Trust involved and lodge a complaint with them. There is also a PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) attached to each hospital, and complaints can be lodged with them – they can look into the circumstances of each case by contacting the staff involved to find out what happened & then send a report back to you. Each CMHT should have a PALS link worker attached to it, and you should be able to get the details of the PALS link worker for the team looking after your case from that CMHT. If they can't tell you, the Trust headquarters should be able to tell you which PALS link worker is the correct one for you to contact.

kethry

thanks wherediditallgo for all that.. just out of curiosity: i have a number of mental health problems, which i ain't about to go into on here (mostly cos this isn't my thread!) and i saw someone who was a member of a CMHT a few years ago. It got to the point where she felt (after about 5 visits) that she could no longer really help me and that my next "stage", if you like, was group therapy.. the only problem is that i am deaf: group therapy, to me, is my ultimate nightmare - sitting in a group, not understanding what is going on, feeling obliged to unburden myself to a group of people i have no emotional connection with... and she just could not seem to understand that, mostly because (despite my deafness) i cope well in a one to one, quiet room setting, and gave the distinct impression that she thought i was exaggerating/faking it. Needless to say i was most put off and didn't go back for further appointments and since then, i've coped alone. Its not the kind of mental health issues that needs medication, btw. I didn't complain at the time as i just.. well. didn't have the energy to fight it i suppose.

any ideas?

Many thanks -

keth
xx

supersavershal

Hi MOT I too am picking up on the "outwardly appears capable".
Many years ago when I was a student nurse as part of my training I had to spend a period of time on a psychiatric secure unit (where all the patients were sectioned).For the first month I did not know who were the patients and who were the staff, I was told to go out on the unit and interact with everyone.It doesnt mean because someone has mental health issues that they go around with a big sign on their head.The patients there were from all walks of life, one lady had been a member of the Royal British Orchestra (or whatever they are called) and had travelled the world living a wonderful life before she suffered from depression.Its easy to see if someone is in a wheelchair but some disabilities are not shown outwardly.
P.S. the staff in the mental health unit wanted us to see if we could spot who was patients to test our assessment skills it was very hard sometimes the patients there made tea, give dinners out and run groups and inducted us to the unit.The staff smoked cigarettes, played pool and gossiped.
Sorry for waffling on.

mumoftwins

Sorry I have been 'quiet' for the last couple of hours but have just had the policeman round to take my statement about LL

supersavershal

Good glad to see they are listening to you and taking this seriously.

Wol2

Hi There All

Only discovered this thread a couple of days ago for reasons that will become apparent. However i can really relate to everything MOT has and still is going through and hope this post may be of use.

I have been reading about the NOW MEdical report and Council email and it is absolutely obvious to me that they are clearly written by people who have no experience or idea of the type of situation and mental distress MOT has been in and how that may have affected her.

I agree with a lot of what has been said on the last few posts. I don;t know if it would help to have a case study from someone else but anyway here it is:

Those who know me would describe me as a highly intelligent, outward-going, extremely confident, capable, strong and successful career woman (age 46).

Last October, following the destruction of my house by floods in July, and relocation to rented accomodation in a completely new area some 60miles away, I had a "nervous breakdown" - and only emerged out of the black fog very recently.

The actual breakdown was caused by one particular event, but had been preceded by a sequence of events, starting just before the flood - any one of which would have meant I would have been able to cope at a reasonable level without shutting down as completely as I did. The important point was that I found myself without any anchor in a short space of time - house, partner, family and a close friend all disappeared and my employment contract was due to end in January 08.

For the whole of November and December I found that I couldn;t concentrate for any period of time and would get distracted very easily halfway through the washing up or the hoovering. I had no short term memory, couldn;t remember what day it was and even what I had been doing the previous three hours. I would wake up in the morning in floods of tears. I felt emotionally drained all the time. I would walk around the house for long periods of the day and not actually do anything. Anything I did do took much more time than normal. Even now I still can't recall much about that time - but I know I still functioned at some level. I know I made it to the supermarket twice a week, I even went out a few times with friends for a meal. I did go into work part-time in december (Work have been fantastic about all of this) I wrote emails to my friends. I would tidy up the house once or twice a week. I rang the Samaritans regularly just to have someone to talk to after 10pm and help prevent the downward spirals.

But most importantly I focused what little capability and concentration I had on ensuring I managed to feed myself and my guinea pigs each day and going to see a wonderful therapist twice a week. However there was absolutely no way I could bring myself to concentrate on personal financial matters such as preparing the flood inventory for the insurance claim, dealing with the tender specification for the house restoration works, filling in my tax return or anything else. I just couldn't deal with it mentally. (Luckily the insurance company are paying my rent direct so I didn;t need to worry about that - but sometimes it took days or even weeks to try and sort myself out enough to be able to pay a gas bill)



The points I would like to pick up on are:

a) Fact that GP didn;t refer = no acute need: Many GP's have no real skill or idea ascertaining just how serious your condition is. They only see you present for 5 minutes - at a time when you are obviously wanting them to see you as strong and able to cope with the situation and also because, when you're in the thick of it, you actually don't realise how seriously you are struggling and how much you need professional help. They do not ask pertinent questions about your daily routine. All they ask is whether you feel suicidal - whose going to admit to that! They rely on you to tell them what symptoms are concerning you - which of course you won't or can't. Hence you won't get referred. Only a trained psychologist or someone experienced with mental health issues can really recognise and ascertain the seriousness of your condition and how it is impacting you daily life and as you won;t get referred to them by the GP, you carry on coping as best you can. I am lucky -I was able to find and pay for a good therapist having elected not to run the gauntlet of the NHS referral system which in any case is so overloaded.


b) Evidence of neglect of children required to support MOT's claims about mental state - Even though you are in this state, you ensure you focus your available energy on the welfare of your dependents (be they guinea pigs in my case or children). It's part of your survival instinct. It doesn't mean it's not an effort - but it's a question of priorities and they are highest on the list (often above yourself)


c) Outwardly appears capable: Yes, of course you do. It wasn't until I got out of the fog on 28th December that I looked back and realise just how seriously incapacitated I had been - yet apparently the people I met back then(work/friends) state now that they had no idea just how serious my condition was - because I always made sure I was dressed smartly, could be seen by them to be functioning on some level, delivered work in short bursts. The only outward sign was the massive weight loss. But I also left a lot of stuff, especially anything relating to me personally or my personal financial situation, not done - In short, when I had to be seen by other people I put on a great act of being able to cope, doing the things that were important to them. When you have to interface with other people who are potentially standing in judgement on you, you save your remaining energy and effort for those moments

d) Ability to organise - yes - you live one day at a time, you have good days and bad days, so sometimes you manage to organise that day effectively. But you can;t think about tomorrow and certainly not plan something that might need to be done a week or a month ahead,unless it's a meeting with someone (as opposed to administrative tasks such as filling in forms/paying bills/paperwork by a deadline). Even though I;d organise things to do at the start of each day, half of them wouldn't get done - and that didn't mean they went forward to the next day - either I forgot them, something else was more improtant the next day or they were dropped because they made me feel too anxious and stressed. I started from scratch each day. I lost the ability to plan and deliver any administrative tasks/chores that were required more than a day in advance. And let's not forget, I lost the ability to recall what I was doing 3 hours before and I didn't even know what day it was.


I'm sure there's more I could add to counteract any other statements in any of the papers MOT has but I need to stop now. I hope if nothing else, that this post will strengthen MOT's determination not to take heed of these people trying to dismiss her feelings and deny what has happened to her because, (lucky for them) they've never had to go through it. This type of mental distress is not something I would wish on anyone.

Good luck MOT, IT and the twins. I will be thinking of you and if you need any extra info please PM me.

Best wishes

Wol2

teeni

floss2 wrote: »

I kind of hoped you wouldn't take offence.....:D
Anyway, it's a bit nicer to think of yourself as that, than all the psycho words in the report!

Am off now.....rugby tonight,, Sale are playing italian side Petrarca and hoping for another win (come on Saaayyyuulll!) so don't expect to see me till the weekend! BTW, let I-T know it's England v Italy (6 Nations rugby) on 10 February, BBC1, 2.30pm.....and we're gonna win (well, possibly, maybe, if Jonny isn't injured )

Hugs to all,
Floss xx

floss when you play italy on the 10th you will be licking your wounds from the beating you are going to get on the 1st. ( I hope) we have a grudge match ahead of us after the last game. We will have a decent team out this time though. ( again hopefully)

Good Luck for Sale tonight, I will be watching the blues v Harlequins my self.