Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Media Take: the poor health of mental health services (updated)

Hilary Stace

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 20:49:32 +1200

I agree that lack of quality social housing with appropriate community support is a major issue. Poverty and the punitive attitudes of Work and Income don't help either.

Neil

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 11:55:16 +1200

In my experience people with autism who have been admitted to an inpatient unit have been admitted because something else is going on rather than just the features of autism.

And I haven't notice that they do any worse from being in an inpatient setting where it is a non…

Russell Brown

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 11:06:01 +1200

The People's Review is released at 3pm today. I'll post it here as soon as the embargo expires.

Hilary Stace

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 08:06:59 +1200

Being locked up in the mental health system can increase the mental distress of autistic people. So even if someone with autism goes into the system because of misinterpreted meltdowns, which may be in response to stress, sensory overload or even experiences (common for autistic kids) such as bullying, being…

Neil

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 17:29:17 +1200

Ashley Peacock is autistic and he has a psychotic disorder. He is one of the very rare, very complex cases where there are no good alternatives. His risks are on-going and unlikely to diminish.

Autism is quite distinct from psychosis and they can happen independly or they can happen together.…

Hilary Stace

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 11:29:13 +1200

Neil, I admire your faith in the Act and the system, and maybe it works like that most of the time. But there are numerous examples when rights are removed for a long time, without sound basis or even clinical evidence. I've previously written about Ashley Peacock who has been…

Moz

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 10:29:24 +1200

For those clinicians and others unfamiliar with

... traditional masculinity, expression of the permitted emotion (anger) can look very much like a psychotic episode.

Where does the act draw the line between "minority" and the rest, and what exactly defines "mental disorder"?

Hilary Stace

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 17:58:34 +1200

For those clinicians and others unfamiliar with autism, a meltdown can look very much like psychosis with a possible risk of harm to self or others. For those skilled at interacting with people with autism there are ways of changing the behaviour by avoiding the stressful situations which can cause…

linger

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 16:43:13 +1200

A minority group? (In much the same way as being left-handed is not typical, but neither is it a "disorder" — and if someone decides to label me as having a "disorder" on that basis because I have "drifted from your norm", then my reply is very much unprintable.)

Neil

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 10:41:01 +1200

Mental disorder isn’t intended to be a diagnosis, it’s intended to be a description of a mental state that for some reason has shifted from some one’s baseline. A diagnosis may result after the assessment period.

But that isn’t sufficient to lead to the MHA being enacted, there has to…

Hilary Stace

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:26:30 +1200

Because it has no meaning in terms of DSM or ICD. It has been used to incarcerated people with autism by clinicians with little knowledge or understanding of autism, its presentation or how to interact with autistic people. Autism is not a mental disorder. That's just one group of people…

Neil

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 23:44:21 +1200

In what ways do you feel the expression mental disorder to be problematic?

In terms of the initial implemention of the mental health act it's intended to not presuppose a diagnosis but rather a broader loss of mental stability that could be caused by a range of circumstances.

Hilary Stace

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 16:20:22 +1200

Out of date in its use of term 'mental disorder' and other terms and assumptions, its processes for monitoring and complaints, lack of consumer voice, and lots of other ways.

Neil

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 14:36:14 +1200

Today it is all powerful, overrides our Bill of Rights Act and international rights Conventions, and is way out of date.

In what ways?

Hilary Stace

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 12:34:33 +1200

By the way Social Bonds are NZ Government contracts for social service provision with private providers and investors who only get a return on their investment when they have reached the targets specified in the contract. New Zealand’s first recently signed social bond aims to get 1700 unemployed people with…

Hilary Stace

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 12:21:10 +1200

The 1992 Mental Health Act needs to be urgently reviewed. It was partially a response to the first Mason Report (1988), reports of abuse in the 'bins' and the system itself, and the deinstitutionalisation process then underway. The second Mason Inquiry and Report in the mid 1990s showed it was…

william blake

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 11:53:20 +1200

The madness in the privatisation process of mental health services as mentioned is not just the the cherry picking for quick profitable outcomes but the flow on effects for other services who will be supporting the private profit, services like casualty departments of hospitals, shelters the police and justice services.

andin

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 10:28:53 +1200

Big businesses that do govt social work

was never going to be a long lasting solution. And you cant accuse business people of being interested in the long term.
" Make a buck and move on" is more likely to be their motto in recent years.

Which has seen govts…

mpledger

Thu, 13 Apr 2017 09:07:24 +1200

Big businesses that do govt social work tend to take the easy cases, fix the easy stuff and then the govt is left still having to deal with the hard cases and hard stuff that didn't get fixed. For people with little problems, who might have fallen off the government…

Russell Brown

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 18:41:47 +1200

Is the government running down services to encourage privatisation in the mental health sector?

The "social bonds" model has huge ideological appeal to many governments, but it's distinctly unproven.

I can see it could work somewhere where outcomes are discrete and measurable – building low-cost housing, for example – but…

Russell Brown

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 18:13:28 +1200

Very good episode on Media Take. One technical issue. There seems to be a small lack of synchrony between the video and audio that I found quite distracting.

Sorry about that. There have been problems with the new technical specs we have to supply to.

william blake

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:21:34 +1200

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11804781

Is the government running down services to encourage privatisation in the mental health sector?

(The photograph in the herald article is quite odd, is Steven Joyces' body shrinking or is his head expanding?)

JWT1

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 09:51:56 +1200

Very good episode on Media Take. One technical issue. There seems to be a small lack of synchrony between the video and audio that I found quite distracting.

Public Address

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 09:51:56 +1200

Discussion from blog post.