@Willy wrote:
Hi @chibam
Community vs Institutional mental health facilities.
For more than 200 years there have been experiments in alternative mental health treatments for those with serious (psychotic) mental health problems. These have been based on a humane caring model as opposed to a medicalised institutional model. Overall they have been surprisingly successful. They have however often been aggressively opposed by vested medical based interests. Despite opposition these small community MH facilities continue to pop up all over the world as a better more cost effective alternative to psychiatric hospitals. One case I read about recently was in Norway where an entrepreneurial guy "on a mission" with very limited personal resources managed to independently set up one of these facilities. "Look Ma! - No governments".
See, this is usually where I always end up losing my sense of connection with movements/campaigns like this; when they start talking about "small community MH facilities" being a solution to the ills of the "big system, with it's big facilities" (paraphrasing).
The worst of what I went through happened in a small facility; to be specific, a small house in the middle of a residential neighborhood, that had been converted into a multi-therapist clinic.
The other common thread I encounter is talk about pushing "talk therapies" as an alternative to the more aggressive therapies such as drugs, restraints, electroshock, ect. By far, the worst harm done to me was done through "talk therapy", and neglect of pursuing real solutions.
I'm not denying or belittling the evils done in the big facilities, and/or by the harder treatments. But these turmoils are not my own person area of expertise, and so I don't believe I have anything really to contribute to such a movement.
Furthermore, it does not sit easy with me, watching a movement campaigning to extract patients of the "big facility system" out of their own nightmares, only to steer them into mine. When I try to speak out that small-time therapists are just as crooked and dammaging as the big facilities, my voice tends to get drowned out or ignored. I've seen little to no noteworthy interest in correcting the ills of the "small clinic system"; most of which are not down to individual crooked therapists, but appalling shortcomings in the overall doctrine of the system. And I struggle to wholeheartedly back a movement that aims to herd the poor suffering patients of the "big, aggressive-treatment system" out of one nightmare, just to dump them into another one.
The ills of the "small system" are real, significant, and desparately need to be addressed and remedied. Much of it would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper then people ever care to acknowledge.
Since this is my own personal area of expertise, and (incase it wasn't obvious) the area of the mental health system I am most passionate about, this is really where I feel my energy is best spent.
