This is my first blog since our mini-conference in December 2022 about involvement of carers of people with SMI in their care, mental health strategies, advocacy etc.
Lots of things have happened involving our group since then: we have had two new psychiatrists from Pennine Care coming to talk to us about SMI and its effect on the person.
This has fitted in well with the work done on the Care Act Assessments done with people with SMI and the effect of the illnesses on the executive functioning on the brain.
We have worked with Stockport Healthwatch since the beginning of 2022 on a report based on written case studies our members and their family members and friends have experienced.
This report details suggestions and recommendations as to how we would like things to change in community mental health care for working age people with long-term serious mental health conditions.
The report was submitted to the Stockport Locality Committee on Wednesday 26th July. It was accepted by the members, which included decision makers from Stockport Council and Pennine Care.
At this meeting the subject of serious mental illness was discussed in relation to the One Stockport Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
One of the suggestions which was put forward is that we re-examine Parity of Esteem for Mental Health.
However the definition pf Parity of Esteem which was put forward in the Govt Paper from Rhetoric to Reality in 2016 is – “ Equal access to safe and effective treatments and services as physical illnesses”.
Therefore, in order to talk about Parity of Esteem we need to be able talk about mental illness and treatments for mental illness, without being accused of labelling people etc.
So in the second part of this, (rather long) blog and my next blog, I will discuss what is being discovered now around new research, treatments and medication for these illnesses.
To start with:- below is a letter I wrote to the Guardian newspaper re an article in their paper on 12th May 2023
Dear Editor
I am writing on behalf of the mental health carers group which I Chair, to support Prof Belinda Lennox, Head of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford in her search for new and better treatments for serious mental illnesses such as “schizophrenia”.
Like Prof Lennox, we are begging for better, more evidenced treatments and medicines for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and related conditions.
On the MQ MH Research website it says: “It is thought that a combination of genetic and environmental factors can affect brain development to cause schizophrenia. Family history, some factors such as recreational drugs or even some viruses can increase the chances of developing the condition. But more research is needed”. (Jan Shaylor).
In mental health it seems to be the case that “one size fits all” and our loved ones are treated as if this life changing, serious illness is behavioural and they can control it.
Of the second-generation antipsychotics – the most recent, aripiprazole, is 19 years old and clozapine, the gold standard – it’s 38 years since it was recognised by NICE.
Of the ones in common use, these are some side effects:
drowsiness, obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, raised lipid level – (young men developing breasts), hyper-activity, loss of inhibitions, inability to sleep.
Our loved ones must take these toxic meds. If they stop, they risk becoming severely ill again, and unable to cope with living in the community and may become a danger to themselves or others.
Carers are frightened how our loved ones will survive when we die. It is a very difficult illness to understand and our loved ones are hard to help because of their fluctuating insight into their illness, (anosognosia).
For what other illness, but SMI, would professionals state complacently that their patients die 20 years before other people?
mhcarersgroupstockport 