The mental health system.

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state your opions on the mental health system.

There's a system? Mental health experts (unless they're in private practice) continually have to pay more and more for the necessary qualifications (few of which mean anything) and get paid less and less for the effort. Sooner or later, the profession will be abandoned as unaffordable.

Of the system itself, I can find few things to like. Tools that can definitively establish bipolar, autism, schizophrenia or other such ailments (fMRI is great for this) are under-used or not used at all, in favour of risking patients' lives with dangerous medicines that may or may not apply to them.

Psychotherapy is so useless in many cases that it is considered a joke even by many in the profession, although there are times when it is beneficial. Problem is, in those rare cases, the psychotherapist is likely to be more concerned with a specific philosophy than they are with finding out what is needed. A tool is only as good as the person using it and a mis-applied tool is worse than useless, no matter how valuable it is in any other case.

On the flip-side, mental health isn't used where it damn well should be. Kids don't need medicating nearly as much as they are, and certainly not by people who have no business prescribing psychoactive mind-altering substances. Kids who are in need of help should be receiving that help from experts, not idiots.

And what of the prison population? Well, I don't know how many are mentally ill, but probably a substantial fraction. Sure, by all means keep the facilities equally secure, the conditions equally strict and the sentences equally long, but treat those who need treatment whilst you're at it. (It might also be helpful in other cases. There's a lot of prestige in a lot of gangs about going to a tough prison - I wonder what it does to street credibility to be marked mildly ill.)

All in all, I am not impressed with the mental health care system of any country. The systems do not reflect current knowledge and current technology. Hell, few of them reflect the 1960s discoveries of R. D. Laing. If the best of the best is half a century behind the times, and the connected systems such as schools and prisons are over a hundred years behind, it's no wonder society is as sick as it is.

There should not be a system, it just removes the hope out of the individual. Placing faith in an outside force, in some "expert" rather than yourself to alleviate any issues you may have with yourself is kind of disturbing and insane...

It's almost like if an engineer who built a certain bridge asked someone else how to fix it.

I guess you are talking about the situation in the US. I am in the UK.

Anyway, imipak said Laing's ideas have not been taken up by the system. Well it seems to me that nobody's ideas have been taken up. In fact there is little or no respect/consideration given to the mind or the psyche within society at all anywhere, I rarely hear people talk about this kind of thing on the TV, and that is incredible really.

There is so much knowledge out there, so many great thinkers and ideas and possibilities for a life that have been written about. And today's man looks as if he has not a single clue about this. Most people get from birth to death without these ideas entering into their heads, or if they enter then the pressures they live under and the distractions on offer are enough to remove those questions quickly.

I have a great psychotherapist/mentor/(person that helps me). I wish everyone did.

Psychology is a science; however, it has been corroded by politicaly motivated beliefs.

Example if a Darwinian psychologist asserts that humans do not have free will and a product of their environment and genetic make up. hen those politically minded individuals will come to the conclusion that is not in the best interest the mass public to know this even if it is scientifically correct. As they people will to bad thing blaming things on there genes and environment.

So you want maniacs, lunatics, and dangerous psychopaths to run free?

The mental health system needs reforming, so that there is enough capacity to meet current needs, and new mental conditioning methods need to be developed. For those that can't be made safe, lifelong secure residency is the only option.

The UK mental health system in a word: Random.

With some people it works perfectly, with others its a mess. In some places it runs efficiently and with compassion, in others its like the Gestapo took over.

Actually I am just remembering some stories of the last few years about abuse in mental institutions and old people's homes : and that thing where people are retrained on the ground etc...

It's disgusting. Seems like when you put one group of people in charge of vulnerable people, abuse happens.

It's not just that, either. There are still people being put into homes by their parents to get rid of them. Unwanted children, children of some of the richer single mothers, children with birth defects that would spoil the parents' "perfect family" image (imagine the Dursleys, only worse), and so on. One of my cousins was involuntarily hospitalized (probably for life) last year for being mildly Aspie.

The fact that such things are even possible in the 21st century - grave offenses against human beings and human dignity - is beyond the pail. These are mistreatments that were starting to get blasted in Victorian times as obscene, and are still going on many decades after reporters (I think BBC) did some investigative journalism and showed how many healthy people were hospitalized until they became incapable of being released.

Yes, those who are in need of help are routinely abused in many hospitals, and probably the same is true of many of the healthy who have been hidden there as well.

If there is ever a revolution in mental health care, it will need to address these issues. Indeed, that is one reason I want more evidence-based mental health, rather than symptom-based. It's easy to abuse the symptom-based system we have, but it would be harder to sustain such fraud if a patient could be clinically retested using an impartial, unbiased machine. The next doctor who came along would be able to cry foul and prove it. Likewise, it would be harder to conceal over-prescribing, incorrect prescription and such stuff, as it would show up very clearly on comparative results. It may also show up certain cases of traumatic abuse, as such abuse will alter brain chemistry and therefore should be detectable even if the patient didn't volunteer anything and there was no other obvious indications of a problem.

It's unclear how practical such exhaustive monitoring would be, but (a) it's needed for the patients' safety and wellbeing, and (b) it's needed for more accurate diagnostics and medication monitoring, so it's inescapable that it will happen. Eventually. It'd be better if it wasn't 500 years from now - we have the technology today, after all - but if that's what it took to get people to address the issue, then that's what it'll take. Please be seated in the time capsule, whilst we search for the next available socially-aware culture.

I support the mental health systems in nations like Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. As for the services here, I put them in the same category as when whites thought they were "helping" native americans by giving them blankets riddled with small pox.
It's largely based around pity, barriers often withholding kids from growing to obtain their independence, "caregivers" and parents feeding the stigma that if your disabled, "your too dumb to be independent". In many of these nations, disabled people are, consciously or sub-consciously, treated more like house pets than human beings.

We live in a neuro centric, ableist society here in America.

Just went to a shrink today.
Totally useless. I need something
they just can't give.

My therapist is more like a 'wise man' from the old days, a mentor / therapist / advisor ... he's really good.