Mental Health Reform - Call For Action - Part 2

[Shaz51]

Hello @Willy 

[Historylover]

I've pondered this further, @Willy. I know you would like to make things that confound us and the disreputable system go away, but, to be honest, I can't see that there is a cure-all for this situation. 

We all come from different situations, and unless we want to constantly re-visit and compare our conditions and abuses, it all leads nowhere. You would like the people who keep us 'here' to help us when they are profiting from not doing so? I tried that, and it was a dismal failure. They prefer the bird-in-their-hand to trying something new; and letting the downtrodden give them a run for their money would be too risky for them. They may not survive in a world where integrity is key. 

For me, I have no desire to do any reading on the matter. Never have. Never will. It is all just a mess. They are all just guessing, experimenting, finding that their book-learning is inappropriate in a real-world setting, and are doing untold harm while they peddle their incompetence and self-importance, enriching themselves while impoverishing us and wasting government funds.

There's an enormous world out there, and I'm just trying to find a way that I can be part of it. I don't think it is healthy to dwell on the world of so-called 'mental illness' as it narrows our world view. I'm not 'mentally ill', I'm psychologically abused, have been all my life, and expecting my abusers to back off when it is all that keeps them going was a dream I gave up on some time ago.

As I see it, we have to clean up the mess our own lives are in and, for me, I just don't know how that can be done. There is no magic wand, or individual who can do that for me – except the people who did this to me. And they are having too much fun.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I see it. 

[Willy]

@Historylover
I guess the difference between us is that I believe I have at least partially found my way out of the similar mess to you that I was in not all that long ago and I am willing to share my insights and experiences.  I am also well aware that many, perhaps most people with so called MH concerns, are simply not interested for various reasons including the very real emotional pain that these issues bring up for many of us when confronted. It seems to me that the effort involved in dealing with our own pain makes us exceptionally vulnerable to the abuse that some others knowingly or unknowingly inflict on us. 

Imo, the current attempts at MH reform in Victoria where I live are not working. A survey taken not that long ago showed that many people believe the system has got worse since the Victorian Royal Commission report into mental health was released in 2021. There is also plenty of evidence to show that the claim that people like ourselves with genuine lived experience are being consulted about proposed reforms is a farce. As you point out, the whole game has been taken over by vested interests and we are left holding the short straw. 

What I believe needs to happen is that we need to tell our story to Australia and possibly the world in a way that gets heard and understood. I am not allowed in this forum to even type some of the words I would use to describe this story which is one of the reasons it is necessary to move this discussion away from this forum. 

I don't know how successful this will be or if it will bring about any significant change but the other option is to do nothing which will probably just allow things to get progressively worse. 

I am inviting others to join with me in this attempted effort. At this stage I expect a few will do so but most won't.
So be it.

Regards

Willy 
 

[chibam]

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@Former-Member wrote:

thank you so much for sharing your perspectives and experiences on this @chibam. I know we always have to be aware of how power plays out in MH and be aware of the needs of everyone. I'm wondering what kind of things have you done to cope over the years when the MH system hasn't met your needs? 

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With all due respect, @Former-Member , the widespread fixation on getting people to "cope" is one of the biggest problems of all. Because while we're wasting time talking about "coping", we aren't talking about fixing the problems.

I'm a good little soldier. I'm not prone to making a fuss. So "coping" comes as second nature to me. I just sit politely and wait for the good times (which we are promised are inevitable) to come around. All this has done for me is to make me old, ugly, bitter, and no better off then when I started.

In all honesty, I wish I hadn't been able to cope. I wish I'd been born far weaker in body, and that the distress I felt when my problems first began had finished me there and then. It would've been a far more humane and favorable outcome. "Coping" has only brought me 2 decades of senseless misery.

[Historylover]

@Willy, if you get the site up and running, I will have a look to see if it can be taken anywhere. Who knows? I just don't want to immerse myself in the life I am trying to leave behind. I'm trying to re-build in a real world that isn't dog-eat-dog. Haven't sighted anything closely resembling it at this stage.

@Willy, no-one but the people who inflicted this mess on me can get me out of it. We'd have just needed to work as a team and respect each other. I thought it quite simple, but vested interests abound in every walk of life. There's always someone trying to better themselves at someone else's expense. I wish I was born with this knowledge. I was very naive and trusting, but they've cured me of that. Perhaps I was also a dreamer. 

As for Commissions, surveys, investigations...it just keeps some people busy and looking like they know what they are doing, like they actually understand and care. They don't. 

The only way to clean up the mental health industry is for the people who have made this mess to clean it up themselves. 

I'll watch your progress with this idea with interest.

[chibam]

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@Former-Member wrote:

And I would LOVE a bureaucracy support service. I have ADHD and the differences in my brain mean I really struggle with admin even though I know it's important. It's cost me THOUSANDS of dollars over my life. I know it's something I would benefit from.

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TBH, @Former-Member , I am amazed that we are still talking about this, all these years after the robodebt fiasco, and still no such service has been constructed. Surely the robodebt fiasco highlighted for the government, in no uncertain terms, that we need therapists to handle these sorts of crisises for their patients? People kiIIed themselves over that debacle! Ergo, this service must obviously be woven in to our national suicide prevention strategy. Because if they don't fix the beaurocratic grief, how on earth do they expect their gonna prevent the suicides it causes?

And also, just to clarify, beaurocratic grief is just one of the multitude of real-life problems that we need the mental health system to be prepared to resolve for its patients. We either need to redesign the system so that it actually fixes this stuff, or build an alternative "real life problem"-solving system that fixes this sort of stuff.

[AussieRecharger]

Thanks for the tag @Willy 

There is no one size fits all.  You can have someone with all the right knowledge and wisdom, but you just don't gel with them and don't want them to help you. 

You can have someone you bond with to help you but they have no experience in how to help you in the right way.  The personality part of therapy is just as important as knowledge.  First impressions.

[Willy]

@AussieRecharger
I fully agree with you

[Historylover]

Just wondering how you're doing, @chibam and joining in on a post from a time ago is the only way I know to contact you. All good out your way?

[Willy]

Hi @Historylover @chibam 
I'm doing OK. The usual ups and downs but nothing too problematic.

I've been spending a lot of time researching the whole mental health services issue in Australia and talking to people on various forums etc around the world. I'm learning a lot including that the problems we have here in Australia are very much global ones in one form or another.
Some of what I am finding out is rather distressing. Countries like the UK that have tried to implement MH reforms seem to find that they are often taken over by new autocratic interests while the people with MH problems remain at the bottom of the pile and continue to be subjected to malpractice and abuse albeit in sometimes new and different forms.

Here is a recent discussion from a private facebook group that deals with problems about Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT). Some problems obviously can't be readily fixed just by issuing new laws or spending more public money.
Question : Does anyone here know anything about RO-DBT? Apparently developed by a British psychologist and specially for people who are ‘overcontrolled’ as opposed to ‘undercontrolled’. They use it for those with anorexia or chronic depression or OCD type behaviours, apparently. They say that ’overcontrolled’ people don’t do well with standard DBT, suggesting they do better with this one. I am sceptical. Presumably it’s still behavioural.

Response: The problem I see with DBT, RO-DBT and all these related therapies is that they are merely techniques which are all to easily used in a mindless, mechanical cookie cutter way to try and reshape peoples lives. People are not roles of pastry waiting to be stamped into a socially acceptable shape and then shipped off as an economically viable packaged person. At best these therapies provide a template that a wise, sensitive and empathetic guide may be able to use to help someone move forward a little on their life journey in search of wholeness. At worst they are a cruel and brutal process for chopping people up and creating even further fragmentation of an already damaged psyche.

I have also been looking at alternative ways to facilitate online discussions outside of this forum about advocating change. As you say, there is not even an easy way to contact another member, let alone have a fluid ongoing discussion about an issue with an individual or group.
Here are three possible approaches.

1. Set up a discord server. Look up www dot discord dot com for further information. This is free and quick and easy to do. I have a little bit of experience with setting up and using discord servers. Two public discord MH support servers that I currently participate in are Schizophrenic Spectrum and You Are Not Alone. Discord servers can also be set up as private invitation only. Unlike facebook groups etc, discord servers can be anonymous.
2. Set up an ordinary wordpress blog website and add a community discussion backend to it with free plugins. The advantage of this approach is that it would provide some public presence for reform advocacy views which you don't get with the discord server. It would also be easy enough to provide a facility where anyone could lodge a complaint about MH services is Australia. What is done with these complaints is another issue but there are certainly things that can be done and that would probably be one of the first tasks of an advocacy discussion group. This arrangement is not free. It would cost approximately $AU250 per year to set up and run. I am prepared to pick up the initial cost for the first year and hopefully there would be enough public donations to cover operating costs after that. Again I have some experience setting up this sort of thing. I just don't want to turn it into another MH advocacy "business".

3. There is an American journalist and author named Robert Whitaker who writes on science, medical and MH reform. He has a web site set up called MadInAmerica dot com. There are a number of affiliate sites in other countries like MadInTheUK dot com. As far as I can see there is no MadInAustralia yet. It may be possible to pick up the affiliate ship for Australia. I haven’t looked into this in any depth yet.

Please feel free to share this information with anyone else you think may be interested.

Regards

Willy