The Advocacy Saga Continues…

Following on from the original letter to the advocacy charities and the inadequate response received, here is the latest. I will also be sending the original letter to my Trust’s Patient Council.

Hopefully I will not have any more two-posts-in-one-day-marathons for a while.

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Dear Admin Woman Who Wrote to Me the Other Week

Re: Advocacy

Thank you for your letter dated 4 January in response to mine of 17 December. I must confess to feeling very disappointed by the surprisingly brief response of your advocate; however, I did take the advice given, and I discussed the matter with both my consultant and, again, my clinical psychologist [actually, I didn’t discuss this with the consultant, as I don’t see her until Wednesday, but they will never know. C absolutely assures me that it is not the consultant’s decision, but his].

Both advise me that the length of treatment provided by the psychologist is decided upon by the psychologist himself and not the psychiatrist as your colleague believed. My psychologist unfortunately maintains his position of ceasing psychotherapy after the period previously specified (now 22 weeks from today), despite acknowledging that my illness should really be treated through long-term therapy. This contradictory position is a clear illustration of what seems to be unwillingness on the part of the Trust to prioritise and allocate adequate resources to the treatment of mental illness.

In light of the above, can I please again ask that your advocacy service looks at this case. I am very concerned that if treatment is halted prematurely that not only will I have failed to have made any significant progress, but that in fact my mental health will be seriously negatively affected. Arguably, given the number of difficult issues that therapy brings up for an individual, starting but not completing a full course of therapy is more damaging to a patient than receiving no treatment at all. I would be extremely grateful for your help, as I do not feel that I have the cognitive resources to fight this battle against what amounts to medical negligence myself.

To summarise, the decision to cut short my treatment has no proper basis in a clinical analysis of my condition. The clinical literature is very clear that borderline personality disorder requires more intensive and longer duration treatment than I am being offered. I would suggest that this is an illustration that the Trust is not appropriately prioritising the allocation of resources to the treatment of mental health difficulties. I would hope and expect that this is a matter of concern to Mindwise and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you in advance.

Yours etc.

Victories and Failures: Updates on *Those* Letters

Let’s deal with these chronolgically and, coincidentally, in order of bad to good.

FAIL

On 17 December, I wrote to two mental health advocacy groups (Mindwise and the Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health) regarding the whole ‘you can only have 24 more sessions’ bullshit with C.  Both have now responded, and both have represented something of an epic fail.

Mindwise simply told me to discuss the matter with my consultant psychiatrist, as “they would be the ones making the decision”.  Well, I will, when I see my (new!) consultant on 20 January (over a month late, might I add).  However, as regular readers will know, Psychiatry have been one of the problems I’ve been having with the NHS during this most recent breakdown (though to be fair, this was not outlined in the letter).

Talk about passing the fucking buck.  It was simply a case of pushing responsibility onto someone else, and not wanting to tackle my case themselves.  Is it because I is borderline?  Everyone hates a borderline, innit.

Should the meeting with the psychiatrist not yield results, though, I am going to write pompously back to these tossers and demand their assistance.  Either that or the media will be learning of their incompetence and unwillingness to help a mentally ill individual, which is exactly what they exist for.

I heard from NIAMH yesterday.  Apparently, their advocacy service does not operate in my Trust area.

Forgive me, but is it not the NORTHERN FUCKING IRELAND Association for Mental Health?!  At no point does the name of the charity remotely infer that it is not operational across the entire country.  How, then, can they not operate in my Trust area?  Is it because I is borderline?  Everyone hates a borderline, innit.

In fairness, at least they did suggest some sort of action I could take.  They said I should try the Trust’s Patient Council service, who apparently deal with matters like this.

I will heed their advice, especially given that a Twitter friend had some results via the Patient Council in his area, but not until I have heard back from the Trust, who were copied in on the original letter.

POSSIBLE WIN

As you know, the advocacy letter was copied to the Chief Executive of the Trust.  Not wanting to be arsed himself, the individual in question passed my letter to the Director of Mental Health services.

This bloke wrote back to me a few weeks ago, telling me that he had requested more information and that he would be in touch once he had received same.  I have not heard more from him yet, but am hopeful that the mere act of kicking up a fuss like this and threatening to contact the politicians and the media might be enough to get some action from him.

I won’t hold my breath, of course, but I will cross my fingers.

WIN

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Asshole GP has backed down!

Apparently, Dr Bellend/Twatbag/Arsehole/whatever-else-I-called-him “would like to apologise” and accepts that his attitude fell short of “desirable [surely ‘necessary’?] professional standards”.  Ha!  Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The letter went so far as to offer me the opportunity to meet the Practice Manager and Dr Knobjockey to further discuss the matter.  I will not accept the invitation, but I suppose it was good of them to offer it.

As I have generally been well supported by the practice (recently, at least), I won’t be a dick over this.  I’ll write back and accept Dr Fuckwit’s apology, and just hope that I won’t have to see him again.

MEH

And that, folks, is the latest news on that front.  I feel smugly satisfied about the GP letter result, but of course am rather disappointed that the advocacy charities are not actually doing anything that remotely resembles advocacy.  But we shall see how this continues to play out over the next few weeks.