Is the SANE forum up to standard?

The SANE organisation will be subject to a National Standards audit this week. I have been asked to participate as I assume have other forum members. I presume this will involve some sort interaction with the auditors.

I have had a quick look at the National Standards for Mental Health Services which I understand to be the standard for the audit. At this stage, it appears to me that the SANE forum would not be compliant on quite a few important points, particularly in regards to the rights and responsibilities that the organisation has towards us members of this forum. (ref 1)

I joined the SANE forum more than three years ago at I time when I was stepping away from the predominant biomedical model of mental health. I was doing this because it had served me badly for nearly 50 years. My first two posts, as I tried to meld into the Sane community were met with what I felt were condescension. A third post enquiring about the availability of a new type of psychotherapy was dismissed as inappropriate.

I stopped posting in the SANE forum as a result of these early experiences and continued with what turned out to be a very long search for a therapist with the skills and experience to help me deal with my mental health issues.

I started posting again in the Sane forum at the beginning of 2022 after eventually finding a suitable therapist.

I came to a rather weird arrangement with the Victorian Mental Health Authorities after they raided my home at the beginning of the year and tried to take me into custody. I “agreed” to undertake a course of experimental psychotherapy in return for not being indefinitely locked up in a geriatric psychiatric facility. This is apparently the default treatment in Victoria for those of us diagnosed as psychotic, who are fortunate or perhaps unfortunate enough to reach “old age” and considered to have "behaviour" problems which includes not agreeing with the mental health authorities.

Fortunately for me these heroic public defenders against the insane hordes messed up their paper work or to be more accurate, didn’t have any. Otherwise it is very unlikely that I would be writing this today. Of course, unbeknown to them, I had been planning on this “experiment” for some time so when this arrangement was proposed as a compromise, they eagerly accepted it as a means to cover their butts for their administrative stuff up. It was a win-win situation for all of us. A rare achievement in the world of mental health bureaucracy.

One of the things you quickly learn with these people is to never trust them or rely on them to keep a commitment. I therefore needed to publicly document my therapeutic journey as proof to try and protect myself from further invasions. I chose to use the Sane forum for this purpose. So far I have made 4 posts with a 5th one coming soon. (ref 2) There has however been a never ending battle to get these forum posts past the SANE censors who I have referred to on former occasions as the “thought police”. A great deal of important information had to be deleted in order to make these posts acceptable to the SANE administration.

I also tried to be what I thought was a good community member and offer a bit of support here and there when I felt it appropriate. I got the distinct impression that my efforts were not at all appreciated by the administration. The admin peoples’ responses were always of course polite but the subtext was pretty clear and as a result, over time, my posts became increasingly infrequent.

At around the same time I started to become aware that a number of other members of this forum were experiencing similar things to what I had been subjected to by the mental health authorities. This pushed me into an advocacy role which is still ongoing but resulted in even more issues with the SANE administration.

Last but not least I needed support for myself. This psychological journey that I have undertaken is not without its challenges. In my experience a good therapist alone is not enough. I needed a good peer-to-peer support network to fill in the gap between visits to the therapist. In my opinion there are some wonderful members of the SANE forum. What is missing is the infrastructure.

For a start the SANE forum claims to be a peer support network but in my opinion it is not. The administrative structure is much too hierarchical. Members are kept at a significant distance from each other by various arbitrary rules and procedures. I soon discovered that trying to negotiate those rules was similar to trying to negotiate terms and conditions at a psychiatric hospital. It only invites (emotional) blows and abuse.

I therefore had no choice but to go looking for other forums to provide what has turned out to be an essential part of my therapeutic journey. To cut a long story short I finished up becoming involved with two new related peer-to-peer mental health forums as well as attempting to maintain my association with SANE. I plan to report on my experiences with these other forums in a near future post.

The SANE forum uses very old software technology known as a bulletin board (BB) technique. One could almost call it ancient. This type of technology goes way back to the very early days of the internet long before the world wide web and web browsers were even thought of. I first encountered this type of technology back in the late 1960’s while I was doing computer studies at Monash University. BB technology is simple and robust. It was one of the first means for a group of people to share text based information over the internet which was originally set up and funded by the US department of defence and known as ARPANET.

There are still many BB style forums around and very often they do the job well enough but for what the SANE organisation claims to be attempting to do, I consider the BB approach inappropriate. Without going into a lot of detail I am suggesting that the type of technology used to run the SANE forum is hopelessly outdated which makes it difficult for members to communicate with each other in an effective and efficient way. This in turn dis-empowers those of us who wish to try and build the the sort of online relationships that I believe are essential for good mental health support.

While one problem seems to be the software structure, I would suggest that an equally big problem is the administrative structure

The SANE website states the following

“Help us push aside the stigma and
discrimination surrounding complex mental
health and change the way people talk about,
and care for, mental illness.”

That is the talk. Unfortunately in my experience it is not the walk.
The SANE administration appears to me to be significantly hierarchical which is the opposite of peer-to-peer. This results in the sort of problems that I have mentioned above.

I am not suggesting that the SANE administration just dump everything and start again. This would be impractical but there are things which could be quickly and easily implemented that would require little more than a change in attitude.

Unfortunately as we all too well know, getting mental health organisations to change their attitude is no trivial task. (ref 3, 4)

Regards
Willy

References

1. 
   Australian Government – National Standards for Mental Health Services (2010)
   download https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/04/national-standards-for-mental-health-services-2010-and-implementation-guidelines-national-standards-for-mental-health-services-2010.pdf
2. SANE Forum Link to first "Finally-Found-A-CBT-p-Practitioner" post
3. United Nations Human Rights Council
   Right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health 44th session 15 June 3 July 2020
4. Daya I, Hamilton B, Roper C. Authentic Engagement :A conceptual model for welcoming diverse and challenging consumer and survivor views in mental health research policy and practice. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 29, 299311 2020.