Wow. Just wow. News from NSW health

Thanks @Ru-bee . I think Rach's comment deserves to be headlined on the site. This thread is probably out of sight now for everyone except the 2 or 3 people following it.

@Ru-bee that is very sweet of you to say, just made me a bit teary here sitting on the bus. I'll leave headlining decisions to @tyme but it is very kind of you to say. its not just me its the whole comms and stigma and marketing team that inputs to this stuff and its actually quite a lot of work in prep and briefing and getting up at 5 am for early morning radio and its very nice to hear that it feels like I am representing us all in a way that matters to the community.

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@Bow wrote:

And to question whether people have complex or severe mental health issues is ignorant. The hospitals and emergency departments are full of these unwell people. The community to full of these unwell people. And there are many many of them represented right here within this community. I am one of them. I have been diagnosed accordingly by an EDUCATED AND QUALIFIED person. And to have someone like yourself question that makes me so angry. Are you REALLY that sick yourself @chibam???? Do you really need the medication you have been prescribed by a QUALIFIED person? Do you really need the support you receive? Cause that is what you are asking a very vulnerable person when you question whether they are genuinely severely and complexly unwell? I am VERY VERY far from having ‘simple’ issues. Far out.

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Sorry, @Bow , I probably failed to make myself clear.

I was not alleging that there aren't any patients who need or benefit from the educated services of our currant psychiatrists. I was not alleging that people like you don't exist, or that your somehow mistaken about your needs. And I was not alleging that our state isn't filled with people in crisis; because I know it is!

What I was try to say was that a whopping proportion of these people in crisis (I suspect a majority of them) are not well served by the currant psychiatrist regime, and would be much better served by psychiatrists from outside this regime.

That doesn't deny the experiance or needs of anyone like yourself; it merely clarifies that not everybody in crisis fits in to the same boat as yourself, and therefore is probably not well served by administering the same sort of treatment that is apparently working well for you.

As it stands, I believe our currant system is skewed towards misdiagnosing peoples' real-world problems as some sort of "mental illness", i.e. a malfunction that exists within the patient's brain. (Again, I am not denying that some members of the community really do have these mental problems; I am merely saying that a lot of people who don't have them are being misdiagnosed with them.) And so I think we need a real shake-up to change the system so that it's much more inclined to recognize real-world problems for what they are, and to treat those problems, instead of the brains of those problems' victims.

And yes, there are a lot of people here on the SANE forums who have mental illnesses, and who do benefit from the presence of psychiatrists. But there are also a lot of people here who's problems aren't in their heads, but rather in their lives! People who are wracked with loneliness, or trapped in unemployment, or homelessness/housing troubles, or other financial crisises (just to name a few of the problems).

Our currant psychiatric workforce has no idea how to handle these problems, except to throw pills at them! Really? Taking a pill makes an elligible batchelor appear on the front doorstep of some lonely woman? Or magically upload the address of an unemployed person's job into their brain? Or magically make the government suddenly back off a persecuted person who they've been hounding for thousands of dollars that that person doesn't rightfully owe them?

Yes, there are a lot of people on here who derive a lot of benefit from educated psychiatrists. But there are also many others who are done a massive disservice by them.

And yes, I can really appreciate the peril that people like you are facing with the collapse of the existing psychiatric system. But the fact is that for people like myself, we are plunged into the same sort of peril by this very same system, when it is working as intended. We have found ourselves trapped in crisises of suicidal magnitude, with no prospect of escape or rescue. Our distress goes beyond measure. But for us, this system - designed to see a real-world problem as a disease to be medicated - actually makes things much worse. Not least of all because it obscures the fact that the help we actually need doesn't even exist.

I respectfully dispute your claim that my perspective is ignorant. I am very painfully experianced in this issue. However, my experience comes from the opposite side of the issue to yours. But I can assure you, it's just as pointy and painful over here as it is on your end.

Thanks, @Dimity and @Ru-bee for all those links. I haven't had time yet to listen to the audio ones, but the articles were quite thought-provoking.

The loss of the beds is a real blow, @Dimity . I know they had a shortage of them to begin with. The way I read her statement, the minister was basically saying that the bed loss isn't because of the psychiatrist problem, but rather because of other issues that just happen to coincide with this crisis. Although considdering that's coming from a government minister, we should probably take that with a grain of salt.

Thanks for posting that statement from @RachSANECEO , @Ru-bee .

I think she probably more artfully said what I've essentially been trying to say. Instead of just throwing more money into trying to keep the old system going as it is, we should be trying to open up new avenues for differant sorts of treatment that suit certain patients better; patients who aren't well served by the currant system, particularly when it's running optimally.

That doesn't mean we abolish the existing types of therapists we have; it just means that we redirect the patients who wouldn't benefit from their treatment to other sorts of therapist, who will treat the patient's problems in more appropriate ways. This will reduce the workload of the existing types of therapists (perhaps even to the point of making some of these positions obsolete), and make it much more likely that patients will be able to get the type of help they really need. Everybody wins!

@Bow is the situation any closer to being resolved?