Posted by alexandra_k on January 1, 2015, at 17:47:12
In reply to Re: psychiatry is an ougrowth of society, posted by Christ_empowered on January 1, 2015, at 11:08:24
I have a lot of bad memories with psychiatry services, too. Most of those are 10+ years ago. 15 years ago. Sometimes I think that times have moved on and things have improved. I mean... Things are (mostly) better than the average Janet Frame novel... They closed a lot of the country institutions...
On the other hand my recent... Uh... Excursion with community mental health... My first ever court appearance... Leads me to believe that things haven't overly improved all that much.
Perhaps it is more that the more time you spend with something... The more you get to see it's... Uh... Perverted side. Those memories stick a lot more... Get really stuck in there... Resonate for a while...
I was talking to my community health nurse... Who really is terrific for me... And she was saying about how the hardest thing is how you don't have control over your case load. You might be required to have 40 clients on your case load. Where you know you could do a good job with 30 but you simply don't have the option of having only 40...
And I said that I appreciated that the worst of the 'care' I got was due to clinician's being overwhelmed / not having time for me / resource constraints. Why I was not admittted when I needed to be. Why I was discharged early. Why I didn't get the help I needed. Why the 'help' that was offered was never enough. Why people didn't want to work with me. Why people needed to stop working with me.
She said it's a long road... I guess the idea being... It's a long road to consultant. Maybe at the other end of it... Eventually, eventually, you get to decide things more on a case by case basis. Have control over your workload.
The reason my care is so good now... A huge whopping great big part of the reason my care is so good now... Is that she works 3 days a week. My GP works 3 days a week. They have the size case loads they feel comfortable with and when I am with them... I feel cared for. I feel heard. Even when I do the big ranting thing I do... They don't feel the need to interject their judgement. And there are moments where... I can soften. And be real. Which is, uh, kinda hard for me. Takes a bit of a process (who am I kidding, a lot of a process) to get to that.
The more money you have the more money you can spend. The more money clinicians make the more power / control they have over the size of their workload / over only accepting cases where they feel they can help.
I think that is a significant part of the situation...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1074584
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20141123/msgs/1074684.html