Schizophrenia Watch .... September 2009 ... *** !!! NEW ...... Community Treatment Orders ... CTO's:- the original debate and a Research Project aftermath...
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy......cp Eysenck on psychotherapy ... a carer makes a point of observation

'capacity' arrives in the (specialist) secondary mental health services.

"Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide , in thy most need to be by thy side

... for carers, particularly family carers .... [ ! come out of hiding, that will get you nowhere .... ] a web site to give voice to those who can't, and don't, voice for themselves
The site is edited by a retired consultant psychiatrist who has looked after a family member at home, affected by schizophrenia, for the last fifteen years.
For website beginners, clicking with the mouse on a highlit item e.g Care Programme Approach [ CPA } will take you to the appropriate page. You return to the Home Page by clicking on the back arrow button at the top of your internet page, or try pressing the back button on your keyboard, or there is usually a return highlight link at the bottom of the page

If nothing else you must learn, understand, and address
1.
breaks within the week
If you are a family carer and there are not breaks from caring within the week on a regular and sufficient basis then you have
2.
UNMET NEEDS
and your 'cared for' has unmet occupational activities that would stabilise their lives.
3.

the CPA is the mechanism for getting them addressed; ask to get in at the first Needs Assessment stage

you carers must know about this Care Programme Approach - the four stage process for delivering mental health services.
The updated Care Programme Approach

4.
a specialist rehabilitation team with a consultant lead, is the team with sufficient authority, to build up the experience of finding out, building, and connecting to the activity resources in the local area, so as to be able to deliver meaningful 'breaks in the week' .

5.
Carer Assessment provision as the second-line of defence to get the UNMET needs into the system of delivery.

6.
Finally the Care Quality Commission [CQC] - combines - [ no, wish it did for mental health service ] - does both Inspections, usually annually - but separately - the NHS Inspection service and the LA Social Service Inspections [ an example of their work ... the NEWS link at the top their front page gives you the West London and Broadmoor NHS Inspection Report ]
Note the contact link to the the way they want you to be involved in Health Trust visits and Reviews. You can ask them when they are coming to inspect your local area Mental Health Trust.
Then you can write to them beforehand, and bring up the lack of a Rehabilitation service for aftercare in your area; or ask to be interviewed by them when they visit:- the local contact route

CQC inspect the local Social Services as well - but separately - really for mental health services they should do both together.


E-mail re action is welcome .... and necessary ... mica2@tiscali.co.uk


> *** !!! NEW means new to this site and/or keeps relevance

*** !!! NEW

Inquiry GEB

Inquiry Bryan
still it goes on; we were building the trusting relationship.

It was their choice

more unsettling news

Latest July 2009 National Confidential Enquiry into Suicide and Homicide [ on their front page - go to 'latest news' top right ]
... unexpected increase in homicides committed by people who were mentally ill
.. but not currently 'patients' in NHS care'
[.... pages 32,33. ] between 1997 and 2005:

Homicide annual rate by schizophrenia sufferers is up.
from 25 in 1997 to 46 in 2004
and an estimated 40 in 2005.
A pointer to a poor service ? The increase is from people not in contact with local services. But, why not ?

But the Reports of the service on offer when a perpetrator was supposed to be being helped within secondary NHS care, show up hardly much better in keeping people in touch with service .

Look at this this:- Local London 18 September
.... ' The brother of a man with schizophrenia who died in a squalid Clapham flat
criticised the care workers who feared moving him would violate his human rights.
Mayan Coomeraswamy was found dead on January 9 this year in a filthy, unheated flat deemed barely fit for human habitation,
an inquest heard yesterday..... ' The patient, who was visited regularly by a psychiatric nurse, was found
dead, partially clothed, in his bedroom after police were told he would not
answer the door. A post mortem examination found ulcerations in his stomach,
often found in those suffering from hypothermia. Speaking in court, Dr Ruth
Allen, director of social work at Tooting's Springfield Hospital, said human
rights had to be considered before removing patients from their homes. She
said people were only sectioned when they refused to comply with treatment,
but this was never the case with Mr Coomeraswamy. She added: "What we have
to bear in mind is that this is not the only piece of legislation in terms
of people's rights that the care team have to balance."

She highlighted that workers were always aware of the patient's right to
choose their living circumstances, citing the Mental Capacity Act and the
Human Rights Act. '


Cp [ A good look at an Inquiry report about one tragedy Inquiry Scott-Moncrieff; Gonzales from within the service might bring the difficulties into focus ... a brief attempt at summary and comment .. ]

Inquiries... into Care and Treatment after Homicide

The source material for the recorded increase comes from the psychiatric reports to the Courts.

The figures are sufficiently alarming for there to be an immediate examination as in the Confidential Inquiry. of the psychiatric Reports to the Courts for one more recent year - say, 2008, the year before Compulsory Treatment Orders came into effect

It can be done quickly by the same people, just for those by people with schizophrenia.
The National Director has been rightly sceptical of the usefulness coming from individual Inquiries.
He was sympathetic to that view in the Royal College establishment.

That body that did not greatly demur when a member wrote in that schizophrenia was no longer the 'heartland' of Psychiatry.
Funding has gone off to the Gp practices. to be delegated for counselling, often not monitored, for the numbers of ' Layard conditions' ...
[ see Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - CBT - and Eysenck on psychotherapy Cognitive Behaviour Therapy......cp Eysenck on psychotherapy ]
... now the first concern of the Primary Care Trusts .

Plenty of research into genes and brains; little into the practice in keeping a lead and a hold towards the provision of a 'life' for those with this continuing illness: 'sticky' management that keeps an eye on those with vulnerability in residual illness.

The old activities available on the mental hospital campus grounds for the long-term ill are lost to them.
[ Pentreath Industries ]

There should be a Rehabilitation service in every Trust area
National Institute for Clinical Excellence [NICE } points the way



*** !!! NEW

CTO 2000 Community Treatment Orders in the first year.
see relevant Mental Health Act for chapter 4scroll down ;
No category diagnosis figures as yet ...they should be broken down to diagnosis and rate per population served
the Maudsley [ as usual ] leads the way - 126 - Manchester - 6 ?! - Liverpool - 58
Do they get a proper after-care service in exchange for their loss of liberty.

A professional comment at the introduction of the new MH Act about the effect on family carers

If there is no resource, available, to take them into an acceptable active routine, for self care and occupational engagement then what does the supervision and authority bring to bear on their situation.

Why a specialist service is a necessity to improve the connections of the enduring but unvocal troubled and inactive.

... it is who gets their way to the water hole first - the Layard Cognitive Behaviour Treatment, conditions, vocal, well connected, and numerous, with problems that are passing, with the help of friends and relatives till they pass; or the worst off, with permanent hardships who, if not protected, find the water gone, or what is left muddied by the careless splashing of the active !!

? Rehabilitation ?



***

National Institute of Clinical Excellence
on schizophrenia
it is buried in the
three hundred pages. Here it is NICE

New Horizons ...link to consultation form
put in for 'breaks in the week' !! ... my proposal answer here next month
:- To replace the National Standard Framework for mentally ill - lapses September
- ?? .. priority to serious and enduring,
to give way
to the worried well ? It looks that way.
Well, vide supra

Carers Week survey
the website is well worth a visit.
carer week survey people
[ thank you, Sushila ] pulled out
mental health for me ...
11.5% = around 270 were adult mental illness carers
76% said they had been near breakdown.
... Carers Strategy

aCarers Strategy One Year On
- More Help For Carers

A one-stop information and advice
service for carers
launched by the Care Services
Minister Phil Hope.

*** !!!NEW !!! ...
Rethink have a carer diary

A carer's blog

There is a new NHS Inspectorate,
part of the Care Quality Commission [ CQC ]
replacing the old Mental Health Commission.


go to the CQC tell them
in the next 'inspection' in your area
, you want your carer
after-care experience to be sampled

This is what the MHC used
to ask providers to reply to ...
MHC

Note the absence of any indication
that provider Trusts should tell
what they were delivering
as service to aftercare - rehablitation,
supported housing ,sheltered lodging etc
.

tell the new body that you carers are not
to be left out in any review
of local mental health service;

*** !!!NEW !!! ... Comparitive mental spend per person:
English Primary Care Trusts
can we find 'the best buy area'
to live in for after-care?

*** !!! e.g.


Comparitive mental spend per person: English Primary Care Trusts
can we find 'the best buy area' to live in for after-care?

*** !!!


If you are internet and
literate with linking
try this service mapping website

to find for your geographical area ...
compare them to other areas
[ e.g. supported housing has wide variation:
Dorset lots, Cornwall eight ].
Or for your local Mental Health Trust
{ go to LIT - provider Trust area ,
under service group,
tick 'allservices' then,
at bottom, click RUN REPORT
and ; or in particular service type
... try continuing care ...
type ... Rehabilitation and Recovery services
- the after-care service ]



Items marked red are new
or retain importance !!!

the quandaries facing the professional services.

*** !!!NEW !!! ... How to to get a better service ? Or more usually, I am afraid, not


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***
a good website updates news on schizophrenia

claim

Judicial Review Forms

about Schizophrenia

*** !!! NEW

Is memory difficulty the disability ? Three studies

cp this in mice

An experimental study agrees

a man twenty years on with long-term schizophrenia, now well settled to a routine, describes a difficulty that continues.


*** !!! NEW X occasionally gets word salads but now less frequently. I used to play up to him and we made a Goon conversation which only lasted a few minutes,
a long discussion with X. re: reading which he has just started, having always read quite a lot before the onset of illness. he was finding difficulty with the reading. He has to return to a page or a chapter and re-read it to retain its content. It was a simple book from childhood (Robinson Crusoe) .
Another point about memory is that he likes long words, and he does remember the Latin names of plants etc. though he never learned Latin.

He got a copy of "The Woodlanders" which he had read as a school project.
He told me that he had great difficulty in connecting the characters with the descriptions intervening.
He had found the same with other books he had tried to read.
He also finds that any disturbance affects his ability to retain anything he has read.
e.g. someone talking to him.Someone putting the T.V. or radio on. Someone calling him away to undertake another task.
He then finds it difficult to "pick up the string" and has to return to a previous area of the reading.
He is able to write and uses the computer for this, but again does not like disturbance.
A short ability to continue a project, though he does usually return to complete it. The discs also showed how he made a record of what he had done, in order that he could return and pick up the "train" at a later date.
He sometimes goes to the garage to get something he wants, and forgets, so goes back, and then rmembers again. Perhaps the name of dementia praecox was pretty accurate after all!. His long term memory is good and he often talks about thngs that have happened in the past

This is an experimental study with the same conclusion

These are important observations, to be born in mind and acted on when people with research grants do brain studies.

They may point to a general fault in this condition.

This website would like to see a comment from those so involved in brain imaging studies . in fact comments from anybody living in the world affected by schizophrenia ! about anything on this website.

"We all like to have anchor points of certainty in our lives, and even in psychiatry, with its whirlpools and eddies of doubt, we are searching for reminders that some fundamentals remain unchanged. The trouble is that relatively few are left [.,,,, a lead word from the world of the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry ] ,,, ' shame that he does not connect this thought to helping the sufferers from schizophrenia, who flounder without any such future anchor points in the the chaotic lives in their days, and weeks, ahead.


Only by re-connecting to a routine, daily and weekly, of regular interest activities outside the self on a regular basis
does a sufferer rebuild the internal brain networking, holding the networks together, so that they stay consolidated, together in the mind, matching up the necessary backing associations to support the continuing involvement in outside activities.
Wandering thoughts need these anchor points in the routine to fall back upon, to rehearse in their mind, to make firm the readying associations, which prepare and accompany the real activities.

Sufferers cannot organise or bring themselves to engage in such a routine without help, a lead mentor, some form of oversight, sometimes a degree of coercion at introduction

Only a Rehabilitation service which has built up local contacts,is able to set up such a regularity of engagement , can provide the mentoring to set up and sustain such a routine.

*** !!!Only half Mental Health Trusts have a co-ordinated RehabilitationService

'Breaks ' from caring within the week are an essential part of aftercare: they can be measured .

Establish the lack of 'activity breaks' in the week, and you have a measure of missing aftercare needs for carers and sufferers.
A good service would give family carers three session, in the ten session week [ monday - friday: morning ; afternoon = sessions ] when family sufferer is out doing something that occupies them - education, training, interest activity, sheltered work: and being out on a regular basis, family carers can then do something in their own time in those three sessions
These breaks relieve emotional tension in the care situation, and that reduces both relapse and violence.
Get that registered as a care situation need - documented with the your local NHS mental Health Provider Trust, and the local NHS commissioner Primary Care Trust as UNMET NEEDS at the first Needs Assessment stage [ the first step they have to do, when the specialist service meets your family sufferer ] of the Care Programme Approach

One way to collect of facts for the NHS suppliers, will be to ASK for and then put into a Carer Assessment protocol these questions - if it is not in the Needs Assessment then you will not get it

1.

Would it be helpful to you in your care situation, if there were breaks within the week where the person you cared for was out doing something on a regular weekly timetable ? If they won't include that question then you invert it and give the information yourself ... what would be helpful, indeed necessary , to me and my family member, in our care situation is to have such breaks, within the week, regularly

2.

What breaks of this kind did you ( did I - if necessary ) have in the last week - if that was a typical week ? - over the last month ? .. would be one measurement.

3.
Another would be to put into the core assessment [ the Needs Assessment ] stage 1. of the Care Programme Approach for someone with schizophrenia
... what will be the after care activities that will be provided for them in the Care Plan so as to provide breaks within the week for carers and their family member?


The Government has consulted on regulations relating to these two changes. New 1. Direct payments when capacity is lacking. Consultation on direct payments regulations, Department of Health, 19th August 2008
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 extends the availability of direct payments to those people who lack the capacity to consent to their receipt.
In addition, the government is also reviewing the current exclusions to receiving direct payments for those people
who are subject to various provisions of mental health legislation in light of the modernisation of mental health law brought about by the Mental Health Act 2007.

New 2.
deprivation of Liberty protection [ DOLS ]
summary DOLS Guidance .... the Offical advice


The NHS complaints system ... ... your right in a serious and untoward incident. [ SUI ]
Try your local PALS first " to give advice and support to clients [ patients - PALS are not health staff, even though paid and employed in NHS; 'clients' gives a different relationship for Pals ] , families and carers " ... - in my experience they are the most sympathetic, practical, functional and responsive of the helpers - your mental Health Trust will have a contact number


Mental Capacity: advice for Carers
Red Information for carers - allowances, benefits, direct payments etc :- click for the government website

Not so new ..... into the NHS mental health services ... click on ....The patient [ and carer ] journey through illness


... violence in schizophrenia down to street drugs ?



third world better ?
epidemiology world distribution issues

The claimed for better 'recovery' in third world countries is unexplained and is not capable of being learned from


***
Professional care and treatment does go wrong.

*** !!!the List of Inquiries after Homicides

linked to Comments

*** !!!What are the lessons - that are not learnt

*** !!!

Legacy cases

One piece of information from the Inquiries, where the perpetrator suffered fom schizophrenia, is that very few have been helped into a daily and weekly routine of engagement with a meaningful programme of activity, so that they will want to continue with medication

It's a common finding for most of those suffering from schizophrenia, and it is a failure of NHS provision to deliver a Treatment programme in aftercare.

Only half of the Mental Health Trusts have a Rehabilitation service which includes a consultant psychiatrist [ sometimes called 'Recovery' ] - that is, a team dealing with after-care separate from the community mental health team ( they get the first referrals ), a Home Treatment team ( often the old crisis team ) or the Assertive Outreach Teams.

These have responded and the replies are half and half, yes and no.

the No people here, so that you can check the service in your area.

And Complain!!



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E-mail reaction is welcome

mica2@tiscali.co.uk

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