“The disparities in physical health outcomes for people with mental illness are currently regarded as a human rights scandal. Patients with serious mental illness are two to three times as likely to have obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases – which impact on quality of life and recovery, while contributing towards a 20-year gap in life expectancy currently experienced by this underserved population.
Dr Joseph Firth”
Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust (GMMH) is under fire due to policy changes that are said to be limiting peer advocacy and service user involvement.
In January, GMMH published its latest service user and carer engagement policy (SCE), which changed the definition of “service user” to mean anyone who has been discharged from its mental health services within the last 12 months. Only they are allowed to be involved in decision making about GMMH services.
My first contact with Liverpool Mental Health Consortium (LMHC) was in February 2003, when I wrote them a very terse letter complaining bitterly that I had been unable to access a place at their national Snakes & Ladders Conference & denouncing them for exclusivity & poor communication.
Fast-forward 9 months, & they advertised a post with a person specification clearly stating that lived experience of mental distress was a ‘desirable quality’.
User involvement in professional education was pioneered in social work, where service user and carer involvement is required at all stages. Students, service users, carers and educators all strongly support such involvement and see it as a key way of improving the culture of practice.
Andy’s Man Club was established by Luke Ambler in 2016 after his brother-in-law Andy committed suicide. It is a volunteer led organisation in which men suffering from mental health problems, including suicidal tendencies, can go for help.
A lack of hospital beds means NHS bosses are having to pay for in-patients from Greater Manchester to be treated across the country - at a £9m cost to the region’s taxpayers
A lack of hospital beds means NHS bosses are having to pay for in-patients from Greater Manchester to be treated across the country – at a £9m cost to the region’s taxpayers
“Scandalous” waits to get mental health patients access to treatment are letting down vulnerable people and wasting police resources, an MP said.
A Freedom of Information request by Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb found some patients detained by police faced long waits for doctors, beds or ambulances.
The Service Users Christmas Party will be held once again on
Thursday 14th December 2017 at Stanley Street Working Men’s Club Openshaw 7:30pm until 11 pm
New figures reveal that girls, young women and black people are more likely to be held down by staff on wards
Patients in mental health units were physically restrained by staff more than 80,000 times last year in Britain, including 10,000 who were held face down or given injections to subdue them, new NHS figures show.
By Ross HawkinsPolitical correspondent, BBC Radio 4 Today Police chiefs in England and Wales say they may be unlawfully detaining arrested people needing mental health care more than 2,000 times a year. Some people have been held in police cells for several days because there is no hospital bed for them, the National Police […]
