Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Recent BBC & Channel 4 programs about mental health have presented far too rosy a picture. I will be one of the people featured anonymously in a 4 part Channel 4 documentary series called Bedlam. I'm in the Anxiety program which will be broadcast at 21:00 on 31 October. While the documentary was being filmed, one of the 12 patients (lets call her Kay) was told she wouldn't get an extension to her stay. Such extensions are often granted to give people more time to work on their problems. She had started to improve & her own therapist thought she deserved more time. However the unit is under pressure to reduce the amount of time it spends on each patient. When she was told she wouldn't get an extension, she became suicidal but was discharged anyway. Within months she had tried to commit suicide twice & is now on an acute ward where they can't really treat her problems & where she was recently attacked by another patient. At the time she was discharged, the media were reporting that there were 1700 people in hospitals who had nothing wrong with them, but were being kept in hospital because there was nowhere for them to go when they were discharged.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/10/513406.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/10/513406.html