Echo Readers.

If you've read the article in today's Echo, I am looking to raise some money to try and reach patients, carers and professionals, to tell them about the UN Declaration and to lobby parliament about the lack of rights for patients. Thirdly I would like to do some research to support the argument for a change in the law. The change I suggest is detailed in the Manifesto, which is avaible to download for free, or you can buy a paper copy. Both links are available via the Mental Health Manifesto link to the right of this article. There is also a donate link to the right of this page, or you can contact me directly, at dedicate@blueyonder.co.uk. Thanks.

The Schizophrenia Commission Strikes Back!

Last year Rethink Mental Illness commissioned a report into care for people with Schizophrenia. In it they attack the appalling care for people in hospital, calling it 'catastrophic'. They say that not enough is done to provide calm, safe environments and the wards are mostly secure wards to prevent patients hurting others. Rethink believes and the commissioners from this report, that this is wrong. That most patients don't hurt others and those that do are more driven by drug and alcohol abuse than mental ill health. They say that the standard of care is poor, too focused on medication, too focused on locking people up and patients need more early intervention services and more access to psychological therapies. This is one of the most damning indictments of health services for many years.

I welcome this report, although I have only read a summary. What also stands out for me is that it sits at the very top of the stories on the BBC News website and Paul Jenkins was interviewed on the BBC morning show, talking about schizophrenia. Usually broadcasters and news organisation steer clear of the subject. If you feel up to it, go and find the report, read it and link it up to your Twitter accounts, Facebook etc, and get this report spread as far across the community as you can. Something has to be done about the care we receive. For far too long the NHS has been building lock up wards, while at the same time focusing exclusively on medication. When medication fails patients and become ill they're locked away until the doctors have finished with them. Many patients then leave hospital on huge doses of medication, that patients find hard to come off. This in turn leads to physical health problems. The Schizophrenia Commission recommends more focus on calm environments and alternatives to medication.

Consultation. What Consultation?

When the governments Office for Disability Issues, said they were going to consult on the UN Declaration of Human Right for People with Disabilities, you would think they would take in a wide range of opinions from lots of different people. Despite the fact that what is contained in the declaration, its basically a get out of hospital free card for mentally ill people, the ODI consulted one mental health charity. One. On the list at the back of their report, are about fifty organisations, almost all of which are charities and groups, for physically and mentally disabled and yet this UN Declaration doesn't really apply to physically disabled as much as it does to the mentally ill. So I wrote to every Mental Health NHS Trust in England and Wales, asking them whether they'd heard of the UN Declaration, whether the ODI had told them about it and what they did in response to it. All of them, (all 54), said they had not been told and had never heard of it. Shocking stuff. This is the greatest breakthrough in mental health ever. It compares easily with the Civil Rights movement and the suffragettes movement. The mentally ill have been locked up and forced to take meds that damage their mental and physical health for far too long. And the papers aren't interested either. We need to mobilise to get this UN Declaration implemented properly. Please download the manifesto and tell others about it, because contained within it is a starting point for full implementation. I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but this is what I came up with when I tasked myself with coming up with a plan.