"Lights!" Sheds Light

I'm busy catching up with Hafal's summer campaign having been preoccupied recently with my own health problems...

This seems a good moment to reflect on the campaign so far and consider what we are learning from it (and thanks to Hafal's public affairs chief Peter Martin for briefing me). But first a reminder about what we are up to.

The Lights! Camera! ACTION! campaign is being led by mental health service users and carers, capturing their experiences of using mental health services and how effectively the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010 and the new mental health strategy are being delivered.

The Campaign was launched on 9th May 2013 by Mark Drakeford A.M., the Minister for Health and Social Services, and representatives from each of the 4 main political parties also spoke at the event in support of the campaign: Ken Skates (Labour), Mark Isherwood (Conservative), Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru) and Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrats).

So far our mobile studio has broadcast from 12 local events across South Wales and has now moved up to cover 7 North Wales counties during the high summer before heading south again to complete all 22 counties by the end of September.

Service users and carers have been talking openly and honestly at the events, many through film blogs, about their experiences and how services have either helped or hindered their own personal recovery. Also as part of the Campaign service users and carers are completing a feedback questionnaire asking about their experiences of primary and secondary mental health services.

A wide range of issues have already been highlighted by people who use mental health services, including:

• the importance of peer support in a person’s recovery

• the need for people to have somewhere secure to live

• the importance of people having greater control and more power over how services are planned and delivered

• the need for effective care and treatment planning

However, one particular message is emerging already from the campaign, and this is the need for psychological (talking) therapies to be made more widely and readily available for people with a serious mental illness, and for easier and faster access to these services. For example:

• Nigel from Newport spoke about the shortage of trained practitioners, and how it wasn’t tea and sympathy he needed but good professional therapy to help him and others with similar needs move on in their personal recovery.

• Steve from Torfaen spoke about how his psychiatrist referred him to see a psychologist but that he had to wait for over 2 years before he got an appointment to see one.

The feedback sheets also show that for many people the only option they are being offered is prescribed medication, despite a clear need having been identified for some form of specialist psychological intervention.


The Lights! Camera! ACTION! user and carer panel

So what should our response to this be? Our campaign service user and carer panel will respond formally at the end of the campaign but the feedback so far demonstrates once again that all people with a serious mental illness should have access to a range of psychological therapies. Specifically mental health services should ensure...

• routine availability of a range of psychological therapies for everyone diagnosed with a psychotic illness

• a priority for access to psychological therapies for those in greatest need

• psychological therapies for people diagnosed with a psychotic illness are available and widely used within mental health units and hospitals and becomes a standard provision

• psychological therapies begin as soon as possible for people diagnosed with a psychotic illness, and as a minimum follow NICE guidelines

• As well as making available access to specialist psychological interventions, a full range of psychological interventions are made available for people diagnosed with a psychotic illness to meet their primary care needs also (e.g. anxiety disorders, depression, etc.)

Meanwhile we have learnt a lot about implementation of the Care and Treatment Plans prescribed by the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010 which established a platform for people to have a greater say and more control over a range of care and treatment services they receive. Feedback suggests that more people who use secondary mental health services now have a fully completed Care and Treatment Plan. However, the quality and usefulness of those plans still varies across Wales.

Training is key to this, and not just training for the professionals. Take a look at the training course How to Get a Great Care and Treatment Plan that has been developed for delivery to mental health service users and carers by Hafal and its partners Bipolar UK and the Mental Health Foundation. We look forward to this training being widely rolled out across Wales to help drive up the quality of people’s Care and Treatment Plans.

Welsh Air-Conditioning

Mrs Blog's garden which I have been contemplating now that the cardiologist has allowed me out

An up-date: symptoms permitting I will be back in the office next week. I look forward to catching up and resuming this Blog's commentary on the wider world of Hafal and mental health...

During the fierce heat and my worst moments of illness a week ago Mrs B filled two pop bottles with water, froze them in the freezer, and then played a blow-heater (on "fan only" setting) at them and onto me on my sick bed

Important New Comparative Study Of European Healthcare Systems

Dr Rhys inspects the heart monitoring machine

I'm still "under the doctor" as they say around here, in fact under an orgy of them as the specialists move in to prod and poke.

The good news from my cardiologist after a thorough exam last night is that some kind of electrical fault is most likely causing my heart to fire erratically, information which does not of itself relieve the symptoms of breathlessness and fainting but at least removes the sensation that I am about to meet my Maker or else enter eternal oblivion (take your choice).

As a classical philosopher and admirer of Montaigne I don't think I'm particularly afraid of death but I can report that its seeming imminence over the last week was...distracting.

As I write I'm wired up to a contraption which records every flicker of life in my mortal carapace and will be compared with a diary which I am instructed to keep about what grindingly mundane activities I'm up to and how I minutely feel, all in interminable and tedious detail - exactly like what everybody puts on their Twitter page.

Apart of course from Hafal's always relevant and useful tweets to be found here.

This Blog is supposed to be at least partly corporate and not just about me but I can't yet do justice to the much more exciting things happening in Hafal - see the links to the right especially our Facebook platform which has no rival anywhere for the amazing film reportage of people with a mental illness and their families. Humbling stuff.

I shall return, as General MacArthur said sucking on his corn-cob pipe.



Postscript:

There again I should really get something in about health policy etc so try this...

Comparing notes on Skype yesterday my older brother who lives in Spain reports an interesting conversation with his GP who has practised across Europe. He told my brother that patients require different things to satisfy them according to where they live.

Apparently he found that British patients want to be told that there is nothing wrong with them and to be sent on their way; by contrast the Spanish (perhaps because they are still excited to get free stuff from their relatively new healthcare system) want to be given lots of different pills in exotic shapes and colours.

"And you know what the French want of course, Señor Walden-Jones?"

"Are we talking suppositories here, doctor?" guessed my worldly and perceptive brother.

"¡Exacto! The Frenchman does not believe anything can do him good if taken only orally".

Conforming to national trends my brother, who is at least as healthy as me, takes a colourful cocktail of pills for obscure prophylactic purposes - while I take nothing at all.

But we both agree that if we lived in France we might object to the medication on offer but it would be superfluous to tell the doctor where he can stick it.

Prostrate

So far in my life I have been lucky with my health. Indulgent readers will know that I am an occasional martyr to gout but I rarely get nasty bugs or even colds and have a pretty good sickness record - some recent years without time off and others with just a day or two (usually gout).

So, it was an unwelcome surprise to spend much of my holiday last week in the Isle of Wight, plus all the current week, poleaxed by a mystery illness which has left me prostrate, breathless, and miserable in a way I have not experienced before.

The tests continue but the money is on either an electrical fault (causing an arrhythmic heart) or an unknown virus. Not knowing doesn't help but of course that isn't so unusual as medicine is a less sure science than we would like to believe. The reason I am writing is that the first signs of remission are upon me (touch wood) so that I can bear to switch on the pc and contemplate life beyond lying on my sick bed drinking sweet tea.

But I can't do justice here to all the exciting stuff going on at Hafal, not least the Lights! Camera! ACTION! events and the annual Physical Health Awareness Day (though lordy am I aware of the importance of physical health right now) but instead I will lazily steer you towards our brilliant Facebook presence here which tells you about what we are doing and much more besides - and there's a lot of your feedback too.


Postscript:

In my enforced indolence (and as a distraction from the tests and probing) I have been playing with a machine on the net where you can upload your mugshot and it looks for similar faces. You can find it here.

My best match was Michael Gambon about which I am fairly neutral but Mrs Blog seems quietly satisfied to get Jennifer Ehle. I hope Mr Gambon won't take it the wrong way if I say that he would be lucky to bag Ms Ehle. And indeed I am a lucky man myself...any chance of another cuppa?

Newport, Newport, Newport

Nothing ever really happens around here
Just smoking, fighting, and drinking beer

Newport's own rap satirists Goldie Lookin Chain were proved wrong yesterday - it was all happening because of another successful visit for the Lights! Camera! ACTION! "motorcade of cinematic thrills" - camper-van and mobile studio - to the city including a forthright plea by Rachel Ayriss for basic information to be provided to carers telling them what's available locally - see the film here.

For Hafal's guide for carers follow this link.

It is quite difficult to find repeatable lyrics from GLC but I like this...

Newport
Twinned with Guangxi, Province in China
There's no province finer
Josie D'Arby's from Newport
Yes, it's strange, we didn't know either...
Thank you Wikipedia
Let's say some more
Newport, Newport, Newport.

Capital Gain

A lot of blokes in a garden - including Mark Drakeford AM (left) and Kevin Brennan MP (front right)

A great Lights! Camera! ACTION! event in Cardiff on Friday and the sun shone unexpectedly making the garden setting at St Fagan's a real delight.

Mark Drakeford tipped up in his capacity as the local Assembly Member - showing great interest and commitment to the Campaign which he had launched in his ministerial capacity just last month - and gave us a great interview which you can see here.

Local MP Kevin Brennan also came to lend support and gave a useful insight into the problems of employment assessments for people with a mental illness: see the interview here.


Gender balance restored

A reminder that the Campaign is calling for...

• high quality Care and Treatment Plans for everyone receiving secondary mental health services
• full choice and control for service users on the content of Care and Treatment Plans
• prompt delivery of quality mental health services in response to those Plans and to the needs of people with a serious mental illness using primary care services
• further reform of services which increases service user and carer control over the choice and commissioning of services
• a longer-term move towards full equality in Welsh society for service users and carers including equal access to health and social care, housing, income, education, and employment.

Our iconic VW camper-van and mobile studio are on location at 22 local county events taking place throughout the summer and the Campaign will conclude with a red-carpet event at the Senedd on World Mental Health Day in October.

Military Duffers and Clerical Boobies

Dancing Baroque-style (but without a wig) last night in Newton House

My Mum lent me and I've just finished reading Rodney Bolt's The Impossible Life of Mary Benson about the eponymous wife of the Victorian Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson and mother of six including E F Benson, author of the Mapp and Lucia novels.

The Archbish almost certainly suffered from bipolar disorder and most of the children had serious mental health problems, particularly Margaret who spent long periods in fairly benign (and incredibly expensive) asylums.

Mary herself was not ill but her life was made "impossible" by the fact that she was betrothed to the future Archbishop while still a child when she was in fact gay and actively so throughout her adult life, something which troubled her at first but which she reconciled with her deep Anglican faith by reasoning admirably that her physical relationships must be okay with God as they were manifestations of love and didn't do anybody any harm. And several of her children were also gay and apparently at ease with that if not with many other aspects of their lives.

The Archbishop went along with this so long as Mary's partners didn't annoy him - some did. When Edward dropped dead suddenly Mary lived with Lucy Tait, daughter of another Archbishop of Canterbury.


Mary Benson

The book is most fascinating because the author resists applying any modern labels or commentary either to the family's mental health challenges or to homosexuality. Rather their own words are simply reported, giving an entirely different slant to these matters and not in some respects an inferior one to today's - essentially they accepted how they were, saw only the consequent practicalities and had no interest in the opinion or strictures of wider society or of the law. This was the privileged perspective of a wealthy family of course. See Hafal's leaflet on Bipolar Disorder here.

For all that it was difficult to enjoy the book because all the members of this family were spectacularly self-centred, self-regarding and opinionated to the point of being intolerably irritating. I can imagine no worse experience than spending the weekend with them, rather in the way that I wouldn't have wanted to spend time with Charles Dickens in spite of his brilliance and humanity.

To understand just how annoying our 19th century forbears could be read Lytton Strachey's wicked set of potted biographies Eminent Victorians.

No, much better to set the dial on your time-machine 150 years earlier, not forgetting to pack a powdered wig in order to fit in unobtrusively...

Last night I did just that but forgot the wig - attending a Baroque soirée at Lord Dynevor's pile Newton House under the glare of portraits of the assorted military duffers and clerical boobies (no match for the formidable Rev Benson, inventor of the Christmas service of nine lessons and carols) who were the successive Barons - none of whom seems to have lived up to the glory days of their ancestor Sir Rhys ap Thomas, possibly because they didn't refresh their genes or bank account by marrying clever or rich women (the secret of the success of the British aristocracy through the ages).

The house, a fairly hideous Victorian gothic blot covering an 18th century neoclassical gem (there's my prejudice again), is now in the hands of the dreaded NT but this event was organised in support of the excellent Marie Curie Foundation and made full use of the elegant interior.

The dancing was fun but the best bit for me was our own local soprano Julia Jones singing Purcell, Monro, Arne, and best of all Handel. Also I have to admit enjoying the Ave Maria played by Gerald Jones (piano) and Abigail Hammett (violin) - actually a combination of Bach (early 18c. Baroque) and Gounod (19c. sentimentalist). So, there you are, the two eras working together.


Postscript:

Another recent jaunt was to see the Mousetrap in Swansea - pretty fair rubbish not up to Agatha Christie's usual mediocre standard. Search me how it's lasted 60 years in the West End - possibly by playing it much more for laughs. Of course I won't tell you the plot but I was intrigued to find that it relied on a flabby and faintly offensive take on mental illness. But I enjoyed sitting outside the Swansea Grand in the interval...



And I'm pleased with this photo from Laugharne last weekend...



And thanks to Dan and his Breton partner Claudine for playing at Mrs Blog's big birthday party...