here
Professionals missed six opportunities to assess a patient under the Mental Health Act (MHA) and provided him with 'misguided care' in the three months before he killed his grandfather, a review has concluded.
Yet as one continues to read through the article, it sounds much more linked to budget cuts, savings and policy.
So the question is... who exactly is misguided?
Sadly this is not confined just to this case. If mental health services see admission to hospital as a failure, and disguise the impetus for this by pretending it’s for clinical and empowerment reasons rather than for financial reasons, than these cases will continue to occur. I have no idea if a more assertive response with the possibility of hospital admission would have prevented this tragedy but I know the hoops services would have gone through to avoid an admission. We ask carers and relatives and friends to substitute proper medical and social care, pretend this is because of the efficacy of the “recovery” model and than absolve ourselves when it leads to a tragedy by saying proper care and better involvement was unlikely to lead to a different outcome. In my community I see repeated dismissal of our concerns for our loved ones and our neighbours and as if being told to go away was not bad enough we witness that mental health services can live with the consequences of their neglect as long as they can proudly show that they have prevented a hospital admission.
I couldn't agree more!
I think the word "misguided" covers a multitude of sins!
The whole Health Service is administered by " guidance" which can be "only guidance, not procedures" if resouces are short, or one area of the service doesn't want to take an extra referral from another; yet a stick to beat/blame the beleaguered individual practitioner with, if Senior managers haven't provided the resouces to allow "guidance" on best practice to be followed.
"Guidance" is a one-way downward valve to separate accountability from resouces.
So it could be argued that the Health Service is "Institutionally misguided"