3. A patient from an extended family of mental patients, you might call them a clan, (if you made sure you remained anonymous) comprising far too many siblings, cousins and assorted relatives, who’d been rejected, neglected, abused and farked up by their useless, feckless parents and aunties and uncles – who themselves had been rejected, neglected, abused and farked up by their useless, feckless parents – was living in allegedly supported accommodation where he spent his days taking drugs, getting madder and thieving to supply himself. That’s when he wasn’t touching up the female staff – who daren’t report it, knowing the charity/NGO running the place won’t back them.
NB in this version of supported accommodation, he held all his own medication, staff didn’t lock it up and administer the correct dose. On top of that, he was taking drugs you MoPs never heard of.
NB this point may cause jaws to drop out there, but not for us in the job, this patient was constantly on about having his meds reduced.
He was nicked, the police (not the accommodation staff – remember that least restrictive policy you didn’t get to vote on?) searched his room, removed the drugs and for a little while, the working people who parked around the accommodation didn’t have their cars broken into. Then he got – wait for it – a conditional discharge, with conditions he’d failed to meet before and has not a cat in hell’s chance of meeting this time.
When he is evicted, City Social Services have to re-accommodate him, before the current place can eject him. What genius dished out these rights like confetti?
So, why, oh why, are the patients in the council’s dumping ground estate (cos they’re not all patients, they don’t all have mental illnesses) made to live in these neglectful, abusive, vicious cycle conditions? It is absolutely more expensive to keep them like this, than building and staffing new, modern mental hospitals and accommodating them there. But money is not the only consideration.
And why, oh why are the other two not living in hospital, under the care of nurses like me, who will say ‘No’ a lot, back it up every time I need to and improve their lives by a factor of ten.
The addict cannot, yes, cannot stay off drugs of his own volition. Nor can he hold down a job to pay for them. The schizophrenic – and street drugs are part of it, but much is simply the chronic nature and duration of his illness – cannot even keep himself alive without constant help. This is not kindness, not care, not freedom and it bloody well isn’t least restrictive. The dealers who prey on them don’t give a tinkers cuss about not being restrictive and coercive, they joyfully take advantage of, use and rip off our patients. It’s not freedom, it’s a cage, a community cage they cannot get out of, imposed on them by incompetent, idle, jobsworth politicians and managers who didn’t have the sac to stand up to the WHO (more on this when I have it) and say no, we won’t do that to our mentally ill. Piss off Klaus (other symbols of megalomaniac wannabe world dominators are available), we will design and commission our own services based on what the electorate want and need and can afford.
Post continues in ‘The state of play you are paying for Part 1c’.
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