Mental Health

This page specialises in Mental Health issues, which are currently in the media. (Some readers may find this page distressing).

 

 

News on Mental Health

  

Mental health help for new Welsh mums 'woefully inadequate'

 29 July 2017

  

New mothers are suffering in silence due to inadequate mental health support in Wales, campaigners have warned.

 

In 2013 Wales' only psychiatric mother-and-baby unit (MBU) closed, meaning women have to travel to England.

 

Charlotte Harding, who developed postpartum psychosis, hid her symptoms as she was frightened her son would be "taken from her".

 

The Welsh Government said it was investing £1.5m a year in community perinatal mental health.

 

  • Calls for Welsh mothers' mental health unit
  • Post-partum psychosis: Why I thought I'd killed my baby
  • Half of new GPs do no mental health training, figures show

 

The body which commissions specialist NHS services, the Welsh Health Specialist Services Committee (WHSSC), is currently considering whether to reopen an MBU.

 

Public Health Wales estimates between 3,328 and 6,656 new mothers a year will experience a perinatal mental health issue, including severe postnatal depression.

 

Since the last MBU closed in Cardiff - which had allowed women to be admitted alongside their babies - Welsh women have had to travel to England for inpatient treatment, with some going as far as Derby and Nottingham, or to be treated in an adult psychiatric unit with no contact with their child.

 

To read more on this story Click Here

 

 

 

Theresa May wants to scrap the Mental Health Act. Here’s what should replace it

 

Theresa May is keen that we know she cares about mental health. She told us so in her first speech as prime minister. She announced alterations to the Equalities Act to reduce workplace discrimination, roll out mental health workers in schools and recruit 10,000 more staff by 2020.

 

Coinciding with the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week she told the Sunday Times this week that, should she win the general election on 8 June she would replace “in its entirety the flawed Mental Health Act”, which “too often leads to detention, disproportionate effects and the forced treatment of vulnerable people”.

A new mental health bill sounds sweeping and decisive to the layperson, but the current Mental Health Act for England and Wales is mainly concerned with a specific but contentious element of mental health treatment: the legal processes and safeguards for detaining and treating a person without their consent if they are judged to threaten their own or others’ health or safety. When we talk about “sectioning” we are talking about the section of the Mental Health Act 1983 under which someone is held. It makes us feel uncomfortable; blurring the line between treatment and legal proceedings.

 

For more on this story, Click Here

  

 

For more information and advice click on to the Links listed below:-

Rethink - www.rethink.org

Mind for better mental health - www.mind.org.uk

Springfield Hospital, Tooting  www.swlstg-tr.nhs.uk/

Mental Health Acts 1983 & 2007 - The 2007 Mental Health Act made several key changes to the 1983. 

Share (Wandsworth Only)  www.sharecommunity.org.uk
(Share is a Wandsworth based charity who work with disabled adults to provide training and employment support across London.)

 

These websites contain several aspects of mental health issues contained in their wesites.