As a psychologist I see the fantasy of neoliberal values having a devastating effect on mental healt

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Good piece with a lot of parallels to the challenges so many of us will face
Resources go to initiatives that sustain the neoliberal fantasy that individuals have equal opportunity, which they can fulfil with the briefest of state intervention. If one fails to perform commitment to these ideals, resources are taken away. For example, people who do not show they are trying to return to work during every waking minute are sanctioned by the benefits system. And mental health funding is skewed to initiatives that use brief cognitive-behavioural interventions to return the masses to productivity as quickly as possible.

Those who are not willing or able to pursue the fantasy that everything is possible for anyone are tucked out of sight, as if they were an embarrassment somehow, or left to fend for themselves. Those with the most complex problems often end up for years on end in private mental health hospitals, abandoned and overmedicated to silence their howls of despair. In the NHS, people with even the most complex needs are told they can recover.

The recovery movement was intended to give people hope they can lead fulfilling lives. But it has been co-opted by the neoliberal agenda to support certain practices that foreclose the reality of long-term impairment and structural disadvantage. For example, community mental health teams are under huge pressure to discharge people to recovery colleges, and then their GPs, with a graduation certificate to sustain society’s fantasy that they have been provided with the means to survive.
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Also
People with complex needs often identify with neoliberal propaganda telling them that they are responsible for their condition, that they are “trying to get away with it”, that they should be able to recover and work.

These ideas speak to and reinforce internal persecutors that tell those struggling they are worthless and should be ashamed. Imposition of these narratives – which goes against robust evidence linking mental health problems with early trauma, adversity and structural disadvantage, things we all have responsibility for – is a form of violence. Thus, policy turns are making those with long-term needs feel worse whilst at the same time denying them the means to get better.
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*The author Jay Watts has been a friend of PWME. She a consultant clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, and honorary senior research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.

*She was one fo the Health Professionals who wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May criticising Simon Wessely's appointment to review the Mental Health Act.

https://www.thecanary.co/discovery/...-controversial-new-mental-health-guru-letter/

A review is needed to address mental health injustice, yet Wessely’s body of work on ME [myalgic encephalomyelitis] (or ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’) demonstrates his lack of honesty, care and compassion for patients.

His unsubstantiated claim that ME is driven by ‘false illness beliefs’ has led to patients being labelled as hypochondriacs, treated with contempt by some in the medical profession and stigmatised by society.

His recommended treatment regime of Graded Exercise Therapy caused deterioration in function for nearly 50% of ME patients surveyed, yet he dismisses their evidence as unreliable and labels all critics of this work as irrational and extremist.
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Wow, critisism on neoliberal ideology, in the Independent and here.

I think I start to love this place more and more.

If one fails to perform commitment to these ideals, resources are taken away. For example, people who do not show they are trying to return to work during every waking minute are sanctioned by the benefits system.
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Feels so good to read it, thank you. I only wish more and more people would understand.

I had a brief discussion with a colleague once where she stated we had the most freedom ever. I told her that is incorrect. She went on, you can do whatever you want, learn this, do this job or that one...I said it's not freedom if not to work is no option (since you're sanctioned for it), but only to work.
I think this job-focus is very questionable. There are so many other meaningful things a human can do than contributing to profit maximization.
 
Inara said:
I had a brief discussion with a colleague once where she stated we had the most freedom ever. I told her that is incorrect. She went on, you can do whatever you want, learn this, do this job or that one...I said it's not freedom if not to work is no option (since you're sanctioned for it), but only to work.
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There are a lot of problems today, but I'm not sure things have ever been that great. Seems like there need to be constant battle against abuses of power. I think things have gotten worse for disabled people in the UK, but there's been progress in other areas. Hard to know how things balance out (especially if you're in a group for whom things have got worse!)
 
Nevertheless - things, in many non wheelchair friendly respects, did used to be better for "disabled" people, in the UK. We have been going backwards at an ever increasing rate for quite a while now.

Hopefully there will be a nice cliff or wall made out spikes to halt this backward acceleration soon.
 
Ah, you corrected it "to this thread", thanks.

I would be happy to hear from mods about this, since I asked about rule #12 and never received an answer. PM would be okay.

I believe common politics affect people with ME (and other sick people) immensely. I think it unwise not to consider this. How can you advocate ME while ignoring how the system works? I don't understand it.

Personally, I suffer under neoliberal ideology. Others may be too. Are we not allowed to discuss this?

I don't understand, too, what the motivation is behind reporting this thread.

Please don't kill me! I really want to understand.
 
I wasn't even aware we had a rule#12 - I took references to it as a joke, fair enough I didn't get the joke, but that's not uncommon ;)

I do not currently have to capacity to access the merits of rule 12 vis a vie this thread, but my gut feel is, if it does apply, we is stuffed, coz everything, other than cats, biscuits and possibly fridges, would break it.
 
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