BBC video, 'when mental health gets physical'

"Recovery" in this context means "learning to live with your symptoms". I just wish they would be more honest about that, because for some, that is a valid aim, particularly in the absence of anything else that might work.

 

Yes i noticed the talk of 'recovery' too, it makes me very cross. These are not unintelligent people, they can be expected to know full well what the word recovery means, and using it to mean 'management' or learning to live with it, it just disingenuous. Telling people they cant cure them but can help them recover, simply means to the vast majority of people that although they cant cure the condition they can enable them to return to full health, because that is what recovery means.
If someone tells you they have recovered from the flu, or from an infection or from their agonising frozen shoulder.... they do not ever mean, 'i still have flu, infection, frozen shoulder but i am managing to cope with it a bit better.' It's nonsensical.

But they know this, they use the word recovery because it sounds good to the funding bodies & also they think it will cause patients to 'expect' to feel better & so they will. But they cant legally say they can cure because it's not true. It's manipulative, all the BPSers do it.

 

It's not even that. It's just convincing patients to stop complaining about their symptoms or going to the doctor. If it was aimed at coping they wouldn't be calling it recovery, or essentially denying that there is a disease at all.

 

I watched the video in the OP for less than thirty seconds. Up to the point where the narrator, who was gabbling on, said "mental health has physical symptoms too" and then raced on to her next point. Let's press pause right there. Let's think about what she just said, and how many ways that assumption she just made in passing as if it were common knowledge can be questioned.

That'll do for me. No need to press play again and watch the rest of it. That's 7 minutes of my life I can spend doing something else.

 

The issue of "recovery" is a thorny one, and it is no less thorny in mental health as it is in any chronic condition. This blog by Recovery in the Bin outlines it quite succinctly, although I think it goes a lot deeper than just a problem with neoliberal ideology.

The concept of recovery comes from a good place, as outlined here:


[IMAGE]

Replace "mental" with "chronic" and you have no difference.
(As far as I'm concerned, mental illnesses are physical, even if not all 'physical' illnesses are mental.)

---------edited version>>>
What does “recovery” from severe chronic illness look like?

For most people with a severe chronic illness, recovery is an ongoing process. Since the illness is not likely to get totally resolved, there will be ongoing management of the condition. Recovery is the process of reclaiming one’s life from chronic illness. As with other difficult events in life, over time, people learn to adjust to their challenges.

Recovery is about:
- finding one’s place in the world
- attaining peace of mind
- establishing relationships with friends and family
- discovering opportunities to grow
- finding happiness

Recovery is not:
- a cure
- freedom from symptoms
- an end to challenges
- the elimination of relapses
- life as originally planned

But it can be a good, if different, life.
-------------------------------------------

The problem comes when terms are co-opted for the therapist's aims and not the patient's. Or when they are used to avoid searching for curative treatment.

 

IAPT call it 'moving to recovery'

"
1,391,360 new referrals were received in the year.
965,379 referrals entered treatment in the year.
567,106 referrals finished a course of treatment in the year.
Outcomes
524,730 referrals finished a course of treatment in the year having started at caseness4, of which 258,884 (49.3%) moved to recovery."

2016-2017

"
Recovery
Recovery in IAPT is measured in terms of ‘caseness’ – a term which means a referral has severe enough symptoms of anxiety or depression to be regarded as a clinical case. A referral has moved to recovery if they were defined as a clinical case at the start of their treatment (‘at caseness’) and not as a clinical case at the end of their treatment, measured by scores from questionnaires tailored to their specific condition.
The Government target is that 50% of eligible referrals to IAPT services should move to recovery."

eta: see also from 2013
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-events-a...ing-nhs-costs-with-mental-health-investments/

 

I really don't like this approach to 'recovery' (even trying to ignore the fact that it was inevitably going to be misused by systems like the DWP), and do think it's a serious misuse of the term, but also recognise that (unlike with PACE recovery claims) this is something that honest people can disagree on and that different people can have very different values.

The whole recovery movement makes my skin crawl tbh. People can have all the things 'recovery is about' when they first realise they are ill and so seek help and diagnosis, yet also lots of physically and mentally healthy people do not have all those things. The fact that a group of mental health professionals, many of whom seem to make a pretty poor job of finding their own place in the world, think that they should be managing people in this way seems really creepy. It is so unsurprising that it has gone wrong.

Also, I don't want peace of mind! The problems of the world are such that peace of mind would surely need some sort of wilful ignorance, or an embrace of immoral passivity. I'll take a break every now and again, but regular bursts of outrage are no problem. With lots of this stuff I feel like it has been designed by people whose values I don't respect, and now they're working to promote their values not through political and philosophical debate, but as some form of 'treatment'.

Having said all that, I realise that some people are going through difficulties which mean that they quite rightly want greater peace of mind, and I don't mean to sound like I'm ranting at someone with severe psychotic symptoms for being insufficiently concerned about the state of the world.