Mental health support in your country

what is it like? ours isn't very good. i have been told not to look for help until after new year and you have to bend over backwards if you need help getting/paying for help.
also, is it very expensive like it is here? should it be? how do you think they could be improving it?
i'm really interested to hear what you all have to say.

I'm not a mental health service user, but my mother's worked in mental health for decades, and from what I can tell, the support on offer in the UK seems pretty good. For example, Marie's part of a team that (if this is way wrong, I apologise) assesses young people who've experienced first-episode psychosis and provides support, referrals to relevant health professionals, and examines whether they're likely to continue having psychotic episodes/other mental health problems, and if so, what can be done to help. I'm not clear on the details, but she sees people who've been referred to her team by their GPs and people who've dropped in to Youth Enquiry Services and similar support services aimed at young people, so I think an assessment is very easily accessable for people who feel they need it. She's worked with people with schizophrenia and eating disorders in the past, and while I'm no expert, the help and support on offer to people in need of it generally seems pretty good.

And this is on the NHS, so it's all free for the service users.

The US has been okay for me, but it really depends on the individual therapist or psychiatrist. Some of them just want to drug you up with meds and leave it at that, which isn't particularly helpful.

At my college, counseling is free; psychiatry/medication isn't. But I don't know about anywhere else, as when I went as a child for obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety my parents were paying. -_-

I'm not sure whether learning disabilities fall under the aegis of mental health issues, but that's certainly an area with room for improvement in England. My brother has low-functioning autism and my parents have to fight tooth and nail to get appropriate provision for his needs (respite care, special education etc.). In some cases the council won't even budge unless you threaten legal action - I mean jesus, I understand that they have a responsibility to ensure that people aren't scamming the system, but they take scepticism a step too far.

Even then, we're relatively privileged in our situation that my mum can afford to work part-time and look after my brother the rest of the time, and that both my parents are fairly confident when it comes to shouting down nasty council folk. :P
God help you if you're a single parent without the time to spend researching law and mental health issues, or a person who speaks English as a second language. It's only going to get worse under the cuts.

The only thing I know about mental health facilities in Ireland is that the diagnostics seem pretty incompetent. Whilst at a CTYI (Centre for Talented Youth Ireland) class, five or six kids there had been diagnosed with ADD and ADHD in about five minutes, on the grounds that "All the kids in that CTYI thing have ADHD". Seems pretty fucked to have what is supposed to be a good thing turned into a mental disorder.

On a somewhat similar note, disability here is a mixed bag. A girl just down the road has Cystic Fibrosis, and everything that she needs is paid for by the state, such as a huge, wheelchair-accommodating van. However, she only gets this because her mother isn't working. Another couple with a daughter with a similar disability get no help whatsoever because they are working. They're desperately trying to sell their two-story house for a bungalow, because they can't even afford a chair lift. However, if both parents were fired today, the council would immediately step in and pay for a state of the art bungalow in a wonderful area, and basically fund everything she needed.

Which is really depressing.

As someone who has seen the mental health side of things, I can give more detail to Coroxn's comments on the Irish mental health services. Frankly, like most of the HSE, they are populated by excellent frontline staff but the administration is utterly incompetent and overbloated while there's a huge shortage at the frontline. The only reason I was able to get seen by a psychologist so fast is because my aunt knows someone who works at the substance abuse and misuse service and she agreed to see me - technically, I shouldn't have even been allowed to go there, as I had depression, not a substance abuse problem. On the other hand, my fianceé has been on a waiting list to see a psychologist for months despite having a significantly more advanced and detrimental psychological illness, simply because there's such a big shortage of psychologists and a high demand for their services.

In short, the mental health services here are excellent if you can actually get to the treatment stage. Before that, they are awful.

goldenquagsire said:

I'm not sure whether learning disabilities fall under the aegis of mental health issues, but that's certainly an area with room for improvement in England. My brother has low-functioning autism and my parents have to fight tooth and nail to get appropriate provision for his needs (respite care, special education etc.). In some cases the council won't even budge unless you threaten legal action - I mean jesus, I understand that they have a responsibility to ensure that people aren't scamming the system, but they take scepticism a step too far.

Even then, we're relatively privileged in our situation that my mum can afford to work part-time and look after my brother the rest of the time, and that both my parents are fairly confident when it comes to shouting down nasty council folk. :P
God help you if you're a single parent without the time to spend researching law and mental health issues, or a person who speaks English as a second language. It's only going to get worse under the cuts.

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That's how it is here, too. Everything's free and they give you benefits, so they want 100% proof or more that you need those benefits. I didn't get anything for being bipolar, I had to be diagnosed with aspergers to get benefits.

Asking for other things from the government is also a pain, i.e. housing, etc... They just don't work for me though, so, eh. Also the appointed psychiatrists/ologists are generally less-than-stellar. I have a really low tolerance for psychs, having been forced to see so many of them.

Idk how much I should go into institutions over here, but they are basically governmentally-set-up torture houses.

goldenquagsire said:

I'm not sure whether learning disabilities fall under the aegis of mental health issues, but that's certainly an area with room for improvement in England. My brother has low-functioning autism and my parents have to fight tooth and nail to get appropriate provision for his needs (respite care, special education etc.). In some cases the council won't even budge unless you threaten legal action - I mean jesus, I understand that they have a responsibility to ensure that people aren't scamming the system, but they take scepticism a step too far.

Even then, we're relatively privileged in our situation that my mum can afford to work part-time and look after my brother the rest of the time, and that both my parents are fairly confident when it comes to shouting down nasty council folk. :P
God help you if you're a single parent without the time to spend researching law and mental health issues, or a person who speaks English as a second language. It's only going to get worse under the cuts.

Click to expand...

This is really sad ): It looks like it's going to get much, much worse, with the Tory government's emphasis on ALL THE PEOPLE ON BENEFIT FRAUD and how basically all disabled people lie in bed all day and do nothing when they could be working hundreds of jobs and keeping the economy going by themselves or something.

My best friend's brother has massively severe learning disabilities and while it's terrible that he is so disabled (he's autistic to the point of being a 3-year-old in the body of a very big 19-year-old), it does mean that his family don't have to go several rounds to get care and support for him, because it is obvious within seconds of meeting him that this guy will never be a productive member of society.
He lives in a home paid for by the council now, which is very good because my friend's parents aren't getting any younger, and he requires 24/7 one-to-one care. Apparently, their LibDem MP has been extremely helpful to them and other families with disabled kids (Adrian Sanders, also one of the LibDem MP's to vote against higher uni fees).

Although, I was chatting to his sister about it, and apparently, every year they have to take him for an assessment to check that he's still entitled to all the things he's getting. Even though he's been like this since birth, and massively severe autism isn't something that will ever go away, they have to go through the motions annually. Which is still not quite as bad as a friend of a friend who's an amputee and has to have a similar assessment for disability benefits with his doctor each year. Apparently their conversation goes something like:
"So. The leg's not grown back then?"
"Apparently not. Maybe one more year'll do it."