Wessely on air at BBC 4 Radio

[chipmunk1]

More comment from TES:

https://www.tes.com/news/school-new...-need-pr-spin-about-tackling-mental-health-we

'Theresa May, we don't need PR spin about tackling mental health – we need proper funding and action'

Natasha Devon
9th January 2017 at 11:45

"...It was during a roundtable at the DfE. The chief executive officer of one of Britain’s largest mental health charities turned to me and said: “Natasha, if your vision of improvements to mental health necessitates investment into services, I’m afraid that is just a pipe dream. There is no money.”

"The group then went on to enthusiastically discuss the launch of an app for young people that would cost millions of pounds. (“And at the end you get a badge,” said its inventor. “Young people love badges.”)

"It was at that precise moment the disturbing truth hit me. This had never been about helping vulnerable young people. This was a marketing exercise in which I had been used as a pawn..."

Natasha Devon is the former UK government mental health champion for schools

The hilarious thing about this is that if you believe that a CBT app will solve any mental health problems then you are probably not very sane.

 

[JaimeS]

"Under the plans, mental health training for teachers and staff will be rolled out to a third of secondary schools in England next year, with the remaining two-thirds of secondary schools offered the support in the following two years."

Not saying it wouldn't be useful for teachers, but this habit of society of dumping everything they can't manage to handle on schoolteachers is becoming comically ridiculous.

The hilarious thing about this is that if you believe that a CBT app will solve any mental health problems then you are probably not very sane.

The hilarious thing about this runs deeper, IMO:

• Conversion disorder holds that patients aren't 'faking it' -- at least not consciously. They're really mentally ill enough to think that they're feeling symptoms, or they're generating some pretty severe symptoms through subconscious emotional conflict translating to physical debility.*
• They must be damned mentally ill, then, to produce such extreme symptoms, and be convinced that they are real.
• Chatting will fix it! Not even in-person chatting.

This, more than anything else convinces me that Chalder et al don't actually believe we have severe conversion disorder -- they believe -- as they used to have the decency to say, in public -- that we are the 'undeserving ill', malingerers, and those out to cheat the government out of money.

Because if you believe the third point, how can you possibly support the first two?

* I just read several papers on this and I'm at that insane place where they're doing brain scans and saying that the dysfunction and damage in the brain or the way it functions is signs not of overt neurological disorder, but proof of conversion disorder. I've been joking to people that papers on conversion disorder seem to offend all logical principles. But of course that led to jokes like this one:

"Reading about conversion disorder is giving me hives!"

and

"Trying to think of conversion disorder as a logical construct is giving me a headache!"
​

 

[Large Donner]

Not seen any reference to pilots/implementation in infant and junior schools but if Large Donner has the source I'd be pleased to have it.

I dont have any info on infant schools regarding this current issue etc but previous to this weeks announcements I had been increasingly concerned about the "mindfulness" program already being rolled out in infant schools.

I find it extremely contentious via personal experience of it and the head teachers dictating to parents via the school newsletter that they should be practising the same program at home that is being implemented in schools on children as young as six.

Heres a link to the program that the government has already introduced into schools and workplaces etc. Like many other issues I find the fronting campaign creepy and the lack of public scrutiny worrying.

https://mindfulnessinschools.org/

Exeter/Cambridge study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry details the effectiveness of the Mindfulness in Schools Project and the .b curriculum. Read more here →



Researchers find that those children who participated in the .b mindfulness programme reported fewer depressive symptoms, lower stress and greater wellbeing than the young people in the control group.Approximately 80% of the young people said they continued using practices taught in MiSP’s mindfulness curriculum after completing the nine week programme. Teachers and schools also rated the curriculum as worthwhile and very enjoyable to learn and teach. View the full collaborative report here →

Anyone care to look at the above claims objectively? There's something very icky about lots of this kind of stuff especially when one realises claims made by psychiatry seems to have some kind of free pass even when all the data often shows quite the opposite of the claims made by the very publisher of their own individual papers. Not only that but often psychiatry is deeply entwined in governmental policy and I am increasingly hearing the phrase "we need to get into schools to reach people as soon as possible", being pumped out over and over in media blitzes. That's an extremely worrying trait.

The General public really needs to wake up to many issues like this and start to look at what kind of society we are being manoeuvred into in our general complacency for trust in self proclaimed authority figures.

@Dx Revision Watch if you have time look closer at the mindfulness programme in schools and workplaces and see if you can spot a trait that is leading to, "don't believe in your own thought processes they are wrong the government can tell you what thoughts are correct and teach you how to think them". I find it quite worrying.

I never see the news in isolation and if you add all I have mentioned above to last years issues over sharing of everyone's medical records with multiple agencies including the police and research groups etc and the fact that was the last time I heard Wessely on the radio singing the praises of such a nationally rolled out scheme I seem to spend most of my time swearing at the BBC news when I am unfortunate enough to let it into my house.

 

[Barry53]

He's already got one.........more likely aiming for a peerage.

Good grief!

 

[Barry53]

The hilarious thing about this is that if you believe that a CBT app will solve any mental health problems then you are probably not very sane.

Catch-22 on its head.

 

[CFS_for_19_years]

Heres a link to the program that the government has already introduced into schools and workplaces etc. Like many other issues I find the fronting campaign creepy and the lack of public scrutiny worrying.

https://mindfulnessinschools.org/
Exeter/Cambridge study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry details the effectiveness of the Mindfulness in Schools Project and the .b curriculum. [URL='http://mindfulnessinschools.org/mindfulness/research/']Read more here →

Researchers find that those children who participated in the .b mindfulness programme reported fewer depressive symptoms, lower stress and greater wellbeing than the young people in the control group.Approximately 80% of the young people said they continued using practices taught in MiSP’s mindfulness curriculum after completing the nine week programme. Teachers and schools also rated the curriculum as worthwhile and very enjoyable to learn and teach.[/URL]

SuperFreakonomics notes the following:

As one academic researcher wrote more than a century ago, lab experiments have the power to turn a person into "a stupid automaton" who may exhibit a "cheerful willingness to assist the investigator in every possible way by reporting to him the very things which he is most eager to find."

They were on to something even a century ago. Confirmation bias exists in the minds of the subjects being studied.

 

[Jo Best]

PROOF POSITIVE ? (REVISITED) Margaret Williams 14th September 2016 - quote from page 14 - http://www.margaretwilliams.me/2016/proof-positive-revisited.pdf -

“Rather than start with the physicians, which might be quite a difficult task,
we could make a start with youngster in schools.
My experience is that they are much easier to educate.
The only barrier is the parents.
Once we have the child on our side we are in a very good position”.

Professor Trudie Chalder, 2002.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Theresa May's speech is pure ideology - there was that recent "study", widely quoted in the conservative media that claimed that mental health care is more "cost effective" in improving "happiness" compared to other social programmes and therefore we should just invest more in mental health care.

 

[Sean]

"Rather than start with the physicians, which might be quite a difficult task,
we could make a start with youngster in schools.
My experience is that they are much easier to brainwash educate."

Sickening stuff.

Chalder is a nasty dangerous piece of work.

 

[Snow Leopard]

They can start by preventing harassment, bullying etc. That is where adults ultimately learned this behaviour - when they were growing up.

Much of mental health issues arise from a cruel society.

 

[Sean]

It's the new opiate for the masses.

 

[Barry53]

“Rather than start with the physicians, which might be quite a difficult task,
we could make a start with youngster in schools.
My experience is that they are much easier to educate.
The only barrier is the parents.
Once we have the child on our side we are in a very good position”.

Professor Trudie Chalder, 2002.

 

[RogerBlack]

Theresa May's speech is pure ideology - there was that recent "study", widely quoted in the conservative media that claimed that mental health care is more "cost effective" in improving "happiness" compared to other social programmes and therefore we should just invest more in mental health care.

Properly measured - what's wrong with happiness as a metric?
Not the whole one of course.

We need proper research and thought as to whole system costs of all public measures, and 'whole person' measures of illness outcome.

For example, cancer treatment is great, but measuring solely by 'did you die', without considering resultant illnesses (many people suffer significant fatigue afterwards for extended periods) in your measures of cost-effectiveness and how much a drug helps is misguided.

Or considering disability assessment.
I suspect many of us would be quite happy to see the amount of money spent on the assessment very significantly increase so as to properly evaluate disability in a meaningful way, rather than a rushed tick-box assessment that often leads to appeals - even if that money came directly out of the benefit we are granted.

Combined with deep research into why people are economically inactive, and weighting research into diseases by their whole costs on society, including loss of tax revenue from patient and carers as well as increased benefit spend.

And yes, I do realise that unfortunately, the conservative government as a whole seems to see everything from a narrow lens of cost-saving at the point of use, never seeming to consider knock-on costs, and using research more as an excuse to be grabbed, nomatter how flimsy when it supports your agenda of reducing costs.

Sorry for the marginally linked rant, I should be doing the washing up.

 

[ash0787]

Thats how politics work, it doesn't matter what you actually do as long as you look good in the media
and people think that you are doing something good, at the moment Theresa is changing everything in sight to how she wants it while everyone is distracted by Donald.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

I dont have any info on infant schools regarding this current issue etc but previous to this weeks announcements I had been increasingly concerned about the "mindfulness" program already being rolled out in infant schools.

I find it extremely contentious via personal experience of it and the head teachers dictating to parents via the school newsletter that they should be practising the same program at home that is being implemented in schools on children as young as six.

Heres a link to the program that the government has already introduced into schools and workplaces etc. Like many other issues I find the fronting campaign creepy and the lack of public scrutiny worrying.

https://mindfulnessinschools.org/

Anyone care to look at the above claims objectively? There's something very icky about lots of this kind of stuff especially when one realises claims made by psychiatry seems to have some kind of free pass even when all the data often shows quite the opposite of the claims made by the very publisher of their own individual papers. Not only that but often psychiatry is deeply entwined in governmental policy and I am increasingly hearing the phrase "we need to get into schools to reach people as soon as possible", being pumped out over and over in media blitzes. That's an extremely worrying trait.

The General public really needs to wake up to many issues like this and start to look at what kind of society we are being manoeuvred into in our general complacency for trust in self proclaimed authority figures.

@Dx Revision Watch if you have time look closer at the mindfulness programme in schools and workplaces and see if you can spot a trait that is leading to, "don't believe in your own thought processes they are wrong the government can tell you what thoughts are correct and teach you how to think them". I find it quite worrying.

I never see the news in isolation and if you add all I have mentioned above to last years issues over sharing of everyone's medical records with multiple agencies including the police and research groups etc and the fact that was the last time I heard Wessely on the radio singing the praises of such a nationally rolled out scheme I seem to spend most of my time swearing at the BBC news when I am unfortunate enough to let it into my house.

Thanks for link @Large Donner.

Been tied up with the IAPT thread:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ary-care-whats-happening-across-the-uk.48710/

 

[FredaF]

The hilarious thing about this is that if you believe that a CBT app will solve any mental health problems then you are probably not very sane.

Never ceases to amaze me why the easy observable and measurable physiological signs of ME/CFS are NOT used to identify the disease and help people manage too identify how much they need to rest?? Why not a simple heart rate monitor and the NASA stand test (used by the Bateman Horne Centre) will go a long way towards identifying and helping people with ME/CFS. Useful apps like ME CFS Assistant - actually enable people monitor and hence manage their symptoms. Standard exercise apps...are fine for monitoring heart rate..Where are the clinical exercise capacity assessments, that demonstrate talking increases the participants anaerobic threshold, chronotropic incompetence, daily temperature, increases heart rate variability? Science please. All that seems to have the potential to increase is the bank accounts of the proponents.

 

[Valentijn]

Why not a simple heart rate monitor and the NASA stand test (used by the Bateman Horne Centre) will go a long way towards identifying and helping people with ME/CFS.

NICE already recommends using a heart rate monitor and decent heart rate limits for GET. The quacks at the fatigue clinics never use them, of course.

 

[Chrisb]

If only we all had listened more carefully and attended the .b mindfulness programme, as we were supposed to, rather than the .b mindedness programme, where we ended up

 

[user9876]

NICE already recommends using a heart rate monitor and decent heart rate limits for GET. The quacks at the fatigue clinics never use them, of course.

This does of course mean that the clinics are not following the NICE guidance. I suspect if people complained about being made worse they would argue that they are just following NICE and the evidence but they are neither following NICE if they aren't using heart monitors and from PACE we know the evidence is rigged by outcome switching.

 

[Invisible Woman]

This does of course mean that the clinics are not following the NICE guidance.

The NICE guidelines are just guidelines when it suits, but seem to be hard and fast rules when it doesn't.