It's great when you're straight

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
we'll have to agree to disagree

male stoicism isnt the cause of male suicide levels in Britain today just as patriarchy isnt the root cause of the problem either, stoicism isnt even a recognized personality trait out of the big 5, although conscientiousness is

imho its because the NHS doesnt recognize, plan for or demand financial support for the scale of the problem....if every CMHT consultant threatened the Govt with strike action, more would have been done, but collectively they sit on their hands, take the very tasty pay packages & pension options & continue to allow this festering sore to remain untreated

its a national disgrace, compared to France & Germany, Maybot's lot have promised more for mental health services, which is hardly a guarantee

you're preaching to the converted about medication "options", they're cheaper than employing therapists after all, my bone of contention is how these are screened & administered by GP's @ primary care stages by professionals who arent specialized, who ignore key data, who seek to throw a blanket coverage over a client "presenting" certain symptoms (i fkn loathe the term "present", surely it should be "is"?) & then stall & stall & stall....primary care is one almighty bottle neck & only a very lucky few get referred on to secondary care services

the region i was born & semi-raised in currently has one of the highest levels of anti-depressant medications administered in the whole of Britain & it certainly isnt the sketchiest, part of the problem here again lies with GP's @ primary care level, because Aneurin Bevan Health Board has some of the better secondary care CMHT's in the country, its just not enough referrals are made for the appropriate support, a vicious feedback loop indeed

so whether you look at a regional case study or a national one, its the gulf in-between someone who knows they have problems & how the medical profession then choose to treat that person, it seems that men will (to make a generalization) put up with more incompetence because no-one outside of the NHS really knows the structures in place to improve mental health (outside of charities & advocacy groups), so they wait & they wait & they wait & then bang.....as women are more agreeable than men you might expect them to be the bias indicator for suicide demographics because they would possibly trust their GP more, but that isnt supported by suicide demographics

thats why i find the notion of some of the gender traits you included (which would defer to & include aspects of identity politics) as a tad problematic

if you're on the frontline, working in this sector, day in, day out, i tip my cap to you, because of the stresses these careers induce & the structural inefficiencies that everyone from Govt down seem to want to bury in the graves of victims, keep on keeping on

2 local clinicians who ARE pushing therapies & treatments forward in new & encouraging directions are listed below, Professor Jonathan Bisson @ Cardiff & Dr Ben Sessa @ Bristol (the former is a fuckin saint!):

http://www.ncmh.info/3mdr-treatment-resistant-ptsd/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?ei=.....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.98....0.-xrcEp_bVvI

https://www.google.co.uk/search?sou...959.0..46j0i131k1j0i10k1j0i46k1.0.7sbQRpP_ey8

edit: blame the edible......both researchers have trialed MDMA & Psilocybin for ptsd, addiction & related traumas, with scope & range thats slowly building momentum

good to see these approaches explore such innovative paths in the face of so much institutional resistance

Bisson set up http://www.ukpts.co.uk/ ....indispensable, there are usually a raft of papers from a bi-annual conference archived, the scale & spectrum of submissions are recommended, couldnt do the wall of advocacy work piling up here w/out it
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Sorry just seen this

Do you have any links for the research, even if it's a work in progress? Trying to get psychotherapy funded (which is part of my job) is an epic battle due to the perception that 'there's no proof that it works', interested in any new weapons...

Here you go, here's one of Cooper's PDFs

https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/downloads/PCCS_talkMIckCooper.pdf

Apparently the new (came out late last year) edition of his "Working at Relational Depth in Counselling & Psychotherapy" has up to date research in it. I'd drop him a line if I were you - based at Roehampton Uni (I think)

What's the job?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
@Cwmbran - I think we agree on a fair amount of things here - I just can't see men en masse as an ignored/powerless group of people who couldn't improve the conditions for their mental health through cultural changes in the way they relate to each other. Obviously that is a massive over-simplication of a difficult topic, but.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Sorry just seen this

Here you go, here's one of Cooper's PDFs

https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/downloads/PCCS_talkMIckCooper.pdf

Apparently the new (came out late last year) edition of his "Working at Relational Depth in Counselling & Psychotherapy" has up to date research in it. I'd drop him a line if I were you - based at Roehampton Uni (I think)

What's the job?

Brilliant, thanks Danny. I'll take a look at that book too, and yeah, definitely worth dropping him a line, good point.

It's for an organisation that supports young people leaving care in a therapeutic setting. I've been sending out quite a few funding applications for the therapy itself recently, and these can struggle to meet the relentless appetite for quantitative stats. And evidently there are lots of problems even if stats are available, in that things can (seem to) get worse before they get better as a result of lowering defences, and that positive outcomes aren't always apparent to the person undertaking therapy until a long time afterwards.
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
@Cwmbran - I think we agree on a fair amount of things here - I just can't see men en masse as an ignored/powerless group of people who couldn't improve the conditions for their mental health through cultural changes in the way they relate to each other. Obviously that is a massive over-simplication of a difficult topic, but.


theres a fundamental disagreement here because you're implying male stoicism, or pride, or ignorance, or belligerence, or male "culture" of avoidance (head-in-sand-burying or whichever way you seek to articulate it in general), are the inherent root causes of the problem.

they're not - its a broken system, in clear denial about the true extent of problems & the demands being made upon it, which raises fundamental questions about the ethics of our current health system, compounded by being a system which society as a whole truly needs.

if it was 1850, you'd have a point, but men have never been in a better position to talk openly about their emotions, express them honestly & have their concerns addressed, but the health system is merciless in dismissing these personal concerns, ruthless in prescribing poorly monitored medications & consistently negligent in referring men to the appropriate services available....there are no "sign-posts" & they're rarely provided in a crisis...further accentuated by pvt sector predators who feel £100 hourly is justifiable in the current market because demand is so high & they know the NHS can't cope.

the irony is such public services ARE available, but only a lucky few get anywhere close to being treated appropriately, because of the above factors, because of bottlenecks at every turn, which have already been discussed.

imho every school, at primary & secondary age levels, should have trained psychotherapists in place to flag up potential candidates for therapeutic intervention, because the warning signs are clear for a raft of people who are ignored presenting with various symptoms, but would that ever happen? would it fk.

another eg: how is any male of any age, whose talent has been overlooked by schools, whose psychological injuries can not be fully understood by said individual or evaluated thoroughly by the medical professionals he seeks support from, be in any position to change anything except to go to his GP, be given inadequate medication or receive the statutory 10 one hr CBT sessions thru primary care counselors, and then discharged & dismissed?

thru a hashtag, #ustoo style, social media campaign?

by petitioning MP's & a Govt who simply dont care?

every significant mental health charity is aware of the problem, but even they can not make up the difference in a grotesquely underfunded sector.

patriarchy might be a partial factor, but only a historical one - as for the present day situation, mental health service provision is in need of a full national audit, parliamentary review & a house select committee founded to begin to untangle this ungodly mess & even then very little would change because our political landlords are as inept as our snr clinical professionals...in denial, in servitude of self & ultimately incompetent.

if that hasnt put you off enough, ukpts have uploaded a batch of papers from their Dec '17 conference in Cardiff....some outstanding research, but how much of it is put into practice?

and therein lies the rub:

http://www.ukpts.co.uk/previous-ukpts-events.html
 

luka

Well-known member
well the root cause is clearly not the NHS. the root cause is whatever is causing unbearable suffering in the first place. a fit for purpose NHS could and would save some of these people from suicide definitely, but the inadequate version we have is not the cause of severe depression and other mental problems. those casues lie elsewhere.
 

luka

Well-known member
it doesnt sound any more crazy to me to locate the causes of todays plague of depression and anxiety in societal structures and attitudes than it would be to do the same for the Victorians pandemic of hysteria.
 

luka

Well-known member
not that i would want to reduce it all down to the word 'patriarchy' that would be glib. but there's clearly a conglomeration of forces acting in today's western world that is at the bottom of this and even a fully functioning health service would only be in a better place to deal with it. it couldnt address the casues or prevent it from happening.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I don't know who you think is running the NHS! It's not aliens - mainly men. To me, it seems as though you're talking about class as a fault line of who gets fucked by the NHS and who doesn't (which I would very much agree with), rather than gender, so I'm not sure why you insist upon writing in gender terms. And if that's not the case, then I'm completely confused as to how you think a broken system treats women.

That the system is undoubtedly broken, can and does co-exist with male stoicism (or indeed, whatever you want to call it). Many men feel shame over perceived weakness because it conflicts so jarringly with a perceived 'gender ideal' (and we certainly live in a world of rigidly enforced gender ideals), and shame is the number one thing that will stop someone from talking honestly.

theres a fundamental disagreement here because you're implying male stoicism, or pride, or ignorance, or belligerence, or male "culture" of avoidance (head-in-sand-burying or whichever way you seek to articulate it in general), are the inherent root causes of the problem.

they're not - its a broken system, in clear denial about the true extent of problems & the demands being made upon it, which raises fundamental questions about the ethics of our current health system, compounded by being a system which society as a whole truly needs.

if it was 1850, you'd have a point, but men have never been in a better position to talk openly about their emotions, express them honestly & have their concerns addressed, but the health system is merciless in dismissing these personal concerns, ruthless in prescribing poorly monitored medications & consistently negligent in referring men to the appropriate services available....there are no "sign-posts" & they're rarely provided in a crisis...further accentuated by pvt sector predators who feel £100 hourly is justifiable in the current market because demand is so high & they know the NHS can't cope.

the irony is such public services ARE available, but only a lucky few get anywhere close to being treated appropriately, because of the above factors, because of bottlenecks at every turn, which have already been discussed.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
not that i would want to reduce it all down to the word 'patriarchy' that would be glib. but there's clearly a conglomeration of forces acting in today's western world that is at the bottom of this and even a fully functioning health service would only be in a better place to deal with it. it couldnt address the casues or prevent it from happening.

race-to-the-bottom capitalism must be a front-runner
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
for Luka:

causes & effects are very different but clearly interdependent subjects, prevention>cure, so i've tried to focus on the latter to highlight the dearth in what's available thru public health provision, the implications of these & because there's a clear lack in public knowledge of (rather than engagement with) where to go/who to ask to see/legal parameters etc, which greatly exacerbate said problems.

granted, this is a tad back to front, but the NHS has been around for approx 70years and yet no other area of healthcare is as overlooked, mismanaged or neglected as mental health care in this cuntry.

why?

snr consultants understand all too well the extent of the problems under their juristiction & have done for the last couple of decades, but there is no professional outcry, not at a level you might expect from hundreds of snr clinicians who are quite happy accepting significant financial benefits for overseeing an abortion of a system, a system than continues to hemorrhage & creak.

would this degree of incompetence be allowed to fester in cancer care, HIV treatment or palliative care? never in a million years, because those pathways are funded according to need &, partially, to maintain society's civilized veneer.

from what i've witnessed up close over 3 decades+ dealing with attempts to get ptsd diagnosed properly, treated appropriately + all that goes with that, but also from seeing friends lose their way in labyrinths underpinned and perpetuated by medical professionals deliberately & purposefully obfuscating (mis)information, which therapy options are available, various treatment and recovery plans lost thru institutional bs....at some juncture the NHS has to hold its hand up & say not only can it do better, is also needs a budget to match current & future projections.

the Mid-Staffordshire inquiry showed how a regional system, left to mismanage itself, could devastate thousands of lives, yet mental health care provision is a national, not regional, scandal.

this leads back to my point that mental health is one of the deepest rabbit holes in terms of societal taboos.

hence, where do you even begin with causes?

overwork, stress, divorce, childhood trauma, changes in employment structures/sectors, the astronomical (& geographic) wealth divide, depreciating levels of human agency in the face of all these.....the list is metaphorically endless....vast tracts of knowledge, books, phd's & research can do little to initiate change if the political AND medical will to reform the system doesnt exist.....and right now the medical will isnt there to the degree it should be.

the brutal truth is there ARE members of the NHS who could give less of a fk about who lives, or who dies, or who gets sectioned, or which care-plan should be initiated and at what stage, might sound harsh & a bit emotionally loaded, but its an evidence-based position.

those in positions to solve the effects of any causes dont have the stomach, appetite or vision to enact the changes necessary &, as society & leading clinicians dont have an operating system upgrade imminent or ready to initiate change wholesale, the causes & effects will only continue to grow.

the NHS is as responsible as its political masters here, if not more so, because while certain NHS strikes have focused debate in recent memory, nothing as drastic has occurred with the mental health sector, a sector we ultimately pay for in more ways than one.
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
I don't know who you think is running the NHS! It's not aliens - mainly men. To me, it seems as though you're talking about class as a fault line of who gets fucked by the NHS and who doesn't (which I would very much agree with), rather than gender, so I'm not sure why you insist upon writing in gender terms. And if that's not the case, then I'm completely confused as to how you think a broken system treats women.

That the system is undoubtedly broken, can and does co-exist with male stoicism (or indeed, whatever you want to call it). Many men feel shame over perceived weakness because it conflicts so jarringly with a perceived 'gender ideal' (and we certainly live in a world of rigidly enforced gender ideals), and shame is the number one thing that will stop someone from talking honestly.

There have never been more women in the NHS, employed at all levels across all services. I'd re-evaluate your position on this front first & foremost

Secondly, males across society can & do talk about their mental health, never more so, the problem lies with who is (or isnt) listening and the social norms that underpin causes, eg Luka's astute note on race to the abyss capitalism.

To blame men for NHS mismanagement or unwillingness to reveal shaming traits or weakness, is naive in the extreme.
 

droid

Well-known member
I wouldn't deny that mental health services (or lack thereof) are a major contributing factor in male suicide, but there's one inescapable fact that supports Baboon's argument, or at least points to other factors. Globally men are three times as likely to commit suicide than women. In Ireland, 80% of all suicides are men. The only country where female suicides outrank males is China, and thats marginal.

The most clearly outstanding difference between regions was reflected in the male-female rate ratio of suicide—in the European Region it was 4 and in the Americas 3.6 while in the Eastern Mediterranean region it was 1.1 and in the Western Pacific region 1.3. Among males in the 15–29 age-group the suicide rate was the highest in the SE Asian region. The lead was tied in the 30–44 age-group but in the 45–59 age-group European males had the highest suicide rate. For ages above 60 males from the Western Pacific region had the highest suicide rate. Females from SE Asia had a remarkably high suicide rate among 15–29-year-olds and they led also in the next age group. From age 45 the highest female suicide rates were in the Western Pacific region.

Data about latest available suicide rates, which have been measured in individual countries and compiled by the WHO are in Table 3. The leading country was Lithuania with a suicide rate of 34.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. Also among males the suicide rate was the highest in Lithuania at 61.2 but in Russia and Belarus it was also prominent. Among females South Korea with a suicide rate of 22.1 was clearly at the top. Male-female rate ratio was the highest in Puerto Rico (6.6), Slovakia (6.6) and Poland (6.4), while it was the lowest in China (0.9), which is currently the only country where the rate for females is higher than for males.

The countries, which contributed most to the number of suicides in the world, were China, India, Russia, USA, Japan, and South Korea

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367275/

So, seems to be a complex situation where economics, social roles & cultural differences all play a part.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There have never been more women in the NHS, employed at all levels across all services. I'd re-evaluate your position on this front first & foremost

Secondly, males across society can & do talk about their mental health, never more so, the problem lies with who is (or isnt) listening and the social norms that underpin causes, eg Luka's astute note on race to the abyss capitalism.

To blame men for NHS mismanagement or unwillingness to reveal shaming traits or weakness, is naive in the extreme.

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/03/women-underrepresented-nhs-roles No need to re-evaluate, but cheers anyway.

I don't think what I'm saying is naive - in my view what's naive is rather to blame a nebulous 'system' that somehow mysteriously is targeting men as a group. Of course I'm not blaming all men for NHS mismanagement, just saying it makes zero sense to paint men as a group as victims when they are disproportionately represented at decision-making level, as they always have been. Put in class terms, as said, the thrust of your argument makes much more sense.
And I'm certainly not blaming individual men for unwillingness to reveal shaming traits or weakness - but there is something in the ossification of gender 'roles' that makes male suicide more prevalent. I don't think avoiding this fact by blaming the system, as shitty as it is, is going to lead to much progress.

And that's my astute note about race to the bottom capitalism, thank you very much! Although Luka did make some astute points too.

Anyways, I'm going to bow out there because this is going nowhere.
 
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Benny B

Well-known member
not that i would want to reduce it all down to the word 'patriarchy' that would be glib. but there's clearly a conglomeration of forces acting in today's western world that is at the bottom of this and even a fully functioning health service would only be in a better place to deal with it. it couldnt address the casues or prevent it from happening.

Don't think its glib really. You might refine it and say 'masculinity' (and 'femininity' since this is also a male construction).

Like, people talk about "toxic" masculinity, when thats really a redundancy - the very idea of masculinity is toxic because its a set of stereotypical roles and behaviours assigned to a sex class. Those who do not fulfill these roles are punished very harshly and made to suffer.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
do people still subscribe to sex class feminism? i thought it was irredeemable when compared with transfeminism...

im no expert tho.
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/03/women-underrepresented-nhs-roles No need to re-evaluate, but cheers anyway.

I don't think what I'm saying is naive - in my view what's naive is rather to blame a nebulous 'system' that somehow mysteriously is targeting men as a group. Of course I'm not blaming all men for NHS mismanagement, just saying it makes zero sense to paint men as a group as victims when they are disproportionately represented at decision-making level, as they always have been. Put in class terms, as said, the thrust of your argument makes much more sense.
And I'm certainly not blaming individual men for unwillingness to reveal shaming traits or weakness - but there is something in the ossification of gender 'roles' that makes male suicide more prevalent. I don't think avoiding this fact by blaming the system, as shitty as it is, is going to lead to much progress.

And that's my astute note about race to the bottom capitalism, thank you very much! Although Luka did make some astute points too.

Anyways, I'm going to bow out there because this is going nowhere.

I dont think the system is targeting men as a group, where did you get that from? If anything the system is failing to recognize & address the demographics, i'd go as far as to say ignoring the suicide demographics. This has been derailed partially through your own insistence on the significance of patriarchy, which i'll do my best to dispel below & as politely as possible

As males do make up the majority of suicides & within a specific age range......

https://www.google.co.uk/search?sou....0..0i131k1j0i131i46k1j46i131k1.0.Tad3sls483s

.....why would the sex of their care co-coordinators have any bearing on the quality of their care & why would that lessen the impact of institutional incompetence & neglect on those people who suffer, who choose to end their lives & the impact of that upon their families & friends?

Do men look out for men because they're men, or do they fuck it up because they're men? This patriarchal, Neo-Marxist foundation paradigm is ideological claptrap.

The structural problems within the mental health sector are nothing to do with the sex or gender of its practitioners. Its broad, embedded institutional incompetence thats been going on for years.

You seem to be placing the burden of responsibility of male suicides on male traits compounded by patriarchal health structures, which i whole-heartedly disagree with on a range of issues, primarily because of institutional neglect, professional self-interest & profound incompetence.

Yes men may be more emotionally introspective, but the causes of suicide are far more complex than wanting to avoid showing weakness.....
when healthcare failures are repeated throughout an individual's journey through life & mental health services available are so poor or inadequately managed that a suicide results, a fair degree of accountability & the overall burden of responsibility are fixed on the role of a patient's care provider. I'd rather see someone sectioned, than dead. The frequency & disproportionate distribution of men in this category is irrefutable & to blame patriarchal care structures is not only missing the point entirely, it reads like the worst elements of Guardian hocus-pocus.

Class may impact on a client's ability to pay for pvt treatment, it may improve an individual's chances to draw on financial resources from unemployment during relapses, it might mean more fundamentally that growing up in a deprived area increases your chances of deterioration in mental health during key life moments due to deprivation, but this notion of patriarchy as the cause of NHS bs & that there arent victims of suicide because of their sex/gender is absurd. The numbers are a national disgrace, but you appear to dismiss that as a male problem caused by men & perpetuated by a male-dominated care system. I can dredge up the numbers of clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, counselors & GP's which might take a week, but the sex-differential for snr clinicians down to SHO's & CPN's in mental health has never been lower.

I work in mental health advocacy & archaeology, 2 very different fields. The onslaught of cases for clients with mental health issues receiving unethical, inappropriate & negligent standards of care, are astronomical & while the work we do doesnt pick up where suicides leave off, we are at the thin end of the wedge in terms of picking up the pieces of people who cant even trust a consultant, SHO or CPN to tell them the truth without an independent advocate present. Gender has nothing to do with the care-plan co-coordinators we meet, its entirely irrelevant in mental health, because so many are women & we're talking about the dozen or so consultants who direct mental health services within the health boards under our remit.

We are seeing increasing numbers of men within the suicide age group demographic. Many have sought help, repeatedly, over many years. The cases are complex & somewhere between 3/5 to 3/4 go on to the health ombudsman.

Men are seeking help, but the structural incapacitates are compounded by recovery programs informed by professionals rather than by survivors views.

Its a fkn shit-storm of behemoth proportions & will only get worse in the short term because of Brexit & NHS staff leaving in ever increasing numbers.

This paper gives one of a very limited number of appraisals of an adult mental health service in south Wales, the problems it faces, the challenges it identifies & prioritizes, put my rant aside & you'll see how refining one tiny slither of a nation's mental health care provision can be a model for a broader national review of ALL CMHT's:

(Elanor Maybury and Lucy Johnstone – Introducing Trauma-Informed Care in an AMH Service in South Wales - Challenges and Successes)

http://www.ukpts.co.uk/previous-ukpts-events_36_3109208224.pdf

To get all pretentious, i'll quote Burroughs - "Control is controlled by its need to control". This is hegemony, not patriarchy.
 
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Benny B

Well-known member
cwmbran, are you saying that men are just naturally more inclined to commit suicide than women? Like, there's a male-suicide gene or something? It's just you seem keen on pointing out that men commit suicide more than women, yet the possible causes you suggest (overwork, stress, economic inequality) affect women more than men.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If society expects more of men than of women, then it also punishes them harder when they don't succeed, perhaps?

Men may make up 68% of MPs in the Commons, but they also make up 84% of rough sleepers, for example.
 

luka

Well-known member
Don't think its glib really. You might refine it and say 'masculinity' (and 'femininity' since this is also a male construction).

Like, people talk about "toxic" masculinity, when thats really a redundancy - the very idea of masculinity is toxic because its a set of stereotypical roles and behaviours assigned to a sex class. Those who do not fulfill these roles are punished very harshly and made to suffer.

i think it's glib because, well, imagine someone coming to you, well Benny I actually want to end it all I'm sufffering so much in this world i can no longer bear it nad i don't understand, it's all beyond my capacity to understand, i can't take it any more

and you go

oh yeah right. that's just patriarchy mate.

it's just maybe not that helpful
 
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