Mental Health Care in the UK

I notice many posters stating that the mental health care in the UK is poor/terrible. Is it because of a lack of funds? I am just curious to know why there is such a lack of good care. People can't survive on such a lack of care.

There are probably many contributing factors to this , people don't often get the help they need unless they go private. There are long waiting lists for any type of treatment , and CBT has been at the forefront as a sort of " cure all " for everything , but it doesn't always help people with more severe issues and people are often not that well trained.

I don´t live in the UK but I do know a bit about their "NHS", that is the National Health Service. In some ways it´s similar to the Swedish mental health care in that sense that they offer treatments based on specific diagnoses rather than taking into account the patient as a whole and in that they limit all kinds of talk therapies and counselling to such an extent that they become inefficient.

As in Sweden they mainly offer CBT and different forms of "psychosocial" and psychoeducative interventions. They offer mainly very short treatments and patients seek care for similar or the same symptoms again and again.

This situation is due to both lack of funding but also a disinterest among polititians and employers to include and help people with mental health problems back into society and to a better mental health. It´s not enough to gain from including people as there will always be others who can work instead of him or her who has some kind of mental health problems.

The NHS has been underfunded for decades and the current government does not appear to believe in growing public services or improving welfare support. Demand for services can only be met if services receive long term and generous funding, especially since mental health concerns often intersect with other social problems such as poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence and so on. Services which address these social problems are also dismally supported by the government and it is common for services to close down as a result.

Thank you for explaining the situation to me! Private care must be very expensive and therefore unaffordable to many. It must be extremely difficult and frustrating to deal with. I have heard of a few cases (not online) where people have moved to the United States to just get help.

And that is terrible that the government wants to get rid of NHS.

I am familiar with mental health services in UK as close family member lives there and I travel there a lot. She received mental health services when needed on several occasions (therapy and such) and has zero complaints. She also has no complaints re any other health services. She just had surgery and all went great as always.

People like to complain about everything under the sun. It’s just in our nature.

I am in the US but here I have found three very different levels of care and have used all three. The government subsidized care often has newer therapists with a high turnover ($0-$5 copay). It is possible to receive a high level of care but the chances are low. Great effort is made to find the one treatment of lowest cost to cover the broadest range of people. At that level the only thing available to me was group CBT and IOP. The next level was T’s working in groups/clinics that took insurance or had sliding scale fees ($35-$50 copay) (often still subsidized but not as heavily and more often by grants than direct government funds). The level of care I received at this level was better suited to my needs, tailored to fit my needs, and more personable. Finding quality and even high quality care in these settings was still hard but not as hard as in the government programs. The third group are the ones who take insurance or will give you the forms to file out of network ($50 copay to full fee of $120-$160). When I can afford it I have had much better luck getting high quality care at this level but still found some T’s were better than others.

The level of NHS mental health care in the UK really is a postcode lottery. I can only go by my own experiences which were horrific.
I went to my GP after a suicidal attempt and also having a history of self harm. He put in a referral to my local Community Mental Health Team and 9 months later I finally received an appointment, after further suicide attempts. However my case wasn’t deemed ‘serious’ enough to be handled by a psychiatrist so I was assessed by a Community Psychiatric Nurse who was not qualified to diagnose or issue medication. The CPN then discusses my case at a multi disciplinary meeting and the psychiatrist attending that meeting then made a decision about what my Care should be. So essentially I was diagnosed and prescribed medication by someone who had never even met me.
It was decided I should be supported by a CPN but there was no current availability so it was another three month wait before I was assigned to my CPN. We started with fortnightly meetings and it was also decided he would be responsible for making decisions in terms of medication and the psychiatrist would just sign it off. In the 6 months I saw that CPN I was emotionally abused. He refused to take me off medication that was causing me to self harm in my sleep and have extremely violent thoughts towards other people and told me I was lying because I didn’t want to take meds (not the case). If he asked me if I had self harmed and I said yes he responded with ‘well if you’re trying to impress me with the fact that you’ve done that then it’s not working and I’m certainly not going to fuel the fire by giving you any empathy. Maybe then you will learn not to do such stupid things.’ He told me if I was serious about suicide I would have already successfully done it and I was using it to seek attention and be manipulative. He refused to offer me any kind of talking therapy as I ‘didn’t deserve it’ as well various other incidents that related to my history of trauma.
When I asked to see another CPN I was told no and if I wasn’t happy then the best thing I could do was discharge myself and seek help privately. Which is exactly what I did.
I have met so many people who have also had really bad experiences with MH care in the NHS but there are those who have had brilliant experiences, it really does seem to come down to where you live and which local health trust you fall under. Don’t get me wrong we are really lucky to have the NHS and I am extremely grateful, but mental health care in some parts of the country is abysmal.

A good friend of mine has adhd and lives in the UK. It was really hard for her to get proper treatment with the NHS probably due to the restrictions on certain types of stimulants. She had to go private to get the one that works for her approved.

The only experience I had was when I saw someone for an assessment when I was 14, but I wasn't ready and lied at the session and said everything was okay. At the current state of things I think the NHS is good in some areas- but mental health is not one of them. My T previously worked in the NHS and left around 5 years ago, when I asked him why he said I wouldn't believe what was going on.

I have a friend I check up on. He did self refer last year and was assigned group CBT sessions only.