Dinesh Bhugra’s comments (Mental health in crisis over staff shortages, 21 June) underline the need for mental health services to bring themselves up to the standards of the best. It is also vital to highlight that mental health services have improved a great deal. The suicide rate in inpatient services has halved and there are thousands of extra staff.
Illustration: Gillian Blease
The recruitment and training of psychiatrists is a long-term problem and we need to get to the bottom of why the profession appears unattractive. With or without the huge financial challenges the NHS faces, better care for the people we support means changing the way NHS services work and integrating more fully with other public services and the wider local community, especially businesses.
Prof Bhugra highlights issues his members face, but it is important to stress that inpatient wards should not be seen as homes for anyone. Better care is only going to happen if we look at how we deliver support and care across the board rather than focusing on just one part.
NHS Confederation Mental Health Network
We all become doctors to help people. That is what we should be focusing on, the human story, helping people reach their potential. The prima materia of the science is, after all, experience. The closure of the institutions in the 1980s was an attempt to help people manage their problems “in the real world”. Care in the community was certainly the next theoretical step, yet does the community care? As a speciality we haven’t really got to grips with this socio-political issue – people do not exist in a social void.
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