Finally, some bad news about mental healthcare that’s not in the U.S.
‘Psychotic’ killer let down by mental health care services
liz | 12:57 PM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
I think the drug abuse is a more relevant issue here than the “mental health problems.” A recent MindFreedom broadcast on the Progressive Radio Network noted that people who’ve been involved in the mental health system are statistically less likely than the general population to commit violent crimes – unless they also have issues with alcohol or drug abuse (in which case they are only slightly more likely). That may have been referring only to crimes in the United States, but I’ll bet it’s pretty similar in Britain.
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