Hello readers; and thank you for being here! I must begin with an apology, as once again I’ve
allowed myself to slack and haven’t written a post for some time. I could make excuses such as “I’ve recently
moved house” and “I’ve started a new job”, but I won’t (both are true, but I’m
confident I could’ve found the time to write something if I’d really tried!).
Onwards! I like to
think it doesn’t matter too much how long I go without posting something, as
long as people enjoy reading it when I do.
So please do enjoy, leave comments and share if you think it’s worth
sharing.
When I was thinking about what to write about this evening,
I was going to refer to my little notebook of ideas(!) when I realised I’m
always writing about things I don’t like about how, things that I
want to change. What about things that are
good, I asked myself; why not write about those? Which brings me to today’s topic: things that
I think are great about mental health services.
Those of you who know me or read my blog will know of my
passion for mental health, and those who know me will know I’ve been working at
a mental health hospital since February this year. Whilst I believe there are many things that
need to change about mental health services, I love working at the
hospital. We have fantastic teams that
provide really good care to people that really need it. Staff are passionate about helping their
patients and are amazing at working together and supporting each other, even in
times of real adversity. There is
constant striving towards providing better care. Incidentally, this is where
my inspiration for the title of this post came from (I like to name my posts after songs and lyrics). In case you’re interested, this particular title is a lyric from a lovely folk musician by
the name of Seth Lakeman.
Speaking of improvement, it happens that just this week two
brand new wards are opening in the hospital I work at.
They feature a combination of light, airy communal spaces,
vibrant colour schemes, homely en-suite bedrooms and fantastic facilities that I think will be really
conducive to recovery. It really pleases
me that spaces like this are being created to care for people experiencing severe
mental health difficulties, and I look forward to seeing more if it in the
future and to being involved in an organisation where these things are
happening right now.
My main inspiration for this post is around something that,
quite rightly, is becoming more and more prominent in modern mental health
services: peer support. Evidence is
mounting to suggest that this is probably one of the most important factors in
recovery from mental illness. Simply giving
patients a chance to talk about their difficulties with each other can be
really helpful. For some, this will be
giving them an arena in which to disclose things about themselves that perhaps
they have never felt able to tell anyone before. For others, simply knowing that others are
experiencing similar difficulties may be comforting. Perhaps a patient who has had difficulty
trusting others will find that they can in this setting.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter why it works, but it
does, so I’m really glad to see it being used more and more in our services!
Today I attended an ‘away day’ (we didn’t actually go
anywhere!) with one of the teams I work in, and we were fortunate enough to have
some peer specialists with us. They
spoke to us about their own experiences, their recovery processes and their
current endeavours and successes in wellness.
Hearing from people like this inevitably inspires me and reminds me why
I’ve chosen to pursue a career in mental health in the first place. I am grateful that there are people like this
around to inspire, motivate and instil hope and positivity in patients and
staff alike. Thanks peer
specialists!
On that note, this feels like an appropriate place to finish. I hope you've enjoyed reading this; it feels good to have written about something
really positive for a change... I’m looking forward to (hopefully) having
many more positive things to write about in the future! As always, thank you for reading and I would
love it if you could leave a comment and share with others. Thank you!
