Mental health treatment like a 'kick in the head'

There's an old saying I've heard: "mental health treatment's like a kick in the head". One mental health nurse took the saying literally. Jongo Vandi, who worked at Broadmoor Hospital, actually kicked a patient in the head.

Let's assume the patient was being 'difficult' at the time. It is Broadmoor after all. So, you'd expect the quality of the staff to be such that they go unphased under provocation, to be of the calibre that they know how to diffuse a volatile situation, that they know through their extensive training how to 'talk someone down', and so on and so on. But no, Mr Vandi kicked the patient in the head.

Alot of the patients in Broadmoor are violent. Sounds like Mr Vandi's just as bad.

Scraping the barrel when it comes to personnel

Another mental health nurse is behind bars after it was found he'd accessed child pornography sites on a computer he'd been using at the Charlton Centre, a residential home for the elderly in Batley, West Yorkshire.

The Yorkshire Post headline was "Mental health nurse had 40,000 indecent images of children". The story goes on to reveal the mental health nurse, Ivor Foster, had checked himself in to a psychiatric hospital called Fieldhead Hospital prior to the stuff being found on the computer he'd been using at the care home. He'd gone to Fieldhead because he was depressed. That means a depressed nurse was looking after people in a residential home, people who suffer from Alzheimer's diseases or dementia.

I regularly read all this stuff about psychiatric patients and their vulnerabilities, and then I read about the quality of the people looking after them. If this is the quality of personnel looking after people with mental illness, and Mr Foster isn't the only blot on the mental health nurse landscape, there must be a barrel that doesn't have a bottom after being scraped long and hard.

Foster was jailed for 14 months after he admitted 21 offences of possessing or making indecent images.

Brilliant name for a shrink...

Professor David Nutt is listed with the General Medical Council as a specialist in General Psychiatry. I must admit I had to check the story first. I thought it might be one of those spoof sites to begin with. A psychiatrist called Professor Nutt? Surely not. Actually, yes, it's legit. Brilliant name for a shrink!

After searching back a little way, Professor Nutt has been in the news on a number of occasions, for playing down the use of illegal street drugs. On the BBC News web site, it was reported that "Prof Nutt says cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or nicotine..." This is the same Prof who, in February this year, said taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than 'riding a horse.'

Problem is his statements are more likely to be those of someone who consumes illegal drugs, not someone who's attempting to halt the problem. Why employ an expensive Prof to advise on this sort of thing when it would've been cheaper to get the same advice from someone happily consuming the drugs? If the problem is as big as the Government says it is, then there's plenty of fokes out there who would've given the same advice for considerably less than Prof Nutt.

The story hasn't finished either. According to the Telegraph, other members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs are planning to resign. Don't know about you, but that hints at the idea they approve of his statements, that they downplay the dangers of illegal drugs. Wonder what sort of parties the advisers go to at the weekend? The Telegraph headline says "Drug policy in chaos after adviser is sacked." Errr, don't think so. I think drug policy was in chaos a long time before now. How else would there be such a problem with illegal drugs?

He can't be a mental health nurse because he's in jail

Well, well, another psychiatric nurse who stole money from a patient.

Only last month, Elizabeth Fayers was caught going down the local casino for a few spins of the reels with a patient's cash.

Now Adrian Mauger, who's been languishing in prison for the past few months for stealing £7,000 from a patient, has been dumped out of the nursing profession after it was deemed his actions "impaired his fitness to practice."

The politically correct language makes me cringe. Instead of saying "impaired his fitness to practice", it should say, "Mr Mauger has been convicted of a criminal offence and can't be a nurse any more because he's banged up in jail."

It takes two to tango

A psychiatrist who was secretly having an affair with a female doctor, got his comeuppance when the lady doctor called time on him when she found out the shrink's wife was pregnant.

The Daily Record reported on the psychiatrist Dr Jonathan Steele who sent text messages to the lady doctor after she dumped him. The lady doctor then reported the shrink when the messages got out of hand.

That's when Dr Steele had to come clean and tell his wife what he'd been up to. Now he's out of work. Would the lady doctor have dumped him if his wife had not fallen pregnant? Was the lady doctor on a guilt trip, or did she think her bit on the side had too much baggage?

After all the publicity on Dr Steele, I'm interested to know what happened to the lady doctor. Promiscuous and an adulteress. Not really the sort of clean-living, honest, trustworthy type suitable for filling the role of a doctor. What do you think?

'Ere mate, what's it worth to take these 'ere drugs?

Paying patients to take drugs. This is the latest psychiatric methodology to gain more compliance from those who've been prescribed antipsychotic drugs. What about those who are compliant? Do they get the cash too? If they don't, they could always become 'difficult' and get a bit more taxpayers cash.

This is coercion, isn't it? Bribing a person to consume expensive drugs. What if the bribes don't work? What then? I've compiled a list of possibilities that might encourage compliance:

1) Meals out at top restaurants
2) Visits to lap dance parlours
3) Weekends away at top hotels
4) All expenses paid flights abroad

Would you look at that. That's a list of what the shrinks get from Big Pharma. I know, perhaps the 'patients' could join the shrinks on their freebie excursions, sort of like one big happy family, and then the shrinks could definitely check whether they're complying!

There now, working together.

Nursing doesn't include inappropriate sexual relationships

Another mental health nurse whose dirty laundry should be aired in public is Drew Shaw-Dickenson. Once again, the nurse in question has been up to no good with a mental patient. The amorous nurse got pulled up in front of his bosses at the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Here's his rap sheet taken from http://www.nmc-uk.org/:

That you, whilst employed by Portsmouth City NHS Teaching Primary Care Trust in the capacity of Staff Nurse on the Fairoak Unit at St. James’ Hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire,
1 on various dates in the approximate period of October 2005 to December 2005, conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with a patient, namely Patient A, whilst she was an inpatient on Fairoak Unit,
2 on various dates in the approximate period of December 2005 to 1 January 2006, conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with Patient A after she had been discharged from Fairoak Unit but whilst she remained a patient of the Trust,
3 on various dates in the period of 4 November 2005 to 13 January 2006, sent inappropriate text messages to Patient A, including but not limited to,
i) on 15.16 hours on 5 November 2005, a text message that read, ‘I
feel so passionate about you Patient A. I want you for keeps. X’,
ii) at 23.01 hours on 5 November 2005, a text message that read,
‘GOD! you are making me feel soo in love. :) cannot stop thinking about you. I really want to know you and trust you. we will be so wonderful for each other I can sense it. and it feels great. X’,
iii) at 21.57 hours on 7 November 2005, a text message that read,
‘how wonderful! your smell is all around my flat and on the pillows. wish you were here with me flat and on the pillows. wish you were here with me now. X’,
iv) at 12.17 hours on 15 November 2005, a text message that read,
‘can’t sleep. I am thinking about you continually. resorted to playing now and smelling you on the pillow. X’,
v) at 22.02 hours on 19 November 2005, a text message that read, ‘I
love you Patient A you are for me. Always and forever. X’,
And that, in the light of the above, your fitness to practise is impaired by reason of
your misconduct.

He's now out of work too.