Caring for the children of the mentally ill

Mental health nurse “child risk”Children may be being put at risk because nurses carrying out assessments on mothers with mental illnesses do not have enough training, an expert says.Mental health nurses are often asked to assess the parenting capabilities of mothers with serious conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But Sarah Rutherford, from Manchester Metropolitan University, said they did not get enough guidance or training.She called for a thorough review of practices across the UK.BBCNHS BLOG DOCTOR readers are only too well aware of the deficiencies of modern NHS mental health care. Patients who cannot afford to pay to see a psychiatrist are dealt with by the CMHT, a pot pourri of poorly paid HCPs with no real psychiatric training. They do not diagnose, they do “risk assessments”. A risk assessment means filling in protocol driven questionnaires, counting up the numbers of 'yeses' and 'noes' and then reading the result from the predetermined answers. More than five 'yeses' and the patient is discharged. You know the sort of thing. Women’s magazines have similar questionnaires which purport to tell them if they are good lovers.Poor back-up from social services is thus not the whole story behind the care of our at-risk children. (See again Shocking Psychiatry) If children in this situation do not deserve the undivided attention of a psychiatrist, who does? Not many, these days. It is thus not just children who are at risk. That is just today’s article. All mental health patients who cannot afford to pay to see psychiatrist privately are at risk.Finally, before the usual onslaught of comments from the usual sources, please note that this research was done not by a doctor but by Sarah Rutherford, who is herself a registered mental health nurse.+++++++++Illustration from the excellent Mental Health Blog