How Mental Health Services are Funded - Part 1

The arguments and opinions about mental health funding form part of a long-running and probably never-ending saga.

Mental Health services are always in a critical situation where funding is never enough or has been cut to the bone.

But the story of how mental health services work at a grassroots level has probably never been fully told.

An individual who has been identified as at risk from mental ill-health can remain unsupported until his or her life reaches crisis point. This is probably even more true for people who have never been identified as at risk, because in those cases the crisis will appear as completely out of the blue, a shock to everyone around the individual and a shock even to those who love and care about them. Unfortunately, at the time of mental breakdown those personal caring and loving networks won't be enough.

The brutal experience of a full-scale florid mental breakdown will happen to around one in sixteen people in the UK. This is the type of critical episode where the individual's behaviour becomes so extreme and seemingly so out of character to cause enough concern for people in their circle to advise that he or she should urgently seeks professional help. In most cases, professional intervention will also be welcomed by the individual because what is being experienced is so cataclysmic.

Being sectioned in a mental hospital or facility can never be a pleasant experience for anyone. For most people it is an experience they never wish to repeat. although further short hospital stays may be beneficial throughout their lives when a crisis arrives.

But the experience of a sectioning experience is not without its benefits. Firstly, it enables the individual to be properly diagnosed by psychiatric professionals and to be prescribed medication which should help to manage his or her condition. Sometimes it can take years and years for the patient to find their right medication but the positive role of pharmacology should not be dismissed. A sectioned patient is also entitled to therapies and / or counselling, some of which can continue once they are back out of hospital and in the mainstream world again. It is sobering to understand that this process will happen to around one in sixteen of the people you or I know in our personal and professional circles.