Is the NHS useless?

[alternageek]

Psychiatrist in under 6 months: £395.

Therapy that actually works and you don't have to wait a year for: £50/week (at least).

Possibly pharmaceuticals as well: £8.05/month

 

Waiting months for sub-standard treatment is not a viable option when somebody you love is in constant suffering and a danger to themselves.

 

Not everybody can even raise the money, let alone genuinely afford it. I doubt all these statistics about how wonderful the NHS is include people dead by suicide waiting for the NHS to help them.

 

£8.05 is DEAD cheap.

I got my UK Rx filled, and it was $79 or so... (About £65) for 30 tablets.

 

My step sisters son is currently waiting 8 MONTHS to be seen by a therapist for his anger issues and other mental health problems.. That was the earliest appointment they could get, and thats here in the US - her insurance will cover only 10 sessions and she still has to pay her deductible (at over $125 per visit or £90)

 

No where is perfect, especially when it comes to mental health issues.

[unbeliever]

£8.05 is DEAD cheap.

I got my UK Rx filled, and it was $79 or so... (About £65) for 30 tablets.

 

My step sisters son is currently waiting 8 MONTHS to be seen by a therapist for his anger issues and other mental health problems.. That was the earliest appointment they could get, and thats here in the US - her insurance will cover only 10 sessions and she still has to pay her deductible (at over $125 per visit or £90)

 

No where is perfect, especially when it comes to mental health issues.

 

I understand.

But we're essentially all living under a compulsory one-side-fits-all insurance system. We have no choice.

If we weren't forced into the state system through massive extra taxes, I could afford this treatment. As it is, I can't.

 

Waiting time here varies across the country, but it's rare that you're waiting less than a year. When you do get seen, you get (as I said before) a severely stripped down, minimal therapy which is poor in its effectiveness.

[Bob Arctor]

I understand.

But we're essentially all living under a compulsory one-side-fits-all insurance system. We have no choice.

If we weren't forced into the state system through massive extra taxes, I could afford this treatment. As it is, I can't.

 

Waiting time here varies across the country, but it's rare that you're waiting less than a year. When you do get seen, you get (as I said before) a severely stripped down, minimal therapy which is poor in its effectiveness.

 

There may be some truth in this, but if the system were fundamentally changed to benefit the few who could afford to pay for their treatment, the options available to everyone else would be much worse than they are now. This is why most people prefer the NHS model over private insurance, although there are benefits to the French model.

 

As other people have said though, mental health services are woefully underfunded. They always were, and it got worse with the recent cuts, not least because in Sheffield it is funded jointly by the NHS and the Council and the latter have had terrible cuts made to their budgets - as a consequence lots of people no longer get a service. But if we want better mental health services, and I guess we all do, they need paying for, so there needs to be grown up discussion between government and the public about how this will be done, but given that most British peoples' views and attitudes to mental health are still infantile and ignorant we will be waiting a long time for that.

 

By the way, I'd be interested to know why you think you've now got the right diagnosis. Lots of psychiatric diagnoses have little basis in actual science.

 

---------- Post added 31-10-2015 at 20:43 ----------

 

There are various therapy methods that have some degree of effectiveness for this condition. The NHS only offers the 4th most effective. The difference in success rate between the various treatments is substantial.

 

Are you aware that with talking therapy there is no research that gives finds any significant evidence of one type of therapy's effectiveness over another? It seems to be largely about whether the relationship between client and practitioner is therapeutic or not, and this seems to be largely about personality, not modality of therapy. I do find it frustrating that the NHS is so hung up on CBT, with a little bit of DBT or CAT thrown in at the fringes, not everyone finds CBT useful by any means, but whichever modality of therapy you prefer you are not going to find any clinical evidence for its effectiveness with which to argue your case.

[Guest]

I understand.

But we're essentially all living under a compulsory one-side-fits-all insurance system. We have no choice.

If we weren't forced into the state system through massive extra taxes, I could afford this treatment. As it is, I can't.

 

Waiting time here varies across the country, but it's rare that you're waiting less than a year. When you do get seen, you get (as I said before) a severely stripped down, minimal therapy which is poor in its effectiveness.

 

Do away with the NHS and bring in a wholly private system where many wont take out private insurance, and business will suffer; if people feel they're a broken leg away from financial ruin they might not buy that fridge or that car.

[unbeliever]

Are you aware that with talking therapy there is no research that gives finds any significant evidence of one type of therapy's effectiveness over another? It seems to be largely about whether the relationship between client and practitioner is therapeutic or not, and this seems to be largely about personality, not modality of therapy. I do find it frustrating that the NHS is so hung up on CBT, with a little bit of DBT or CAT thrown in at the fringes, not everyone finds CBT useful by any means, but whichever modality of therapy you prefer you are not going to find any clinical evidence for its effectiveness with which to argue your case.

 

I've seen plenty of research which contradicts this statement.

For some conditions, there is an enormous difference between the effectiveness of the various therapist you list.

[davyboy]

My wife attended the A& E department of a hospital in Portugal recently.

The triage was the same as in the UK. After a 4 hour wait she paid £15 to see a doctor and get a prescription and another£ 8 for the antibiotic.

ANd that was with the NHS card.

 

She has in the last month had excelent attention for heart problems in our local hospital and A& E after tearing a ligament in her leg.All this from a hospital that has been severely criticsiied by the QCC

[Bob Arctor]

I've seen plenty of research which contradicts this statement.

For some conditions, there is an enormous difference between the effectiveness of the various therapist you list.

 

I'd be interested to see that, could you give some references?

[I1L2T3]

I understand.

But we're essentially all living under a compulsory one-side-fits-all insurance system. We have no choice.

If we weren't forced into the state system through massive extra taxes, I could afford this treatment. As it is, I can't.

 

Waiting time here varies across the country, but it's rare that you're waiting less than a year. When you do get seen, you get (as I said before) a severely stripped down, minimal therapy which is poor in its effectiveness.

 

You may feel you could afford these particular treatments right now but you have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

 

What is this stripped-down minimal therapy. My son had an operation a couple of years ago at the childrens' hospital. A surgeon performed the operation. Fantastic care and the operation transformed his life. Nothing stripped-down about it.

[Margarita Ma]

Older antibiotics and Asthma meds for a start.

Contraceptive pill.

 

It's not just about the first visit to the GP for the initial prescription. They make you keep going back again and again for chromic conditions such as Asthma when the meds are harmless.

 

There are NO medicines that are harmless. All medicines can have adverse effects. Monitoring a person on medication is sensible. How would you feel if your relative or yourself on medication was not regularly monitored to make sure that the dosage was still appropriate and that blood tests for Liver, Kidney, Heart, Iron and other blood test levels were ok. then they suddenly collapsed because they had not been monitored and something could have been done.

I agree the NHS could improve especially in Diagnostics. We also have some of the best specialist treatment centres in the world and world leading research centres The Hospitals in Sheffield are counted among the best.

The waiting times for certain treatments are very long but others are not so long, this is in part dependent on funding and partly on the number of people wanting to train in those specialist fields.

[mickey finn]

The NHS is very useful indeed. The OP is whingeing about not very much really and seems to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder.

 

Did you really just post that