The loss of face-to-face treatments has made mental health patients feel as though they “were missing out on care” over the past year of lockdowns, according to new research. For some patients, video calls made matters worse. The Observer has the story.
Mental health patients found their conditions deteriorated during the pandemic because the NHS switched from in-person help to support by telephone, video and text messages, new research reveals.
Many reported a lower quality of care, according to a study by University College London; others had trouble accessing medication, had appointments cancelled or felt the loss of face-to-face help meant they “were missing out on care”.
Researchers led by Dr Brynmor Lloyd-Evans found that, for many patients, the switch to remote care heightened the isolation and loneliness they were already feeling because they could no longer see friends and family.
“People with pre-existing mental health conditions experienced serious disruptions to their access to, and the quality of, mental healthcare as a result of the pandemic. The opportunities and challenges of remote mental healthcare were an important aspect of our findings,” Lloyd-Evans and colleagues write in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
“While for some people telephone and digital support provided continuity of care, for others there were issues around access to technology, maintaining therapeutic relationships remotely, and digital interfaces exacerbating difficult feelings or symptoms associated with their mental health.”
After interviewing 49 people with mental health conditions in London about their experience during Covid’s first wave, the researchers found key issues included “inadequate access to mental health services”, “difficulties in day-to-day functioning” and “struggles with social connectedness”.
One patient said: “Lockdown has made me feel very angry. I feel the professionals used it as an excuse to stop offering appointments. I was seeing her every week and it’s been cut to every three weeks [by telephone].”
Another said of their therapist: “She did text me a few times: we keep conversation [by] texting but it is not good enough really.” Another, who was offered video calls rather than in-person help, said: “For my paranoia, they make it worse, so I tend not to do them.”
The Royal College of Psychiatrists, which recently said England is “in the grip of a mental health crisis“, believes the extent of the crisis “will likely get a lot worse before it gets better”.
Over one million more treatment sessions were given to adults between April and December last year (1,078,539), an increase of 8% on 2019. There were also 159,347 urgent crisis referrals made for adults, an all-time high, and an increase of 2% on 2019.
The Observer report is worth reading in full.
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Cruel neglect.
Cowardice.
Abdication of responsibility.
Thank you, National Covid Service.
🌪💨
Not all of us. Some of us working in mental health have tried hard to carry on giving as “normal” a service as possible. Not easy to do, when you are surrounded by colleagues and managers buying into the covid narrative and would rather you didn’t see any clients face to face.
Not all, indeed. You are in an impossible position and you have my respect and sympathy.
Thank you
In the first week of lockdown lite (last summer) I posted here of a conversation with a senior front line mental health practitioner at a major in-patient MH hospital.
She told how higher management, on partly returning from WFH, were issuing new covid safety edicts including that all face to face encounters now be mask to mask. This meant it was impossible to develop trust or empathy with her patients; especially with those that had been ‘sectioned’ who considered the masks to be part of the punishment bring visited upon them.
I already knew that in the first week of lockdown that same unit had shipped back ‘home’ as many patients as they possibly could (cf elderly back to care homes) regardless of clinical need. The only concern of management being to reduce the risk of an outbreak on the premises.
I’m not surprised. It’s extremely frustrating working under stupid covid edicts. Personally I do all my face to face contacts maskless, and service users are fine with that, relieved in fact. Only a small minority want remote contact. I find my clients have much more common sense than senior management!
Do senior NHS management do common sense???
I have railed against stupid, patient harming edicts or like you, just ignored them & got on with the job.
I wasn’t receiving any treatment before but lockdown sent my mental health down the pan. I know I’m certainly not alone.
I’m hoping I can get some joie de vivre back if there’s any vie allowed at any point. What we have now is not life.
In the States, there are several private Facebook Groups that have been created to protest all of the draconian lockdown policies on college campuses. A major theme in posts on these sites is the mental health issues these policies have caused in these parents’ children. I’ve also found that these sites are about the only place I can publish my contrarian articles on COVID. Fortunately, several of them have more “members” than small-town or mid-sized newspapers have paid subscribers.
One post I’ve made on Keep Alabama Universities Open: “I bet there have been more suicides on ONE campus in the past year than there have been students who died of COVID on every campus in America.”
“First do no harm.”
Lockdowns cause more harm and kill more people than the virus.
This is a massive issue – and will reverberate on for years.
Yet few comments – ?
I have a long term mental health problem, and was given a couple of online appointments during the past 6 months. I chose not to take part, partly due to technology issues, but mainly because I didn’t want to be seen to be buying into the false Covid scare especially as I live in the Highlands which has consistently had one of the lowest infection rates in the UK. As a result of standing up for my rights and believes I have been discharged by the NHS mental health team, and so will no longer get routine check-ups. So far I consider this a price worth paying to make my point, and am among what is probably quite a small minority of people who had a mental health problem before lockdown and didn’t see it become worse.
P.S. although it can’t be proved I suspect that getting a good daily dose of common sense and rational thinking from lockdownsceptics helped me maintain a reasonable level of mental health. A huge thanks to everyone at LS.
Having suffered from depression and anxiety in the past and through self help books had found ways to manage it, 2020 and the control the government removed from me sent me back 20 years. By September I was snapping at everyone and crying over stupid things and my anxiety was now through the roof. I contacted doctors and was told the new way, not because of covid, this is the way of the future, is, self referral. I had to fill in an online form and wait for someone from the mental health team to phone me. The call came from a mental health nurse and because I didn’t wait until I was curled up in a corner broken and knew how to help myself, I explained what I felt I needed to help me to get my mind back to being able to manage it again. I made one call a few weeks later and knew then I was better on my own with my books and by that point I found lockdown skeptics. I’m so fortunate to have learned how to see and understand what is happening to my mind now as the help I received in 2020… Read more »
Stop the ongoing damage to children’s mental health by abolishing mask-wearing at school (both children and teachers). Parents should fight for the wellbeing of their children and say ‘no mask for my child’ to schools. Note: Masks at school are not compulsory.
Why You Need To Stop Believing The Lie That Children Are Resilient
https://zoeclews-hypnotherapy.co.uk/why-you-need-to-stop-believing-the-lie-that-children-are-resilient/
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Open Letter from UKMFA to Prime Minister, First Ministers and Health Secretary/Ministers – Face Mask MandatesUKMFA have sent an Open Letter to UK Government ministers regarding the current face covering mandatesin the UK. We are requesting an urgent and permanent revoking of all mandates for children under 18 years, and a switch to the voluntary use of face coverings in adults, unless or until a full ‘risk v benefit’ assessment is published which demonstrates that the benefits are significant and far outweigh the harms.
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