If someone’s viewing consisted solely of watching ‘True Crime’ documentaries, that would be far from healthy. just as solely watching porn, period dramas, sci-fi or music documentaries to the exclusion of everything else would be.
The other thing I’ve been watching recently are the BBC’s Small Axe films which are fact based ‘slice of life’ dramas as experienced by the West Indian community mostly in London from the late 50’s through to the 1980’s . These are well worth looking at mainly because they’ve certainly (for me) explained and filled in other gaps in our country’s social history that the mainstream press and media have wilfully neglected.
People suffer pain and have shit lives because they can rarely speak out for fear of being branded a lunatic.
I don’t like the fascination with serial killers, individuals like N, Sutcliffe, Brady were extreme examples or how far from the norm the human mind can slip, they were not representative of any psychological conditions that people suffer with.
Haha! Yeah there’s loads of help.
As long as you’re prepared to go out and find it. There’s kind hearted souls who will chat on the phone. Or you could even get a course of group slapping on the nhs.
I have a friend whose daughter is severely disabled - she will never be able to live independently, due to a stroke as a child.
She recently turned 18, so moved departments into adult care. Now the support is very different indeed, and you have to fight for ages to get anything at all. And there is very little engagement on the creation of a long term plan, as clearly the parents can’t look after her forever.
So if it’s that hard to get help for someone who so clearly needs it, I hate to think what it’s like if you’re “just” depressed, and “just need to pull your socks up” - the nature of mental health support in this country seems to be to wait until the crisis actually happens and then swoop in with too little, too late.
Also MH is dominated by a cabal of psychiatric doctors who are only intererested in the most acute patients and have based services around who they want to work with and not where the vast majority of need truly lies. Its been like this forever and will take a generation of these very academically based unfeeling fuckers to just die to make any change possible.
Ten years ago I was talking to the medical director at the largest MH trust in the country about talking therapies etc and he dismissed them completely saying they were just for people with dog phobias etc
A few years back the NHS introduced the notion of ‘parity of esteeem’ between physical and mental health services. However as I pointed out to any one who would listen, until the Dept of Haalth commits to access targets for mental helath services similar to 4 hrs/ 18 weeks then MH providers will continue to do what they have always done and the majority of people seeking help and support in crisis etc will continue to have a very poor/ non existent experience of care. Of course that costs so…
Finally got around to watching Chernobyl after a few folks mentioned how good it was. Started watching at 9pm last night and the only thing that stopped me watching the last two episodes was having to get up and swap the DVD. Highly recommended viewing.
Really top-notch, I thought. I’ll resist telling you anything much about it, and I’d advise don’t read anything about it, just watch it - it’s a great plot that you want to know as little about as possible.
