Patricia Winchester, chief executive of My Voice Jersey, said there had been a positive culture change towards increasing awareness about people’s mental wellbeing, but stressed it should not be to the detriment of Islanders with complex mental health needs.
My Voice support about 400 Islanders a year who suffer from conditions including schizophrenia, multiple-personality disorder and bi-polar disorder. The charity offers advocacy to Islanders with complex mental-health needs to ensure their rights are respected and they understand what is happening to them and why.
Mrs Winchester said that the nature of the complexity of some disorders meant many mentally ill Islanders were on income support and could not afford to see their GPs and, as a result, their physical health was suffering.
‘If you’re getting £100-odd a week you’re not going to put £2 a side here and there so you can afford to go the doctor a couple of times year,’ she said. ‘It’s a primary-care issue. I’m not bashing GPs because there are some fantastic ones out there who understand and will see patients for free.’
And she added that more needed to be offered to mental-health patients when they were in hospital in terms of ‘therapeutic care’.
‘When people go to hospital it is not right that they just sit there,’ she added. ‘There needs to be things for them to do – therapeutic art, anger management classes. I saw a great thing in London where they were allowed to make their own smoothies.
‘I’ve seen people in Orchard House who just smoke more because it gets them outside.’
The mental-health advocate said care in the Island had deteriorated over the past ten to 12 years from a point where it had been quite well regarded. She said a combination of a lack of funding and the loss of good consultants had left the Island in the position it is in today. She also recalled a time when St Saviour’s Hospital had a gym, meditation area and art therapy room and explained that such initiatives needed to be reintroduced.
‘When they first opened Orchard House it was bright and it was good. Times change and expectations get higher, but it’s grim now,’ she said.
My Voice’s work originally fell under the portfolio of Mind Jersey, but the charity said that as ‘their focus shifts to well-being, we set up as an independent charity to focus on those who are at the extreme end of illness’.
