The 60th year of The Henderson Hospital

I think we should be celebration the 60th year of The Henderson by opening more centres based on The Henderson’s model. With the current population of England being some 60 million and the fact that one in four people with have some form of mental illness. This means, at any one time there will be approx 15 million in need of some sort of care. The correct percentage of this figure I’m not sure of. Lets say that out of the 15 million only 5% need help with personality disorders. This leaves a possible figure of 750,000 people which come benefit from some sort of treatment or another. Now, this is the alarming part. There are only 59 beds offered by the NHS in England, with 29 being at The Henderson alone. I found myself pondering how the other 749,971 sufferers are being treated/helped.

One of the things that attracted me to The Henderson was the fact that No Drugs are allowed, forced or offered. A resident’s treatment is based on group therapy, where the resident is encouraged to explore aspects of their lives that may have some connection with the person they are today. Treatment is 24/7 so if the resident is in need of support in the middle of the night, the whole community is woken to discuss and support the resident through their time of need. Then the following day, the resident is encouraged to talk about what’s going on for them in the days different groups. Then hopefully gaining some insight into their issues, providing some insight that will help them to deal with the issue at hand.

If The Henderson is closed I fear we will very soon slip back into the days of asylums and over-medicated patients, locked wards and the brutality that used to take place behind there closed doors. Also the rights of the people that would be forced to use this type of treatment would go by the by, with any complaints being locked up in red tape for far longer than could be deemed safe.

Lastly

If you think of the NHS mental health service as the body of psychiatry in the UK, then The Henderson is the head. Without a head, the body can’t function and would have absolutely no sense of direction, nor would it be able to learn from mistakes, new ideas, new approaches or it’s own history. We must not allow this or any other TC unit to close. We should be protecting the ideals of The Henderson, not discarding them and flushing them down the pan.

The one in four statistic refers to people who, at some time in their life, will suffer from a mental illness. Of course, some people will suffer throughout their life but many will receive treatment and return to health - still others won't be treated but will "grow-out" of their illness. If we said the average life expectancy is 75 years and that the average length of mental illness is five years, that means that about 1 million people will be suffering from a mental illness at any one time; not 15 million. Using Karl's 5% estimate that equates to around 50,000 with personality disorders. Still a VERY large number.

David

I always was crap at maths. Besides, like you say, 50,000 people is shocking enough. I would love for someone to post an accurate equation of these statistics

Karl wrote:IIf you think of the NHS mental health service as the body of psychiatry in the UK, then The Henderson is the head. Without a head, the body can’t function and would have absolutely no sense of direction, nor would it be able to learn from mistakes, new ideas, new approaches or it’s own history. We must not allow this or any other TC unit to close. We should be protecting the ideals of The Henderson, not discarding them and flushing them down the pan.

Exactly Karl