Hard News: Call it what you like
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Thanks Sophie
As one married to a mental health professional (NOT in Wellington), I know that it is a draining and thankless job.
One of the few compensations she gets is the opportunity to occasionally meet more interesting, stimulating and funny people than those on this side of madness.
I think Finn would have been one of those. -
. Perhaps staff working in mental health units should have some secret garden with wildflowers
So sorry for your loss Sophie. I know myself and my man were concerned for you and Finn over the last few weeks.He was obviously well loved, and it was nice to read about his love for you in his mail to Russell.
I noticed (while in Ak Hospital) that they do now have a secret garden for staff and it is a necessary inclusion for everyones sanity in trying times.xoxo -
Sue,
oh
you know words are never enough at a time like this.
it's just more than beyond sad, and it's just also so wrong and so screw up.
Sophie my thoughts go out to you.
I've had both good and bad experiences with the mental health workers. -
Di,
I am Di, Finn's Mum.
This is more Finn's medium than mine but I have really appreciated the messages left about him.I would however like to present a fuller picture of Finn's death and the part NZ mental health services played in it.
So what can i say about Finn ? well he was a brilliant son and the most truthful, honest person I have ever met .He was incredibly loyal to those he loved [and they were many],empathised with the vulnerable and the underdog , had an extremely sharp yet compassionate intelligence , was a brilliant drummer and had a wonderful anarchic humour.
What Finn knew and needed all his life was to control the situations he was in to keep anxiety at bay.
Whilst appearing calm the prospect of forced detention would have caused Finn great distress . I presented the CATT team with a alternative arrangement for support that would not involve sectioning.It was refused. Although the CATT team considered him in serious personal danger , the prospect of sectioning aggravated an already fragile state of mind , which was confused by prescribed anti-depressants and sleeping pills. They then left my son and his partner .Within minutes of their departure Finn too left the house and entered Oriental Bay with the intention of drowning himself.
When they were informed about this suicide attempt and his subsequent return to home they failed to return to give any assistance. Although at home for almost 3 hours Finn ,realising they would return in time to carry out the threatened enforced detention , ran from the scene and killed himself on Mount Victoria.
I struggle to understand ,as anything other than gross incompetence, the actions of the CATT team who deciding to section Finn for his personal safety then proceeded to show indifference to that by leaving Finn and Sophie. Had it not been for their actions on February 11th I believe Finn would be with us, receiving support and care for the problems he had been silently carrying for some time.The only slim consolation I could take at the time from the proposed action was that Finn would be safe until we could reach him. That was a delusion and we were failed by the CATT team.
I mourn for Finn because the pain that he feared he would leave, and made him turn several times from suicide, is now devastating so many young lives. His sisters, his partner and his friends.
Finn was a compassionate, loving and talented man who struggled to cope at times with society but enriched the lives of those he met. He is a loss to a world that desperately needs his qualities.
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I struggle to understand ,as anything other than gross incompetence,
Di , I am sorry to hear of the failure of our system. I am truly sorry, and something needs to be fixed. If there is anything I can do, to help force that team to be accountable and ensure changes are to be made, I will do my best.My condolences to you and your family.xx
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Di, thankyou for your words. I am so sincerely sorry for what happened to your son. Words fail and are inadequate. Love and peace, eventually, to you and yours.
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Di, Sophie and all of the people intimately connected to Finn, I want to offer my sincere condolences. I was hesitant to post anything here because I was not sure if it would strike a strange note for those who knew Finn to have strangers posting about their loved one in a public space. So to Finns mum Di thanks for coming and writing such personal things here and I hope you can sense the respect we have for your son. Love to you and yours.
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I suppose most people here have seen this story about our lost friend Finn.
It makes me screamingly angry.
Che has a very angry post about it.
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I worked in the mental health service in my last year before leaving Italy, in the Veneto region that back in the seventies originated the reforms that led to the close of asylums and the newly patient-centred philosophy which was later exported around the world. Then a few years after moving here I happened to do some interpreting for a group of visiting Italian psychiatrist who spoke in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington, and it gave me a brief induction about the differences in the two systems. A strong element that emerged from those talks was the different kind of responsibility that befalls a branch of the mental health service in Italy when a patient is under their care, and I think it possibly addresses one of the points raised by Che in his post: namely, that here there seems to be little or no proactive duty of care, you can be seen to follow protocol and "do what you can", stick to the rules and be minimally liable in the face of a tragedy.
Back home, once a person has sought help for a mental health issue, the local service has to take an active interest, do regular follow-ups, keep in touch, even talk to other DHBs if the patient happens to change address (it doesn't hurt in this regard that Italy is much more of a police state). And the compulsory treatment option is taken VERY seriously, it can only proceed with the signature of the city mayor, which acts in this case as a guarantor of the health and the rights of the citizens. Fewer compulsory treatments and the obligation to care mean a much more proactive attempt to engage the patient in the voluntary forms of treatment, which alongside intesive and regular counseling (as opposed to the cheaper "throw drugs at them" option) is known to produce better outcomes. This is at least was what these visiting doctors reckoned, and it seemed to resonate with the locals. Whether that is the solution in an overextended and under-resourced system, I don't know, but a change of philosophy could be part of the answer.
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I don't know where things are at now, but I recall a few years back there were persistent large underspends by many of our DHBs of their ring-fenced mental health budgets. In other words, they had resource that they were just not using, for whatever reason. Previously they had been flogging the "spare" funding for other things, hence the imposition of ring-fencing.
If skilled staff shortages were the problem then I really can't understand why the dedicated (and hard fought for) money wasn't spent on training or recruiting more.
I'd welcome an explanation from anyone who knows, because it seems downright negligent when people can't get life-saving services in times of need. Anger seems a perfectly reasonable response, so I can't begin to imagine how it feels for family, loved ones and friends.
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because it seems downright negligent when people can't get life-saving services in times of need.
I asked a friend at the time of news of Finn and her thoughts were, that it would have probably been staff shortage, but she also mentioned that there may have been a number of call outs at the time.Not knowing the particular case, she didn't want to assume anything. Her training is heading in the direction we all want, but it takes training and several years study before she could even be a volunteer unpaid to get to a position where she can work in the field of mental health. I also note there seems to be plenty of places that come under the heading of "mental health". Without all of her training she cannot make any assessment without senior authority, so it is a very long road to travel and how do you get more enthusiastic about training etc. I have no idea, but at least people like my friend do care, even if it does end in tragedy. They are trying to make the system work.Also police have no understanding so this is not an answer.
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I'm sorry for the loss of Finn & I didn't read the write up as I didn't know where it would take me, but I don't suspect it would be good.I would like to add to this in more general terms as a Mental Health consumer (yip, you knew it - I'm mad) .
"I recall a few years back there were persistent large underspends by many of our DHBs of their ring-fenced mental health budgets"
You say more than you might know here. Many DHBs have treated Mental Health as a slush fund for other services even when specifically ringfenced.
This is just one reason why smaller DHBs should be incorp into larger DHBs.
The trial down south might be about IT and $17M for nothing, but there is a real lack of finacial rigour in many of the smaller DHBs.
Ironically it was Southland that tumballed Otagos IT funding glitch.
[ I started to rant from here on so will leave it there]
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Ta, Shep. I suspected I might be onto something but I've been too darn busy to follow up.
And I think Southland may still run the claim payment system for the whole country.
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I was thinking about identities, and changing names, in the context of the most recent discussions about it over on this thread, which led me to wonder what happened to Nobody Important (does anyone know?), and then I remembered that it was about this time of the year that our friend Finn Higgins took his own life.
Remembering Finn.
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