Mental Health Services in Camden
 

I am what Camden NHS call a "Service User"... Well, I would be If I could actually get in contact with the services. I leave messages (like they tell me to) and they never get back to me. I have been asked to contact various services that they say might help and when I do get in contact with them, those very services are either closed down, out of date or have no idea why I was told to call them.

I feel like I'm basically just being moved around so that no-one has to deal with me. For example, My wife called the Dartmouth Park service for me and was told that a message would be passed along to the person in question. It never was. When I call up this morning to find out what happened, this is what was said:

ME: Hello there, my wife left a message for **** *******
THEM: Your name please?

(I give them my name. This is then what I hear in the background)

THEM: "Erm, this gentleman's wife asked if she could leave a contact request but I lost it... how do I get rid of him?"

At this point, I hang up, extremely pissed off.

Did I over react? maybe I did, but I'm sure you can understand why? For the last 9 or so years, I've been using the mental health services and found them very damaging. South Camden Crisis Team (this is one of many incidents) have actually blamed my wife for my problems and on one occasion (when they met me at A&E), they actually giggled while I was crying and telling them what had happened. They said I was simply telling them a story and than I wasn't being truthful. After they said that, I decided that I wasn't worth the hassle and tried to kill myself. Even now, they still refuse to take me seriously in regards to anything. One member of staff said that If I was serious about my problems, then I would have succeeded in killing myself!

WTF?

I don't know what I am supposed to do. Maybe I'm just ranting. I just feel like no-one is listening. I don't know what to do anymore.

That does sound extremely upsetting, and you should not have been treated in that way. I would put in a formal complaint first off and see if that gets you anywhere.

I wonder if somewhere along the line you have been labelled as being a difficult patient? I'm not saying you are difficult, but if you have been perceived that way (correctly or incorrectly) and it has been noted down on your file then that could be why services are reluctant to take you on. I wonder if that time in A&E when they said you were just telling a story they decided you were a hypochondriac or something?

Can you go back to your GP and tell them what's been going on and ask them if they know why nobody is taking you seriously? Another thing you can do is request your psychiatric notes to see what might have been written.

But I would definitely complain about how you have been treated. And if you can't get anywhere with the NHS then look into charities like Mind and Rethink who see service users.

I live in Camden too. What service was this?

Dartmouth Park and South Camden Crisis resolution team

I'm under the dartmouth park unit and have been for almost 3 years. I am very surprised to hear of your problems with them, as I have never had a problem with them and found them really caring and helpful. I'm not sure if you are aware but the dartmouth park unit is sort of split into 3 different teams with one reception team covering all so if you wernt clear on which team you needed to get hold of then I could see how a message could get mislaid. The 3 teams are: community, dbt therapy, and mbt therapy.

Crisis teams I have always had problems with (though I'm under Islington), they don't tend to like dealing with me as my problems are "long term" and "chronic", ie not something they feel they can help with.

Like Nayy, I'm surprised that you've had that experience with DPU (the Dartmouth park unit), as generally they are good team, from my experience. I had a bit of a personality clash with my worker, but in general I think they're good, so I do think you may have got unlucky with the telephone interaction you had. If you rang the main number you'd be put through to reception and I find the reception team normally very good, so I wonder if you could have possibly misheard, or perhaps had the misfortune of speaking to a dodgy temporary staff member or something. I'm not trying to dismiss your experience, as it sounds horrible, just saying that if you give them another chance hopefully you'll not have the same experience.

In terms of the crisis team, I think i and my partner have most recent experience with the islington team, but I think we've dealt with South Camden in the past. With both teams, there are some truly terrible workers, but there are some really good ones, so it is worth giving them a call when you're in crisis, as you could get lucky and speak to someone really helpful, and if not, you can always just say that thank you very much and hang up. When they do really out of order things, you can make a complaint, which we did recently with islington crisis team and they were very proactive in dealing with it and I do feel they took on board our concerns and will hopefully mean our future dealings with them are more helpful. At the very least, the people who let us down got a good grilling from the people investigating the complaint! So I would recommend making a complaint when you feel there has been a very large failure from them.

P.s. That makes six of us from RYL who are under DPU; what fun!

I'm with the mbt therapy team at DPU...

(hey, why not have a DPU meet up? lol)

lol !!

I do have to say though dpu are generally helpful im under community side although I do find it depends what receptionist I speak too !! My gf is under the community side and will hopefully be going to the therapy side of
Dbt is right ! X

What's everyones experience with south camden crisis team?

horrendous

I've had terrible terrible experiences with the DPU and their reception. This was when they were a fairly new service and didn't have a community psychiatrist in place yet so make of that what you will. I think the Oscar Hill Service has sort of been made part of the DPU?