Formal Complaint
 

I may be making a formal complaint against my doctor and my social worker. My doctor came to visit me in hospital and basically told me off for my "bad behaviour that led to me getting sectioned" and told me to "never tell people rubbish about spies trying to kill you again", as if I walked in and made the whole thing up. I am paranoid schiz for goodness sake, what happened there was purely out of extreme paranoia. This was the same doctor who said its fine to go cold turkey on my antipsychotics in the space of one day. I ended up in A&E soon after he said that and nearly got sectioned.
8 hours before I got section 136-ed, I called my social worker and told her everything. Her reply was "go home and have a bath and drink some tea"! I was very ill at that time and I think she could have prevented me being section 136-ed if she had called an ambulance to where I was to take me to hospital or something like that. Now I have a section 136 on my records which could have been prevented.
My doctor also groans loudly and tells me to stop being silly when I tell him about the voices.
I come to his appointments normal and I come out of his appointments feeling extremely bitter and pissed off.
My social worker spent half an hour of a 45 minute appointment wasting time talking about Poland (her home country) and what *she* did during the weekend. What a waste of time.

And there's more. Do you think I should make a formal complaint? My doctor tells me to stop "behaving like that" when I go to hospital and doesn't believe that I hear voices! He told me I have an "overactive imagination".

i dont think that they have been very fair to you at all!!They are supposed to be there to help people with mental health problems not make them worse.

Please be brave and complain.You have every right to and also to expect people to at least respect you and treat you much better than this.

i am sorry this happened to you.*Hugs*.

I would deffinatley say something about your doctor! I'm horrified a medical professional can be so ill-informed of mental health and so ignorant to the struggles people with mental health issues face!
You shouldn't have to put up with someone who obviously has no experience with your circumstance, and more-so hasn't made any effort to learn about it. Telling you it's ok to stop your medication is disgusting!
Ooh I'm so angry for you!
Deffinatley put a formal complaint in, and look into changing your doctor to someone who is more helpful and caring to what you're going through.
I'm sorry you've had to put up with such a person.
Xxxx

Thank you for your replies - they really helped.
My friend has given me a link to a website that advises on formal complaints. I will definitely go through with this, because my doctor has treated me so badly.
Thank you.

Are there NICE guidelines for Schizophrenia? I'd quote some of that too, if so, to illustrate how they are failing.

Hey there.
 

That is not right, and I'm sorry you had to deal with that...Very unprofessional. :mad:

My other suggestion would be http://www.schizophrenia.com. They may have info. regarding legal issues. (It's a good site to bookmark!)

Let us know how it goes...Thanks for your PM, by the way, and I will be responding when I have a bit more time!

Take care, and talk soon.

Thank you. I am typing a list of the **** he's done and I will produce a letter soon.
I'm going to make an appointment with my GP to have a talk about this.

I am not standing up to this any longer.

I will try my best CRL, I am making a list atm. I will ask my Mother about the dates when these things happen because she remembers dates better than I do.
Thanks Alternate Reality. I will post up the list so far now.

Dr. Grant and Kasia (my social worker) did these things:

Dr G let me go cold turkey on my medication (i.e. take it one day and completely stop the next day without tapering the dose off). He told me “you don’t need this medication”. The next day I ended up in A&E.

Dr G implies that I am being silly when I tell him about the voices.

Dr G tells me that I’ve got an overactive imagination when I tell him about the hallucinations.

Dr G told me off for being sectioned and called it “bad behaviour”.

Kasia told me to “go home and have a bath and a cup of tea” when I was very ill and told her everything that was going wrong. She could have prevented me from being put under section 136 had she taken appropriate action.

Kasia did tell Dr. Grant about what I told her, but I don’t know how much she actually told him because he did nothing to prevent what happened.

Dr G keeps giving me diagnoses which make no sense whatsoever, i.e. dissociative disorder and acute reaction to stress.

Dr G keeps telling me I’m under stress when I’m not and blames everything on stress so that he doesn’t have to make an effort to work out what is wrong.

Kasia took up 20 minutes of a 45 minute appointment talking purely about her weekend and then talks about Poland, wasting a lot of precious time.

Kasia implied I was exaggerating when I told her about the voices when in fact I was telling purely the truth.

Dr. Grant sometimes groans when I tell him about the voices.

Thats excellent well done.i think you are doing really good with this.You have us all behind you!

These things that they did are wrong.

Really glad you're complaining. Definitely look at the the NICE Guidelines for Schizophrenia also like Stellata said, just google Nice Guidelines Schizophrenia.

I also remember Dr G discharging you when you in hospital before prematurely? You went in for like three days, seriously self harmed and he just said it was being silly etc?

I had the same with CAMHS because they kept giving me that "we're going to tell your parents about this" look. I had just told them loads of personal stuff and keeping it secret was cruical to my recovery because the unnecessary involvement of my parents just made it a hell of a lot worse. The irony was that I came out of my sessions feeling worse than I did on entry, mainly due to lack of confidentiality...

Ugh...my psych used to spend about 10 mins at the start of each session arranging the time of the next session, by which time I would be thinking "can we actually do some therapy now?" Thinking back, I should have got a second opinion too...

Yes, without a doubt. Making a formal complaint and getting a second opinion is vital. If you don't, he will just stress you out even more. I think you're doing the right thing in bullet-pointing everything you want to say and turning it into a letter. They're more likely to listen to a letter than a verbal complaint.

these folks could be helpful too http://www.popan.org.uk/

Can a GP diagnose disosiative distress? I would think only a trained psyche would have the appropriate skills to do that =/ though I could well be wrong.

I'm so glad you're complaining against this doctor, not only because he has treated you appaulingly but also to stop him treating others in the same way!

You have all our support hun, take care of yourself and please try and organise another GP for you, someone who can give you the right support.
Thinking of you
Xxxx

Wow, both of the people that were supposed to help you sound like total douchebags. I hope your letter gets something done, those people shouldn't be treating other people, they should BE treated. God, that just really sucks. Let us know how it goes, good luck.

I think it would be a good idea to get statements from anyone who has witnessed any of this too just to add to your case. Maybe also a report from the psych that saw you while you were sectioned saying what they diagnosed you with, just to show them how far off your docs diagnoses were.

Good luck, hopefully you can get this all sorted.

Thanks - I will look at the Nice guidelines, I've downloaded them onto my laptop.
Dr G did discharge me from hospital very prematurely - I only stayed for 2 days and even though I had an incident where I ended up covered in my own blood, he came in and told me to stop being silly and discharged me.
Thank you for reminding me.

Dr Grant is a psychiatrist, not a GP, and I looked up dissociative distress and it has NOTHING to do with me. NOTHING at all. I do NOT have dissociative distress.
I will try my best to punish this Dr Grant.

I'm waiting for my GP to call me (Dr Grant is my psychiatrist) and I will go and see my GP about this, because my GP is amazing and cares a lot about me.