Occupational Therapy News OTnews February 2020 | Page 51

MENTAL HEALTH REPORT
It is easy to assume that events like these are purely a
professional learning opportunity, when in fact these gatherings
encourage personal and professional development in a broader
sense.
It is not possible to maintain the rigid sense of boundaries
between professional and personal identity and to have the honest
difficult conversations about change and suffering. These events are
about relating to one and another on a very human level.
The gatherings are held with the utmost care, so that anyone
who attends can access a wellbeing team who are on site for the
two days and available to help process anything that may arise for
guests.
The event encourages participants to look after themselves with
mindful walking, meditation, yoga and mindful eating. The organising
team also works hard to make it an inclusive space, creating
sponsored places so that people who may otherwise not be able to
afford to attend can be there.
The first morning began with two speakers who work within ultimately, ‘walks the talk’ of trying to empower the ‘individual at the
centre of concern’ (the language they use for service users).
This event was particularly exciting as it felt like real change is
happening. Benna Waites, joint head of psychology, counselling
and arts therapy at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Wales,
spoke eloquently about how challenging it is for people working
in mental health to see a need for change and feel that progress
towards making that change happen is too slow. But she had a
strident optimism offering up the idea of ‘revolutionary patience’.
Charlotte Waite, director of transformation and systems change
at Platform brought tears to my eyes naming the conflict many
practitioners feel within their roles. She talked about how she
is putting the ‘fire in her belly’ into very real change within her
organisation, as well as campaigning for wider change with the
partner organisations her organisation works with.
It all felt very personal, with many individual stories being told,
but also relevant to the big picture within mental health services.
As occupational therapist we have spirituality – the idea that
mental health taking to the stage to speak about their own very
personal stories of how suicide has impacted their lives.
One talked openly about having recently been suicidal and what
supported him in that time. The other discussed the impact of his
daughter dying by suicide.
These real, honest and raw stories created an intense and clear
silence in the room, as the audience collectively leaned into them.
It set the tone for the event, which was echoed in shared dialogues
with the audience towards the end of both days.
The workshops were hands-on and practical – from storytelling
with well known psychotherapist Malcolm Stern, to voice work
with Chloe Goodchild, and creative approaches to working with
psychosis with Karen Taylor, director of Working to Recovery and
pioneer of recovery communities.
Interestingly, the event blended grassroots small community
organisations presenting their work with offerings from senior NHS
workers and directors of charities, including the Samaritans Cymru
and Platform, a Welsh mental health charity.
Another important draw for attending was learning about Open
Dialogue, an approach that was developed in Finland and is currently
being trialled in a large scale multi-million pound randomised control
trial in a number of trusts across the UK.
Yasmin Ishaq, who is the lead on Open Dialogue in the Kent NHS
pilot, discussed the approach with the audience and talked about
how it is being implemented.
While Open Dialogue is explicitly a team approach, for me as
a practitioner, a lot of the principles are useful to reflect on; for
example, the idea that little or no discussion happens about the
person without them present.
Practitioners reflected about the situation and the options as a
team in front of the individual and their family, which appeared to be
both very powerful and totally different to how many teams work at
the moment.
It is also a system that places community and social networks at
the core of supporting the individual in their recovery journey and, humans need meaning and purpose – as an essential element of
our practice. But it can be strangely elusive and difficult to apply
in the constraints of busy teams, standardised assessments and
evidence based interventions.
The spiritual – or perhaps we should say the human part – of
mental health runs strong and clear through these events. It
reminded me of why it is at the very centre of the models we use in
practice, such as the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance
and Engagement (CMOP-E).
After the event I reflected with an occupational therapist
colleague that it is always possible to point at systems and large
organisations as the reason that the services we work in do not
always offer what we think they should, including compassion.
It is certainly true that we are not islands and cannot change
the world completely on our own, but attending a Compassionate
Mental Health gathering demonstrates there is a hunger for change,
and more importantly that we can all be empowered to bring those
changes into the world by joining together in these discussions.
It gives me a sense of hope and optimism about how services
and individual practitioners may evolve in the future to offer a
greater sense of compassion to both ourselves and those that we
work with.
References
Gilbert H (2018) Funding and staffing of NHS mental health providers: still
waiting for parity. London: Kings Fund. Available at: www.kingsfund.
org.uk/publications/funding-staffing-mental-health-providers [accessed
on 8 October 2019]
Van Dernoot Lipsky L and Burk C (2009) Trauma stewardship: An
everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others. Oakland CA:
Berrett-Hoehler Publisher Inc
Katy Bergson studied at Cardiff University and is working as an
occupational therapist in West Wales. For further information visit:
http://compassionatementalhealth.co.uk
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