Moving on - what's on offer for Tom's mental health care?

Hello again.

Today Tom is coming home - about 6 pm. This is the last period of relative quiet in this house for a while, I guess. When Tom is here, we are always aware of it. If he is in the house and is feeling OK, there is loud singing, guitar playing, or church or classical CD music emanating from his room. If he is in high spirits, his singing - and praying in tongues - can be very loud, so much that phone callers can hear it down the line. I cannot make business calls then. At other times, when he is more depressed, his room and the landing is quiet, but there is an atmosphere of brooding gloom in the house. My husband Dave never makes much noise. There is always Tom's food and dirty crockery, cutlery etc. in the kitchen, and his clothes to be washed. (He does not help much, although he did when he returned to us in 2000-01.) In some way his return is like the Biblical "The Prodigal Son" - Tom drew the parallel himself - but in other ways it's different, as the "son" came home once, after an absence of many years. In Tom's cases, it is always after only a few days' absence - often due to his going off on a drinking binge. This time it's after 8 days in the acute ward of the mental health services (in Roehampton).

In many ways I am glad to have him back home - it will seem "normal" here again; but there remains in both of us a fear that things will break down again. Dave was very depressed this morning. He was sitting in the garden, head in hands, looking desolate. I felt depressed myself yesterday and the day before. This morning I felt better; I had more energy and was getting on with vacuuming the floor downstairs, having done the upstairs 2 days ago. The cleaning was much needed. Tom will bring back more dirty washing, and the mess will soon mount up again. I want to put pressure on the health authorities to put Tom's case higher up the care list - and not to make him wait 6 months for inpatient mental therapy - in the meantime we could have another outbreak even worse than the last one. This time my physical health broke down, and my husband grew to be afraid of Tom (and what he might do when in a violent rage).

I made a fuss to the secretary at the Mental Health Department at Richmond Hospital today - when ringing to check an appointment Tom still had. I complained that he had been told he had to wait 6 months before being offered in-patient treatment, and that he'd had no key worker (or social worker) since the end of July. I threatened to take the whole matter up with our MP, who is the Liberal Democrat economics spokesman, Dr Vincent Cable, and whom we know quite well (through our children when young, and the local church). This had some effect - the hospital rang back after 40 minutes: it was someone more senior, who is in charge of the social work side. She said Tom now does have a new key worker - and apologised, blaming the fact that 4 such workers left all at once, and they could not reallocate him to one straight away. That may be so, but it shows how poor and weakly organised the system is - probably these workers are underpaid, hence they are hard to recruit.

Well, I shall leave it at that today. I hope to report soon that Tom is making better progress and we are getting somewhere in obtaining proper care for him. It will be a struggle. Now I shall write a letter to our MP - it is worth doing anyway.

Once again - best wishes and God Bless -
Love to you all, Tigey.