Ambition over health

 Back in Feb 2020, a month before shit got real in a pandemic sort of way, my wife was advised to leave work and to 'protect herself', as this virus thing was nasty & given her medical history a colleague felt that she was at risk simply being at work. My wife works in a hospital - that colleague might have saved her life. . . or if an alternative narrative is to be believed - that colleague over reacted. Fast forward 2 years, and after 23 months of shielding (give or take a brief interlude) today covid finally caught up with my wife, only now she's triple vaxed, so 'hopefully' she's going to be OK.  That said, when my 5 year old suddenly started complaining of being hot today my heart sunk, as in truth we've been expecting this to hit the family given that in my son's school newsletter this week we'd been informed that 23 members of staff were currently off with covid, plus 11 out of 16 classes at the school had also recorded cases of covid. We didn't stand a chance - we have two children, and both of their classes were hit. My phone was pinging every day with another notification of a positive result. 

I'd love to think that this school was an anomaly, after all it was just this week that Boris Johnson announced that plan B was over and people should no longer work from home. In just a matter of days everybody can whip off those 'oppressive' masks and live a life of freedom again. Except for many people that freedom potentially comes at a huge cost. 

Since first hearing about the virus I've really done my research on covid. In a way I was desperate to discover that it wasn't such a risk to my wife, that if she caught it, she really would just have a 'bad dose of flu'. The research took me down the various rabbit holes that exist in the suddenly binary world of covid and covid deniers, the masked and unmasked, the vaxed and antivaxed - you get the picture.

Spurred on by a run in with a group of anti-maskers when I announced that I'd co-written a panto called Covidella and the Masked Ball, a run in which saw all adverts for the show getting hit on by people calling us child abusers for attempting to indoctrinate children, I spent most of lockdown one following the main protagonists of the anti-everything movement. I became fascinated by the alternative narrative that so many people were slowly buying into. The lies that were being perpetuated in a bid to make a point, the propaganda posts being put out by the people that were accusing the mainstream media (MSM) of . . . putting out propaganda posts. 

For a while I took to politely questioning their narrative, it was clear that some of the people involved were profiting from their stance, and I was curious how they'd react to an opposing point of view. I've blogged about this before - as all the people I challenged would first ask me privately to stop putting an opposing view on their timeline (let's not forget that these were the people 'fighting for freedom of speech'), and when I challenged the freedom of speech argument they would block me.  For these people a block is like a public flogging - as they tend to post about the block to their followers, knowing that lots of them will come at you to do their dirty work. It's a fascinating game of schoolyard bullying in a worldwide playing ground.

The pandemic has been so hard for everybody hasn't it? The lockdowns were surreal, and we all suddenly lived in some scifi movie with new words and phrases like shielding, furlough, antimasker all becoming an everyday event. 

I hadn't realised how hard the shielding had been for us as a family until my wife got her first vaccine back in early 2021. Both of us sat and cried tears of relief when she got her appointment. It felt, and indeed it was, massive. Finally there was hope of normality again. The collective relief was palpable.

Fast forward to now though and omicron has whipped up another covid wave, fortunately one that's known to be less aggressive, and that combined with the vaccine means that we've approached today's results with huge optimism. The stats are hugely in our favour, so we just have to sit it out now and hope that we're right. However I'm angry that a government so hell bent on saving a corrupt, inept PM has blindsided a nation on this. My son's school (like so many others up and down the country) have their hands tied. Really speaking with that much covid in the school they should be permitted to have some sort of short, sharp, circuit break in order for the outbreak to pass, yet Boris won't allow that to happen. Or following the controversial GBD route there could have been some leeway for children of vulnerable parents (& vulnerable children of course) to be able to homeschool for. a couple of weeks, just to keep everyone as low key safe as possible. However the law states that children must be in school. Literally lambs to the slaughter, hoping that everybody just gets a mild dose of it, and those that get hit hard are protected by the vaccine.  

Why the inaction? Well it must be clear to everybody that Boris's latest car crash of leadership was to play to the alt-right gallery within his own party, and suddenly give them everything that they've been asking for in order to keep their loyalty. Of course what he actually did was play into the hands of the alternative narrative which has blighted the pandemic, a narrative which was being fed daily with the news of all the parties that he seemed to have whilst the rest of us were in lockdown. Time and time again I've read that the parties were proof (if proof was needed) that covid was never really dangerous - if it was they wouldn't have risked their own health. Strange how people forget how entitled and privileged some other people are isn't it? Some people automatically assume in life that they'll be OK - that they're invincible. Are we really proposing that all the public servants at those parties weighed up the data evidence before accepting the drinks invite? Isn't it more likely that they all just wanted to break the rules and have a party - just like we all wanted to do, but the law would have caught us out. They were 'safe' in No 10 having their shindigs.

The alt-right narrative is so strong right now - the latest being the claim that covid only killed 17,000 people. A claim based on a freedom of information request - a request that was so narrowly worded of course the number was low. We're bombarded with the of covid or from covid questioning, negating entirely the reality of underlying health conditions, because of course nearly all of us have underlying health conditions. I have chronic migraines, that would be me down as somebody dying with an underlying health condition - yet migraines are not life limiting! 

When I argued this point the other day somebody pointed out to me that this viewpoint was akin to eugenics. I disagreed as I know some of the people that believe this stuff - they're not out to create a master race, they've just tumbled down the rabbit hole and can't see daylight anymore. 

Then today happened and I'm reflecting on what Boris's announcement this week really created. I discovered that the 'highly vulnerable' should all have been sent a PCR test to just keep at home from 10th Jan, and with that test comes a fast track to antiviral therapy should they suddenly test positive. Seemingly my wife is not the only person in the category that failed to get that package. In fact at the time of writing I don't know any clinically vulnerable person that received that package (& I've asked around).  Then there's the fact that a reporter discovered that the lifting of the working from home restriction should have included a caveat that the vulnerable should keep working from home. This was never publicised - my wife was due to return to work on Monday. 

I don't think that Boris is some Bond villain out on some perverse eugenic spree, I think that he's an entitled, spoilt, privileged, greedy, corrupt narcissist, who would make a pact with the devil if he thought that he could save himself the embarrassment of losing the job that he's believed was his since Eton.

He's divided a nation and has taken zero accountability for anything outside of his own ego.

A nation where people urging caution are called fear mongers, where paid for stats are bandied around online without any due diligence in order to back up whatever theory you'd like to subscribe to this week. Where influencers are being used as pawns in a game of division that none of us really understand. There's no right or left in politics anymore - it's all one murky swamp right now, where people are desperate to hang their hat on the peg that is most palatable for them.

Meanwhile . . . the clinically vulnerable are being hung out to dry. Oh and before you give me the rundown of what the lockdowns created. . . check those facts as a surprising amount of them are really wrong (regardless of what a friend of a friend told you). I don't want another lockdown, but I do think that there are pragmatic things that could be done to keep communities safer as we hopefully move back to a more normal existence.

A Mental Health Service in Crisis

Way, way back when the pandemic began (& yes you can singalong if you know the reference) I predicted that the pandemic would expose the mental health epidemic which was growing in the UK

There was an inevitability to this prediction, after all, I'm no mental health expert, I'm a mere musician who happens to run a drama college, and that drama college happens to be one of the most progressive in the way that we acknowledge and support people in our industry learning how to live with mental illness.

I was mindful that so many people manage the symptoms of their mental illness and indeed trauma too, by putting their heads down and cracking on with the task in hand, keeping busy in order to ignore them.  However, in our industry, all those 'tasks' disappeared overnight. Theatres closed, rehearsals stopped, auditions stopped, the hospitality industry shut down - Muggle jobs and theatre jobs disappeared overnight removing the need to crack on with anything. We were all left in our own spaces (and for many, those spaces were quite isolated), and left in our mind space. For the people that had been quietly fighting an insidious mental health battle for years, they were suddenly confronted with a harsh reality.

I got angry when people started weaponising mental health as part of their despair with how the government were handling the pandemic. As for so many people, the pandemic simply left them emotionally vulnerable - with nothing to do to mask their feelings, they weren't ill because of the lockdown, they were ill before, but prior to lockdown life were not confronted with the real state of their minds

I've seen a lot of people acknowledge this 'new' reality, and many jumped to utilise IAPT  which I have to say appears to have run rather successfully for the numerous people that I know personally that have needed to utilise it.

However, this has been successful for people dealing with illnesses such as anxiety and depression, for those dealing with the lesser publicised illnesses such as eating disorders, bipolar, PTSD IAPT just isn't equipped to deal with those in a time-sensitive way. Those illnesses tend to need more specialist medical interventions, psychiatrists who are able to diagnose and then sort out a treatment - but again the treatments for these sorts of illnesses are not straightforward either.  You don't solve an eating disorder with a tablet (though that might be part of the treatment), complex illnesses require complex treatments.

The waiting list for these sort of illnesses appear to START at 18 months, and for children requiring a CAMHS intervention, it can be much longer. Now I mention children as the key to a successful outcome for nearly every sort of mental illness is 'early intervention'. Catch the thing at the start, treat it, and then regulate it all leading to the successful management of an illness. I mean it makes sense, doesn't it?  You break your leg - the more you use the 'damaged', untreated limb, the worse the injury gets. You're straight to the hospital, getting an X-Ray, getting that cast put on, thereby ensuring that your recovery time is as little as possible. Well, mental illnesses are no different. 

This sort of early intervention though needs a robust, joined-up, mental health service in order to operate successfully, and as much as I'm a massive fan of the NHS, a joined-up service it is not. The gatekeepers to the specialists - the GPs are STILL hit and miss when it comes to mental health.  Amazingly some of them still dismiss mental illnesses in young people, and STILL put clear MH symptoms down to 'growing pains'. 

On The MTA's Instastory series 'In Conversation', I chat with a few of my graduates who were diagnosed with illnesses whilst at college, and all of them tell the story of going to a GP when they were younger, stating the same symptoms that they presented with at college, and the GP dismissing them and effectively putting it down to teenage angst.  All got treated whilst at college, and all are now thriving. Had they not come to the college, and had they not happened across a clinician who recognised the symptoms that they were discussing, they too would have been entering the pandemic about to be confronted with their own mental illness.

The purpose of this blog though is actually to offload guilt. The guilt of knowing that somebody is very ill and highly vulnerable. Having a vague idea of what sort of treatment they should be having in order to get well and 'balance' the chemicals in their brain, but hearing day after day how that treatment is not being started because the system can not do joined-up thinking. However also hearing day after day how much worse that person is getting, and yet there is absolutely nothing that I can do other than listen.

If I had a spare cash I would, without a shadow of a doubt, get them to another psychiatrist in order for them to receive the treatment that has been suggested to them - but psychiatrist fees range from £350 right up to nearly £1000 for a consultation and then you're potentially adding on numerous tests on top of that. One person that I know has already forked out hundreds for the initial diagnosis, but now they're back on the NHS waiting list waiting for a doctor to approve their treatment, and because of the complexity of the diagnosis. . . you guessed it. . . the GP can't prescribe the necessary treatment, it has to be approved by a psychiatrist!

Where the pandemic really hasn't helped is this idea that you can't go to an appointment or present at a hospital at the moment with a plus one. You have to go to all appointments on your own. Well if you're mentally ill, the chances are quite strong that you'll be unable to really talk about your maladaptive coping strategies, as you'll see them all as perfectly 'normal'. Whereas if somebody goes with you, they can highlight the difficulties. eg if you're awaiting an appointment to get diagnosed with an eating disorder, there's a strong chance that you'll not want that diagnosis, as you're happy lying to yourself saying that your current relationship to food is just fine. However, your loved ones are far more likely to recognise that your habits are not fine, and indeed you're effectively self-harming with your relationship to and around food. They will be able to name that in the room.

The solution to this requires the government to properly fund the NHS, a thing that we've seen time after time they refuse to do. Throw some money at the early intervention stage and you won't need to spend so much in the continuing care stage.  Throw money at the educators to ensure that they're able to spot the early signs of mental illnesses. Ensure that GPs are trained to acknowledge that mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and should not be dismissed in young people.

Until that glorious day comes then we also need to really train up effective mental health crisis teams, as I've yet to speak to anyone that's had a good experience with one. You need your top people on that team, not the work experience guys just filling in because you're short-staffed! I mean - I know that they're not really 'work-experience' guys, but honestly judging by some of the people that I've met whilst supporting people in crisis you'd agree with my description.

So as you're shouting about the ever growing suicide rates in the UK in a bid to weaponize the pandemic, let's get some other facts out there tool Facts like the rates have been growing year on year for at least a decade, facts like early intervention could prevent a whole load of those people becoming statistics, facts like better education around mental health would allow people to access help earlier, and facts like even when people are looking for help, that help comes complete with a waiting list, the timeframe for which for many, might be too long to even contemplate.

There IS a mental health crisis in the UK, but the mental health services are also in crisis, thanks to years of underfunding by successive governments. Weaponise that and try to make a difference..