The Street-wise Guide to Getting the Best Mental Health Care
How to Survive the Mental Health System and Get Some Proper Help
Dr Raj Persaud and Dr Peter Bruggen
About this book
Never before has a guide on how to negotiate the increasingly stretched NHS, and obtain the care you need, been more essential.
This offers crucial advice to families and to individuals on how to not be palmed off with inadequate care.
And how to grasp what you are entitled to - as well as how to best look after the well-being of yourself and your loved ones.
This radical new and expert book shows you:
- how to diagnose yourself
- how to develop a better understanding of what to do about the most common mental health problems
- how to engage and negotiate with GP and specialist services.
- how to know when you need to get professional help, and the issues you can effectively and safely tackle yourself.
The book is essential in enabling you or your supporters to get the system to change your diagnosis if you are not happy with it.
The authors of this new guide are both internationally-known Consultant Psychiatrists with many decades of experience of working on frontline psychiatric services.
They show you how to:
- get your problems or those of a relative treated with adequate priority.
- to see the records kept on you.
- to evaluate if you are getting the correct treatment.
- to find out if that mortgage you got denied was down to something a doctor recorded in your medical history.
- to correct your physician’s notes if they are wrong.
- to obtain the best specialist help available in the NHS.
Various theories are commonly advanced as to the dramatic increase in poor mental health across broad swathes of our community, with tough economic conditions and social media frequently blamed. None of these problems are going to go away soon.
This book is your essential guide to getting the best care in the prevailing critical situation.
About the authors
Dr. Rajendra Persaud, also known as Raj Persaud, is a leading consultant psychiatrist, broadcaster and author of popular books about psychiatry. He is well known for raising public awareness of psychiatric and mental health issues in the general media. He has published five popular books and has received numerous awards.
He worked as a Consultant at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Hospitals in London from 1994-2008, and as an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. These are the premiere research and training institutions for Psychiatry in Europe. In 2004 he was appointed Visiting Professor for Public Understanding of Psychiatry at Gresham College. His book, The Mind: A Users Guide was published in 2007 and reached the top ten best-seller list. All of his 5 previous books have been top ten best-sellers. The Times recently placed him as one of the Top Twenty Mental Health Gurus in the world.
Dr. Peter Bruggen was part of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrist's Podcast Editor Team, with Dr. Persaud. From 1969 to 1994 he was a consultant psychiatrist at Hill End Adolescent Unit, St Albans. That unit had the UK's lowest length of stay and attracted around 100 professional visitors a year. He was also a consultant psychiatrist from 1969-90 at the Tavistock Clinic. His work has featured family therapy at the death bed, working with families in the community rather than admitting adolescents to hospital, and staff relationships. Dr. Bruggen has also written three books, including Surviving Adolescence and Helping Families (both with Charles O'Brien), and Who Cares? True Stories of the NHS Reforms, for which he conducted face-to-face interviews with one-hundred people.
Reviews
Available October 2020
Edward Everett Root Publishers Co. Ltd.
EER