{"id":56820,"date":"2025-08-10T03:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T03:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/56820\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T03:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T03:38:11","slug":"irish-readers-will-find-many-points-of-comparison-to-this-insiders-view-of-the-crumbling-nhs-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/56820\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish readers will find many points of comparison to this insider\u2019s view of the crumbling NHS \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Don\u2019t Use Words Like \u2018Crazy\u2019: On The Frontline of Mental Health <\/p>\n

Author: Elliot Sweeney <\/p>\n

ISBN-13: 978-1785122064 <\/p>\n

Publisher: Blink Publishing<\/p>\n

Guideline Price: \u00a320<\/p>\n

\u201cIn mental health<\/a>, it\u2019s not hard to get away with bad practice,\u201d Elliot Sweeney ruefully notes of his chosen career<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A nurse in this field for 20 years, he is ideally placed to comment on how some in the profession, are \u201cmore interested in cutting corners, publishing papers and booking holidays than doing some good\u201d, while also sympathetic to how difficult the work is, and the gaping holes in provision. <\/p>\n

The term \u201cfirefighting\u201d is repeated.<\/p>\n

Sweeney writes specifically of the crumbling NHS<\/a>, but Irish readers will find many points of comparison with overextended mental health services here, and understand that \u201cwithout gallows humour, the bleakness would overwhelm\u201d. <\/p>\n

Some reminders \u2013 for example, that mental health is \u201ca serious business\u201d \u2013 may feel a tad obvious to younger generations, used to a certain amount of lip service on this issue, but Sweeney jumps right into the less palatable cases.<\/p>\n

A mother poisoning her children, suffering from factitious disorder, more colloquially known as Munchhausen\u2019s by proxy (a diagnosis medical dramas and crime novels are fond of), is not an immediately sympathetic character. <\/p>\n

Nor is someone wielding a knife in public \u2013 knowing that severe mental illness means one is more likely to be the victim of, rather than perpetrator of, violence does not magic away the real danger of such moments. <\/p>\n

Sweeney is aware of the tensions between an individual\u2019s agency and the risk they pose to themselves or others; with a novelist\u2019s eye, he shows rather than tells of the bind health professionals often find themselves in. He knows the system is broken and how many have fled; he\u2019s still there. <\/p>\n

His case studies \u2013 careful composites, as is the usual practice in books of this kind \u2013 illustrate a variety of suffering and labels, and explore what it means to help in such cases. Sometimes he can\u2019t. One particularly volatile patient demonstrates how essential professional boundaries are.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Immense progress\u2019: Use of restraint and seclusion in mental health centres fallsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Psychiatrists tend to be the ones writing memoirs such as these; nurses \u2013 those who are \u201chauled in for answers\u201d if something goes wrong \u2013 are less represented. <\/p>\n

This is a welcome addition to the mental-health-workplace canon from someone not yet burned out: \u201cBeneath the crackle and static of paranoia,\u201d he writes, \u201cI hear the pathos of a human in pain. It\u2019s this I try to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We Don\u2019t Use Words Like \u2018Crazy\u2019: On The Frontline of Mental Health Author: Elliot Sweeney ISBN-13: 978-1785122064 Publisher:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,3952,457,134,3323,514,3285],"class_list":{"0":"post-56820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-book-reviews","11":"tag-books","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-health-wellness","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-nhs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}