Sunday 12 February 2017

The NHS has gone mental!

From the BBC:

Muslims with mental health issues could be helped by re-embracing their beliefs and religious teachings, it is claimed. Traditionally, therapists have shied away from talking about religion as part of treatment - and can often see it as part of the illness.

But an NHS project based on research by Leeds University is "showing some individual signs of success". Those behind the therapy say many Muslims do not get help because of stigma attached to mental illness…

Dr Mir has helped to create a new treatment, based on an existing form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) called behavioural activation. Following a successful pilot involving 20 patients, it is being provided by the NHS via a mental health charity in Leeds.

Patients on the course are asked if faith was part of their life when they were well. Those who stopped their religious practice because of depression are re-introduced slowly using a self-help booklet, which highlights passages from the Koran that illustrate "even people with strong faith" can become depressed and that it does not mean God is displeased.


Brilliant. The cure to depression is wearing a headscarf and inviting your husband to beat you/making your wife wear a headscarf and beating her.*

* Delete according to gender of 'patient'.

14 comments:

Bayard said...

Please point me at the passage in the article where headscarf-wearing and wife-beating is recommended.

Dick the Prick said...

Here's me thinking the NHS was supposed to focus on health rather than culturally sensitivities. Good grief!

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, at the end.

DTP, I too was labouring under this misapprehension. We live and learn!

paulc156 said...

You can see why treatments for mental illness might steer clear of invoking religious beliefs. The cure could be worse than the disease. It assumes the premise that the patients imaginary friend is real. That sounds rather like replacing a case of depression with one of schizophrenia.

Rich Tee said...

File under "it depends".

Religion can give you a sense of purpose in life, and provide s supportive social network.

On the other hand, it can also do all the bad things it is infamous for.

Ralph Musgrave said...

"Religion can give you a sense of purpose in life". Yes: so too can believing you are Napoleon...:-)

Bayard said...

Mark, I'm still having trouble finding it, perhaps you could quote the actual words. Also, I don't know why you and the aptly-named DTP can't see that this is a matter of health. It is widely acknowleged, much to Big Pharma's disgust, no doubt, that there is more to treating mental health issues than pumping people full of drugs. The job of a therapist is to talk to people about things that affect them. Why is it suddenly "cultural sensitivity" when they are talking about religion?

Bayard said...

"they'd rather pull their finger nails out with pliers than get any Christians involved."

Never let the facts get in the way of a good bit of bigotry, eh? A quick Google brought up dozens of hits for the NHS looking into employing Christian faith healers.

Sobers said...

"A quick Google brought up dozens of hits for the NHS looking into employing Christian faith healers."

Links?

I can see several where they have investigated 'faith healers' or reiki type healers, nothing involving Christian faith healing. There's a big difference - a Christian faith healer would involve praying and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, which there's no way the NHS is allowing. Laying on of hands by mystic types maybe, but no elements of Christianity would be allowed - people have been disciplined in the NHS for merely suggesting they would pray for someone.

Here's a link I found:

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/nhs-to-offer-new-age-spiritual-healing/

Most definitely NOT Christian based, more 'New Age' stuff.

DBC Reed said...

Lay off the low grade racism please.As staunch Brexiteers, you should be following your New Leaderene's policy of seeking to attack people of Catholic or of no religious beliefs from Poland and Lithuania for whom we leaving our European free trade area in order to be nasty to them in their legitimate but unwanted efforts to come here to do a job of work and pay their taxes.The freedom to ban their freedom of movement comes at a considerable price which you should respect by not indulging in casual racism.Racism is too crude when we seek to ban our fellow North Europeans on tricky spurious grounds at gigantic economic cost ,

DBC Reed said...

As we are not a full-on Christian country, nor a country of any fixed religion, let alone Islam,there is very little danger of anti-gay attitudes being of much influence here.So this kind of snidery just reinforces the general level of prejudice which the fucking Tories have just worked up to the max by exchanging our access to the Single Market for some facistic BORDER CONTROLS to appease the low-lifes that in Enoch Powell's and Oswald Mosley's time were kept sternly under control (by liberal Tories, thank God!) .Now Toe rag May seeks to add the UKIP legion of knuckle draggers to the horde of Homeowners they have previously enlisted by doing long term damage to the economy by stoking house price inflation.(And guess what ?The Housing Market is all bwoken now. What ever could be the reason? Must be those urban elites wot done it!)
If anybody is remotely interested in integrating Puritanical Muslims into the great fornicating self indulgence that made Britain Great, teenage Muslims must be able to break away from the patriarchal family structures, disappear into seedy districts where cross dressing ,prostitution and straight sex with precious little thought of marriage abound ,( even smoking). In my youth young Muslims did reinvent themselves.
The answer lies with LVT man bringing a beneficent lack of standards to personal life.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC: "teenage Muslims must be able to break away from the patriarchal family structures, disappear into seedy districts where cross dressing ,prostitution and straight sex with precious little thought of marriage abound ,( even smoking). In my youth young Muslims did reinvent themselves."

Behave like normal Brits in other words - an excellent plan but that is exactly what TPTB want to avoid. They don't want integration any more, they want segregation.

Bayard said...

Sobers, Ok, Googling for "nhs healers christianity mental health" brought up lots of hits indicating that the NHS, through its own chaplaincy service, acknowleges the use of Christianity in helping people with mental health issues. On the subject of physical health, yes, they do seem rather keener on Reiki than Christianity.

Bayard said...

DBCR, the Muslims will come in very handy when we haven't got any more Europeans to blame things on and we are not allowed to blame the Jews any more. We can't have them integrating and becoming less visible (or, God forbid, intermarrying and disappearing completely).