Compassion in acute mental health services: Balint groups can help doctors understand mental distress

The timely analysis by Liberati and colleagues highlights the pressures faced by acute mental services and the subsequent effects on patients, staff, and systemically on the quality of care provided.1 These effects lead to a lack of compassion, a sense of detachment from patients by staff promoted by a “biogenetic” approach to mental disorders, a rise in restrictive practices, and, at worst, cruelty and abuse of patients.Lack of compassion is not limited to mental health; the Mid Staffordshire scandal showed how clinicians could become “immune to the sound of pain” when the emergency departments were understaffed, and how they were subject to a bullying culture, being forced to work to targets.2There are parallels in acute mental health. The origins lie in the erosion of the provision of acute beds and community care. A Labour party analysis found a fall in mental health beds of 25% since 2010, with more people…
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