Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Mental health crisis: patients left for days in A&E as hospitals struggle to cope" video.

  1. Back to the insincere reporting and dishonest graphs I see. And in the process as always, missed the actual story altogether. Instead we keep getting the line "mental health patients should be somewhere else". What do you think that's going to do to people in distress today, tomorrow, next week, who have seen this program? Majors A is not the whole of A&E. It's a subsection. So the answer is no, 50% of A&E is not mental health patients. The graph conveniently has no labels. 6 and 12 what? Percent? Hours? Thousand? Months? Double doesn't mean anything without statistical context. Amazing, patients with an acute, complex presentation need to stay in A&E longer than those with less complex presentations. Amazing. Who would have thunk. You break a leg or get into a car accident, referral to x-ray, orthopaedics, surgery or a ward is pretty straightforward. Similarly if you present with schizophrenia induced psychosis referral on to a mental health bed is also straightforward. Whether physical or mental health related, those straightforward referrals make up 80%+ of cases (4:5). In </=20% of cases, be it physical or mental, the presentation isn't a straightforward referral. That isn't a particularly odd percentage. Every A&E in the OECD has a similar mix. Someone comes in without a history of mental illness who wanted to self harm in the moment, they don't need admission, but you can't just immediately let them go. They need to be observed for some period of time, and how long that is will be on an individual case by case basis. So they sit in A&E, that's normal and has always been the case. The actual story isn't that A&E have to treat mental illness, or crisis (which are different things btw). The actual story is that there has been a large spike in people experiencing desperation, mental health crisis, and ideation of self harm. It isn't an increase in mental illness, it's an increase in stressors causing people to break and see no way out. That's about poverty, like old mate from the other day living on £30 a month. Guaranteed he's one of those statistics. The destitute need more coverage. They do. Covering their plight gives them hope, but it also puts things into perspective for those in the middle class, the upper middle class and the wealthy. It keeps their situations on the forefront of the government's minds and the minds of everyone else. That's how things get fixed. That's how donations increase. It's how government's find solutions to real problems. Please cover it appropriately and with integrity. Not with nonsense graphs, manipulated interviews or biased half truths. Do real journalism, on real issues like you have for Gaza. Not ideology. Real issues like the rising destitute and the ripple effect that has on services, the budget, the economy and society as a whole.
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