Groundhog Day : A Mother’s Struggle to Protect her Son from Repeated Failures of a Mental Health Service

The story of a mother’s 27-year battle to get appropriate support for her son and to protect him from negligent and at times abusive services. At a time when the UK government is updating mental health legislation, when the WHO and the UN are recommending the reduction of coercive psychopharmacological practices, and when many mental health professionals and people with lived experience are questioning the use of toxic medications, this is a powerful personal account written by a mother and experienced psychotherapist of the emotional distress she experienced as she watched her son deteriorate.

The author describes under-resourced service providers who fail to listen, are frequently unskilled and at times negligent. She questions the limitations of subjective psychiatric diagnoses without adequate investigation or assessment and the trial-and-error method of prescribing toxic medications without basic monitoring. She describes the lack of adherence to the safeguards of the Mental Health Act and the 2014 Care Act and failures caused by the lack of communication between service providers. She references the literature and research projects that support her growing realisation that the professional help she sought to support him is in fact damaging him.