Recent editions of fly-on-the-wall TV shows are a reminder of why Mental Health still matters. Adam Humphries report.
The other day I watched an episode of fly-on-the-wall TV documentary series, Ambulance, on BBC1 and Inside the Ambulance on W on Sky TV. In the Ambulance episode, it dealt with the issue of mental health, in this case, Paranoid Schizophrenia. In case you don’t know what it is it is a mental health problem in which the person who suffers from it can develop a number of issues e.g. mental delusions, paranoia, and as is quite often the case, audio, and visual hallucinations. Basically, you both see and hear things that are not really there but seem so real.
In the episode that went out paramedics had to deal with attempted suicide of a man who suffered such problems. The caller-handler received a call from a person in response to someone who was attempting suicide, unfortunately in this case it ended in tragedy. Though the paramedics tried their best to revive the person individual in question they had no other choice but to pronounce them dead after so many minutes.
Now you may very well be wondering why I am bringing up this particular incident, well here are a couple of reasons. Suicide in males is still very high yet it is not talked about nearly enough. One of the last times it was spoken about was with Mental Health campaigner Jonny Benjamin. He himself had suffered numerous long-term problems with Paranoid Schizophrenia and attempted to jump off a bridge in a bid to escape it all.
At the end of the episode of Ambulance there was a text fact piece where it stated that last year there was just under 500 hanging incidents, and that was in London and that suicide is the single biggest killer of males under 45. And that just in the UK.
That alone is a shocking statistic.
Whenever we think of suicide, we normally view the victim as a coward who is just trying to take the easy way out. We never stop to consider that they may have been suffering with severe mental issues that they just couldn’t cope with anymore.
It was a similar situation on Inside the Ambulance when paramedics were called to an incident when a young woman who was suffering mental health problems. From the off-set viewers saw that she was clearly in a bad way. Thankfully, she was admitted to a mental health specialist team who were able to offer help.
Though her story had a more positive outcome it is a reminder of the upsetting events that led to her getting to the state ended up in.
One thing I’ll say is that our current situation is a reminder of some problems can’t go on ignoring.
