Eyes and mental health

[Loopy-Lou]

I just wanted to raise an issue which may not affect many members but I'd just like to make folk aware of it, and that's something called 'diagnostic overshadowing', this means when mental health difficulties or a learning disability influence how seriously the person's physical health is assessed and responded to. There's a recent very sad case [Guardian] of someone who suffered an agonising death of a bowel obstruction splitting in a psych hosp who ignored pleas for help. Constipation [and of a severe kind] is a common side effect of 'antipsychotic' drugs.
Another case has also been brought to my attention, of someone who suffered a detached retina whilst on section and again pleas for help were ignored [or assumed to be "in their head"] so that this person wasn't able to seek help for themselves until released from the section, by which time it was too late, the sight in that eye has been lost. This person isn't in a position to file for medical negligence because there's no legal aid for that now.
I think of the times I've been hospital myself and how if that coincided with an episode of rejection, hydrops, reaction to lens solutions, or even just a more bog standard lens emergency i.e. stuck, I know I could have suffered adverse consequences because it's not that uncommon to struggle to access physical healthcare.
I just wanted to make members aware of this, and that should any of you have the misfortune to be detained under the Mental Health Act whilst experiencing ophthalmic difficulties please ensure you get a friend or relative to fight your corner if you need to see an optom/ophthalmologist quickly [and for them to contact your eye practitioner to hassle the unit's staff into getting you there]. Don't leave it to psych staff..

[Anne Klepacz]

Thanks for this, Lou. There's been quite a lot written over the years about physical health problems (and especially sight conditions) being underdiagnosed in people with learning disabilities so the same happening with mental health patients is probably not surprising, if depressing. Though at a much less extreme level, 'diagonistic overshadowing' happens in all sorts of situations. We've certainly had people here who have turned out to have more than one eye condition, which was not initially picked up because everyone was concentrating on the KC. So we all need to be aware that having one thing wrong doesn't make us immune from getting something else!
Anne