On World Mental Health Day

Last year on World Mental Health Day, nearly a year after my mother's death, I wrote a letter of protest to the Deans at Plymouth University which was also a request for help.

In my letter, called "On World Mental Health Day", I asked for a professional opinion of what the likely effects on a person's mental health would be if they:

1. were in a whistle blowing situation
    and
2. were about to suffer a bereavement
    and
3. were approached with multiple offers of help based on the first two situations by someone who then    suddenly never spoke to them again and started an extensive smear campaign about them instead without ever explaining why.

That's because that's exactly what happened to me, through my contact with one of their Senior Mental Health Lecturers, one Richard Byng who with his wife, bounced into our lives when I was in the UK two years ago because my mum was dying.  They were absolutely adamant that they were there "to help".

I've never seen anyone blow as hot and cold as Melanie and Richard Byng.  I've also never met any adults less able to take responsability for their own actions. I've met four year olds who could take more responsibility.

This Senior Mental Health Lecturer and his wife, having enthusiastically persuaded us to "let them help", were then even more enthusiastic in smearing a whole family far and wide, even to the extent of trashing their own stated position on a political platform of 'dangerous' pseudo education, all to avoid simply saying "we're sorry we bit off more than we could chew, and made a bit of a mess in your life at such an awful time for you".

My letter to the Deans was both a protest, and a request for help, because it seemed clear to me that the discovery that someone with a Senior post in mental health was prepared to actively victimise people he's just persuaded to accept his "help" should be concerning, and I hoped that the Dean's concern for the honest reputation of the University might put him in a position to bring the situation back into the realms of sanity.

I was told by the Dean that nothing could be done about any of that information unless I made a formal complaint.  But I couldn't really do that because Richard's behaviour didn't really effect anyone at the University, it was just that, right around the same time they was using his mental health credentials to give himself and his wife a platform in the national press, she was also busy smearing my mental health around the place and on Twitter.

That's how come that skeptics, with their hatred of Steiner Schools, can't acknowledge the actual result of a school having had to admit through Human Rights process to the notorious unchecked bullying that they still go on about, but having to actually hide it instead, because very few skeptics have the independence of thought (courage of their own convictions) to admit that their "mates" screwed up there and to insist on defending the principles of evidence-base which the settlement represents.

(I suppose an upside of this is that I've seen right through the claim of "evidence-based skepticism" that often only means, "whatever my mate tells me to say", and that's going to come in useful as the volume goes up.)

Had I made such an official complaint, I would have been told that this was nothing to do with his job as Senior Mental Health Lecturer, and in fact the person who was supposed to tell me how to make a complaint never did, but in actual fact the Dean did do something with the information anyway, and that something came back to me as that I'd tried to lose Richard Byng his job.

It may not matter to Plymouth University if someone takes a fat salary for knowing and caring about mental health, but allows themselves to knowingly behave in ways likely to damage the mental health of others "outside" work, but to me that seems wrong.

Call me old fashioned but I think that what Richard Byng does in his private life should reflect his professional ethics.

But you know what? Maybe it actually does, because on the anniversary of that letter, Richard Byng is to be congratulated on having recently been promoted to Clinical Associate Professor in Primary Care (his main area of research being in primary care mental health).

Clearly being a mental-health ruining personal shit is no barrier to success in the field, which must be such a comfort to all those with mental health problems. Happy Days.