National Voices is the coalition of charities that stands for people being in control of their health and care.
I contacted them about the NHS England public consultation aimed at restricting the prescribing of treatments that are judged to be of ‘low clinical value’ and the fact that liothyronine was on the list.
This is their position statement on "low-value" prescriptions:
nationalvoices.org.uk/sites...
The more organisations that we can get on our side, the better!
GPs are concerned banning 'wasteful prescribing' will impact on poor patients:
Shame that no one thought of banning the extremely wasteful and low value statins (and anti-depressants shouldl perhaps not be prescribed in primary care but only by a specialist)
Not heard of this Coalition but very sensible comments.
lynmynott ,
It may sound like a long shot but have you considered asking mental health charities e.g. MIND mind.org.uk/about-us/contac...
or Rethink Mental Health rethink.org/about-us/contac...
for support? Many people with undiagnosed or poorly medicated thyroid conditions end up referred to primary or secondary mental health services. They rarely receive the right diagnosis because mental health professionals, including psychatrists, are actually very poor at recognising and treating thyroid disorders. This issue itself requires attention. If T3 is withdrawn in the UK this will potentially lead to even more people presenting with depression, anxiety and more severe problems.
Another group which should take interest are psychiatrists. They are allowed to prescribe T3 but they rarely do. T3 was actually prescribed as augmentation medication for "treatment resistant depression" (more likely "depression caused by untreated thyroid disorder"). As a prefessional group they would benefit from acquiring more awareness about the impact of thyroid disorders on their patients emotional wellbeing. They tend to think in terms of "serotonine deficiency etc." but not in terms of thyroid hormone deficiency. If you manage to persuade even few of them that prescribing T3 is beneficial in the treatment of depression (caused by thyroid disorders) you could get powerful allies on your side: rcpsych.ac.uk/aboutthecolle...
Hi Kitten1978
I seriously doubt they would want to help, I'm afraid. It's something to think about though
You won't know until you ask. Life sometimes surprise us, doesn't it?
The most important part would be explaining to them the impact of poor thyroid care on mental health. You don't have to look far as there are so many of us on this forum who have experienced depression, anxiety as a result of inadequate treatment of thyroid condition. Some of us ended up with diagnoses of bipolar, at least one person here experienced psychotic episode, some attempted or thought of attempting suicide. I wonder how many people would be diagnosed with fibro or chronic fatigue if T3 was more widely prescribed?
It sounds unbelievable but thyroid conditions are not on "professionals'" radar in mh services. People don't know that ndt or T3 exists and don't understand how different it is from T4 meds or how to use it e.g. one of HU members. managed to persuade his psychiatrist to prescribe T3 but it was prescribed on top of high dose of T4 meds.
If mh charities and psychiatrists understood the benefits of T3 medication they would be more likely to support TUK campaign.
Reply from Jeremy Hunt (well his minion)
Medical exemption on prescriptions
Reply from Dept. Of Health
Low TSH on t3
GP review - low TSH on NDT
