Who cares about mental health?

The mental health charity Mind issued a report this week on the quality of mental health prevention care in England. This report arose from a freedom of information request they submitted to all the 152 local authorities in England. Of these, 86 authorities complied and responded.

It was during the NHS reforms of April 2013 that responsibility for mental health care was moved from local Primary Care Trusts to local authorities.

The report concluded that on average just 1.4 per cent of public health budgets are spent on mental health care! Now you don't need to have a medical background to realise that this is woefully inadequate. Some areas don't even plan to spend a single penny on mental ill-health prevention.

According to the Time to Change campaign, which is a national movement to end mental health discrimination and stigma led by the Rethink Mental Illness and Mind charities; One in four of us will experience a mental health problem in any given year.

That 1.4 percent of public health spending equates to a total of £40 million annually,So compare that figure to these annual spending amounts:

• £76 million on increasing physical activity
• £160 million on anti-smoking initiatives
• £671 on sexual health initiatives

The cost of mental ill-health to the nation is vast - it is estimated that mental health difficulties cost England approximately £100 billion annually. This is through lost working days, benefits, lost tax revenues and the cost of treatment.

It was eight years ago; October 2008, that David Cameron came out with his famous quote: "the NHS is safe in my hands,"

Surely mental health care in England is worth more attention and money than this?

Cameron forgives Freudian slip

So now we know what Lord Freud really thinks of people with disabilities. Lord Freud is the Welfare Reform minister. He addressed a fringe meeting at the Tory Conference. This gave him the opportunity to explain to his audience what kind of reforms he had in mind for people with disabilities: in an answer to a question he agreed that some people with disabilities were "not worth" the minimum wage and should be paid £2 an hour.

Less than 24 hours later some lackey composed, on his behalf, a fulsome apology. This was on the orders of David Cameron. Dame Anne Begg MP who herself uses a wheelchair said he should "consider his position". If Cameron had any gumption he'd have kicked him out of the Cabinet straight away!

Baron Freud has got form for this - being a completely tactless, rich bastard. He was the man who originally coined the phrase "lifestyle benefit claimant",  he has also denied any link between cuts and people using a growing number of food banks.

Try telling that to the Trussell Trust who have launched over 400 food banks. They have seen an almost three-fold increase in the numbers using them in the twelve months from 2012-13 to 2013-14. This total was over 900 000 people. Chris Mould the Chairman of the Trussell Trust describes these figures as "the tip of the iceberg".

Then you've got Cameron boasting in the Commons about the lowest unemployment since 2008. Now that's all very well but this information comes with a caveat: everybody knows their living standards have declined; energy prices are sky high, a report by Which this week tell us that energy costs have risen by an average of £410 in ten years, that is 52 per cent over and above inflation. Then there are pay freezes for the public sector workers, On Monday this week there was  public sector workers strike for 24 hours in protest at this. This resulted in 200 000 PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) workers demonstrating nationwide.

So the unemployment figures have gone down but this is illusory when you consider the numbers working part-time, zero hours contracts...

If we were to believe David Cameron everything here in the garden here at UK PLC is rosy, George Osborne is a fantastic Chancellor.

Then there is the Child Poverty Map published this week by the End Child Poverty campaign, this is published annually. On this map you can see the areas most blighted. It is broken down into Parliamentary constituencies, then in to wards for better focus. Ten of most deprived constituencies are in London.

The aim of the End Child Poverty campaign is to eradicate child poverty by 2020 this is something often trumpeted by David Cameron. However it seems this government is failing. The Institute of Fiscal Studies who are an independent research institute, have warned the government that by the time of the General Election in May 2015 the numbers of children classified as living in poverty will have risen by 400 000. They go further; they calculate that by 2020 the figure will have increased by 1 million.

David Holmes of the End Child Poverty Group said: "We are concerned that this draft strategy as it stands, falls short of what is required to guarantee a reduction in child poverty and is just not radical enough to meet the goal of ending child poverty. Tackling child poverty requires bold action across wider society, for example to tackle low pay, unaffordable rents and crippling childcare costs."

I don't think this is anything for Mr Cameron to brag about.

Lies, posturing, defections, elections and resignations

So it is the conference season again, oh joy.

The Labour conference passed by with little comment apart from the fact Ed Milliband forgot his lines and subsequently didn't mention the deficit.

We had better luck with the Tory one which kicked off in much more interesting way, two weekend's ago. First of all we had an MP who nobody had ever heard of - Brooks Newmark, the 56 year old MP for Braintree in Essex. He resigned when it emerged that he had sent a 21 year old Tory public relations "girl" a picture of himself, which was described as "explicit" in the press. I haven't seen this picture myself but he is apparently only wearing the top half of his pyjamas! For this he will go down as a sad episode in Tory history, his wife and his five children haven't said what they think.

In a further irony, Mr Newmark was the Minister for Civil Society who were campaigning to get more women involved in politics.

I tell a lie, we have heard of him, he's the pillock who agreed when asked a question: "that charities should stick to their knitting and stay out of politics".

It used to be said that the Tories were always involved in sex scandals and the Labour Party scandals always involved money. The situation clearly isn't that black and white nowadays.

Then there was another defection to UKIP.

I remember the referendum in 1975 to join what was then called the Common Market and the Tories have been arguing bitterly about it ever since, that's nearly 40 years!

Nigel Farage knows this - he's older than me and he's been playing on this ever since he was one of the founding members of UKIP in September 1993.

I don't think I know any Tories but I can only think this is their standard Pavlovian response to Johnny Foreigner and the fact that the EU costs an absolute fortune. Let's face it we all know that whole chunks of EU infrastructure that are a profligate waste of money.

It would be utter madness to come out of the EU - it may cost an arm and a leg to run and wastes money hand over fist but the UK and the EU are gigantic trading partners. The most recent figures I can find on the HMRC website are for the month of July 2014. We, the UK, imported goods from EU to the tune of £19.6 billion for that month. We sold goods to EU countries to the tune of £12.3 billion for that month. Although these figures fluctuate they have remained consistent for the last 18 months. OK so there is a trade deficit but whichever way you look at it these figures amount to an awful lot of jobs on both sides of the English Channel.

So the other bit of news that came out the weekend of the Tory conference was that a Tory MP defected to UKIP, this is another MP we've never heard of; Mark Reckless, He is well known as a Eurosceptic. After his defection to UKIP, this poor soul has had to move himself and his family; he is married and has two children, to a secret location. According to Nigel Farage "this is because he has been subjected to really unpleasant, nasty, abuse."

As far as I can tell, or it's maybe just wishful thinking on my part but is the Tory Party in trouble? Eight Tory MPs who got elected in 2010 have already indicated that they will not be standing in next year's election. Louise Mensch has buggered off to America, to write and look after her family. She was also elected in 2010. Boris has already started jostling to place himself in an ideal position to stand to be the next leader of the Conservative Party. UKIP are on the way up and will damage the Tories more than the Labour Party, although I think  they will make inroads into both.

My thanks go to my friend Suzanne Cowling who pointed out to me that it was Brooks Newmark who made the snide remark about charities.

Mental Health England- A Car Crash

Mental Health in England is a car crash, according to the outgoing president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Prof Sue Bailey said that the mental health services are in crisis, she also accused the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP of lacking the basic understanding of mental health.

Mr Hunt rejected this, saying; he had made it a priority and that he visited the front line of the NHS most weeks and pledged £450 million in funds.

I don’t know whether Mr Hunt lacks the basic understanding of mental health or not. However, you would expect a health secretary to have studied medicine, or at least worked in the medical field. Nothing in Mr Hunt’s impressive resume suggests that he has ever rubbed shoulders with a mental health patient, at least in a professional manner.

Mr Hunt majored in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, perhaps, that explains why he justified his position by referring to the funds pledged.

Funds are essential to tackle the mental health catastrophe facing us as a nation. However, it is a drop in the ocean of the list of requirements to establish a mental health system which can withstand the test of time.

I am sure that Mr Hunt is aware of the fact that the most common forms of mental illness are mixed anxiety and depression; with one in four of us likely to develop some form of the illness in their life time, and with 9% meeting the criteria for diagnosis according to the Office of National Statistics.

In most cases the depression or anxiety was triggered by external factors rather than biological or internal factors. To help these people, in addition to the money and the facilities, they need further help which money could not buy; they need empathy, care and love, these poor people lost their sense of purpose and are in desperate need of a leader figure to remind them of their true value as members of the society; that could have a more lasting effect than tons of medicine and equipment shipped from China, when they have had a rough day of therapy and unemployment, the last thing they want to come back home to is a Minister calling them scroungers.

Arguably love and empathy are usually provided by family, friends or partners. Or is it? Love could be provided through many mediums such as religion, art, music etc.

Fortunately the awareness among charities and social enterprises and non-governmental organizations is at its highest levels, each year the Mental Health Foundation supports a mental health week which aims at raising awareness, the last event was held 12-17 May and focused on anxiety, and the next event is expected to focus on relationships.

What is Beauty the Exhibition is another illustration of how concerned local communities are, endeavouring to spread the love through art, film, poetry and painting. And a forum aiming at establishing “what beauty means to each and every one of us”, perhaps, discover a universal meaning for beauty in the process.

The Exhibition is expected to be held in Hackney on 22 July, and is sponsored by Poached Creative and Mediorite; the exhibition is in support of a petition to properly fund mental health services.

On the other hand; and In Mr Hunt’s defence, the first thing the current coalition government did after removing Labour from power was to publish a new health strategy for England in 2011 aiming at improving the quality of care and reducing the number of patients.

 The strategy seemed fine on paper and was widely welcomed. However, in reality it was faced by many setbacks; the economic recession had its bearing on the strategy; it led to significant extra pressure on parts of the population (fear of debt or losing a house or a job and so forth) which consequently led to a dramatic increase in the number of reported mental health problems; normally about half people with common mental health problems are no longer affected after eighteen month. However poor people, the long term sick and unemployed people, are more likely to be affected; the economic climate provided all the previous ingredients, which in turn provided the recipe for disaster.

  Furthermore, the mental health problem is as old as mankind. It wasn’t until recently that it has been acknowledged and steps taken to address it.

 In all fairness, it is only under New Labour that this country had a half functioning Mental Health Authority, prior to the Second World War, persons with mental illness symptoms were treated through confinement, in the period also known as the asylum era.1959 saw the introduction of the land mark Mental Health Act, followed up by advances in psychiatry and drug treatment, and greater emphasis on human rights accompanied by advances in social science and institutionalisation theory.

Generally most people with mental illnesses received no organised systemic care until the 19^th century, care was basic and comprised of basic sedative drugs and bathes in various shapes and forms to calm the patient down. Therefore, it could be argued that the mental health system in this country has not yet truly and fully evolved, which makes the responsibility placed on Mr Hunt and the NHS the greater.

Prof Sue Bailey, a consultant child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist in Manchester, will be replaced by Sir Simon Wessely as president of the royal college.

She said, she will continue to promote mental health services, but in a broader context:

"One way to make societies healthier, including mentally healthier, is to invest in the health and education of women because women play this vital role in the rearing of the next generation,"

Makeover for homeless man

Below is a link to a film that has gone viral on YouTube recently, I think it speaks for itself, check it out. As a result lots of money was donated to a homeless charity called Degage Ministries in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24943101

A civil partnership made in heaven?

This week saw the first anniversary of the Coalition government. So what are we to make of it all? Here are some of the highlights.

May

I vividly remember the day that Clegg and Cameron held that nauseous press conference in the garden at 10 Downing Street. There was a chap on the BBC London radio news in the morning of 12 May who referred to them as looking like an upmarket Ant and Dec. I could see what he meant inasmuch as there are times when you can barely tell which one is which. But then I was left wondering did he also mean that they talk drivel, aren't funny and are classed as light entertainment?

Rising star, David Laws, resigns after 17 days in the job, after allegations of financial misdemeanors. A year later he is suspended from the Commons, for seven days, for what are described as "serious breaches". This is from a man who is, in that age-old cliche, a self-made man. An ex-banker and a millionaire caught fiddling his expenses. It beggars belief, and he was being lined up to be the Chancellor's right-hand man!

June

George Osborne set out his budget. VAT increases from 17.5% to 20%. Child benefit and public sector pay are frozen. Housing benefit cuts are announced that will affect thousands. Personal tax allowances went up.

August
The Coalition passes 100 days in power. Samantha Cameron has a baby daughter.

September
The Liberal Democrats have their annual conference, which Nick Clegg comes through relatively unscathed. Telling the party faithful the Lib-Dems are doing "great things" in government and that the party should "hold its nerve" whatever criticism comes their way. As if to back him up MPs vote to scrap ID cards (which no government was going to fund) heralding it as fulfilling one of their coalition pledges.

October
This month sees George Osborne explain in detail his Comprehensive Spending Review. In June cuts to the welfare bill were said to be £11 billion. In early September he announced a further £4 billion, by the time of his Comprehensive Spending Review the total cuts to the welfare budget amounted to a total of £18 billion.

November

Student protests against tuition fees dominate the news. In the majority of cases fees are set to triple. The headquarters of the conservative party were beseiged and some gathered on the roof. An effigy of Nick Clegg was burnt.

December
Sure enough, in the commons MPs voted to raise the tuition fee cap.


January
After months of speculation about Andy Coulson's ability to be Director of Communications for David Cameron, he finally resigns. He had repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking in spite of being editor of the News of the World at the time it was going on. I don't think this tells us anything about the government, but to me it indicates an appalling lack of judgement on the part of the Prime Minister.


AprilThe Cabinet announces what it terms a pause, in their overhaul of the NHS. This, they say, is to consult further over the proposals for a shake-up. This is after Andrew Lansley became the first Health Minister to get a vote of no confidence from the Royal College of Nursing Conference. The whole thing strikes me as a fiasco.



May
The Liberal Democrats have a disastrous time in the local English elections and the national elections in Scotland and Wales, and what rankles them further is that the Tory vote holds up well. And to cap a bad night for Nick Clegg the referendum for AV was a resounding no.

So all things considered, what do I make of the Coalition's first year?
The way I see it the Tories spent a long time in opposition, so they had a long time to consider what they would do when they got back in power. The Lib-Dems are clearly the junior partner in this coalition and I think that shows. So the Tories have been able to pick on their long-standing bogey men; the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, these are the people who have borne the brunt of their economic policies. Sure, they inherited an economy mired in trouble, but they have chosen the direction to take the country in, all the while assuring us that their old friend, the free market will get us out of trouble.

that nice, sensitive Michael Gove...

Just over a week ago (10 September) the Education Secretary, Michael Gove was asked this question by Luciana Berger MP in the House of Commons: "What can he and his Government do to ensure no students turn up to school embarrassed because they don't have the right clothes?"

He said he had recently visited a food bank in his Surrey Heath constituency. He went on: "I appreciate that there are families who face considerable pressures. Those pressures are often the result of decisions that they have taken which mean they are not best able to manage their finances."

Ms Berger said she was "appalled" by his remarks. "People I have met are ashamed to have to turn to food banks. I vehemently disagree it is because they have mismanaged their finances." In 2012 Ms Berger who is the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, made a short film in 2012 Breadline Britain which centres around this issue.

The Trussell Trust, who run almost 400 food banks in the UK, have some statistics about the work that they do: Since April 2012 they have seen an increase in the numbers of foodbanks of 76% but a 170% increase in the numbers of people given emergency food. That number is 346 992 in 2012/13 and relates to the period up to April 2013. That is to say the figures are before the benefit changes came in.

The Trussell Trust see the main causes as the rising cost of living, static incomes, underemployment and unemployment, all things that lead to increasing numbers of people hitting a a crisis causing them to turn to the Trussell Trust.

The Executive Chairman of the Trussell Trust, Chris Mould says: "The sheer volume of people who are turning to foodbanks because they can't afford food is a wake-up call to the nation that we cannot ignore the hunger on our doorstep. Politicians across the spectrum urgently need to recognise the real extent of UK food poverty and create fresh policies that better address its underlying causes. This is more important than ever as the impact of the biggest reforms to the welfare state since it began start to take effect. Since 1 April we have already seen increasing numbers of people in crisis being sent to foodbanks with nowhere else to go."