Austerity and a malign benefits regime are profoundly damaging mental health
442 psychotherapists, counsellors and academics condemn government plans and call on Labour and other parties to denounce anti-therapeutic practices
Austerity is having a ‘profoundly disturbing’ effect on Britain’s mental health, say experts
Austerity and cuts to benefits designed to drive people to work is having a “profoundly disturbing” effect on the people’s mental health, according to a letter signed by hundreds of psychotherapists, councillors and other experts in the field.
The letter, sent to The Guardian newspaper, warned that poverty and increasing inequality was causing a new wave of distress in Britain.
It said that what they described as the Government’s “get to work therapy” was “manifestly not therapy at all”.
Welfare cuts will push Britain’s mental health services towards crisis
Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Iain Duncan Smith, recently proposed a further £12 billion of cuts to benefits. Making such cuts is likely to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including those with mental health problems and other disabilities. After all, approximately half of people who need support from the disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) do so because of their mental health.
‘Creaking’ mental health care keeps children waiting years
Vulnerable children with mental health problems are being forced to wait for up to three and a half years for assessments and almost two years for treatment, a Times investigation has found, revealing a system that is “creaking at the seams”.
Mental health trusts in England have seen their budgets fall by more than 8% in real terms over the course of this parliament, figures suggest.
The reduction, worth almost £600m, was revealed through research by BBC News and the online journal Community Care.
Meeting Wednesday 4Th March with Ilsa Finigan Adult Community & Social Inclusion of the Trust
*What is this new team when you are stepped down?
*What support will I receive when I am discharged?
*If my circumstances and needs have not changed and I am stepped down, will you notify the DWP?
Are you stepping down patients, because of lack of financial resources?
Manchester celebrities Shaun Ryder, Terry Christian, Rowetta and Claire Mooney are to lead hundreds of protesters in a rally against ‘appalling’ coalition cuts that have affected the city.
The Mancunian icons will lead crowds in what they are calling a ‘smart rally’— an emulation of the pro democracy demonstrations that took place in Hong Kong back in September 2014.
The lack of acute beds available to mental health patients has left the system at breaking point, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said.
Illustrating the scale of the problem, the college said it understood that on one occasion last year there were no beds available for adults in England. It called for action to tackle the problem.
The college president, Simon Wessely, said: “There is mounting evidence – such as the doubling of the number of patients having to be sent out-of-area for care between 2011/12-2013/14 – that there are simply not enough mental health beds available in some areas.
A Tory councillor has provoked a Twitter backlash after claiming that food banks are only visited by “those with drug, alcohol and mental health problems”.
Mark Winn, who is also a civil servant with the Ministry of Defence and until recently held an appointment on Buckinghamshire council’s health scrutiny committee, hit out at what he called “the BBC doing Labour’s bidding” after watching an episode of Casualty on Saturday night.
Mental health patient admissions to A&E set to reach record levels
The number of people with a mental health condition admitted to hospital as an emergency is likely to reach its highest level ever this winter, a former health minister has warned.
An estimated 280,000 mental health patients will be admitted to hospital as an emergency in the last three months of 2014, latest analysis suggests as emergency doctors warned that overstretched A&E departments are the wrong place for people in mental distress.
