Millions of UK workers fear reporting mental health conditions !
Huge numbers of UK workers are hiding mental health conditions from their employers for fear of it affecting their job, according to Friends Life.
A poll from One Poll for the insurance firm, which surveyed more than 2,000 people, found that more than 50% of all workers believe being open about a common mental health problem would damage their career prospects.
The UK working-age population is more than 38 million, according to the Office for National Statistics.
So more than 19 million workers in the UK could be worried about reporting a common mental health problem to their employers.
The head of Unison has urged NHS staff to ‘keep on fighting’ after six different unions in Manchester took part in the first nationwide health service walkout for 32 years.
The strike was triggered by the coalition government’s decision to refuse NHS staff the 1% pay rise recommended by an independent pay review body and sparked further outrage after the proposal to award MPs a 9% pay rise earlier this year.
One in four workers at Manchester’s mental health trust would not recommend the care to their loved ones, an official survey shows.
A quarter of staff at the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust said they would not recommend it to their friends or family, according to the first NHS Friends and Family Test.
More than a third of staff who took part in the survey also said they would not recommend it as a good place to work.
A report this week was grim reading for those involved in mental health care. The survey of GPs revealed that one in five had seen patients harmed as a result of “delays or a lack of support” from mental health services, while shortfalls had forced 82 per cent of doctors to act “outside of their competence”. While this news is shocking, it is just another example of the UK’s mental health care crisis.
Just last week, data obtained from freedom of information requests led to claims that the NHS treated mental health care as a “second-class service”. Indeed, thousands of mentally ill patients have been forced to travel “hundreds of miles” for treatment in recent years. Extreme cases have seen patients being forcibly sectioned so that they can receive care in overcrowded wards. Even medical students have resorted to asking for greater teaching on psychiatry, highlighting the derisory attention that mental health issues receive. Yet the state of mental health services is unsurprising considering that they receive only 13 per cent of the NHS budget, despite mental illness affecting around a quarter of the UK population.
Sick and disabled claimants are experiencing severe distress and some are even close to suicide due to botched disability benefit reform, an insider has revealed.
Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Britain’s sick and disabled, but the assessment process which should take no longer than 26 weeks is sometimes taking twice as long.
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Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust (MMH&SCT) meeting at the “Service Users & Carers Forum held at Mechanics Institute in Manchester on the 28 Th April 2014 presented a draft document to the forum to be read and passed by that forum . The documents compiled by MMH&SCT Patients and Public Involvement (PPI) in Research Strategy referred to a *Service User* “Is defined as someone who is currently accessing mental health and/or social care services or who has used mental health and or social care service in the past three years (MMH&SCT service user strategy, 2010.
“As a direct result of ‘Patient’ (Services Users) receiving some of the poorest commissioned mental health care in the country , Manchester services user groups have been working with MACC and other mental health support groups on a Manchester Mental Health Charter; which already holds the support of Manchester Services User groups and carer groups and is presently seeking pursuant to further consultation with ‘Services Users’ and the Manchester People and which will eventually give legally binding protections from discrimination because of mental disability and should contractually enlist all members of staff who work for the three Manchester commissioning Groups who commission for Manchester mental health services for patients within their remit.”
Staatement Made By MUN Chair To North Manchester CCG Full Statement: https://www.manchesterusersnetwork.org.uk/2014/03/12/patients-put-questions-north-manchester-clinical-commissioning-group/
Below we have published three recent examples of what patients, users of mental health services (services users) in Manchester have been saying they now want in a charter for mental health. Please leave in the comments section below what you would wish to see in a Manchester charter . The three Manchester mental health commissioning bodies are listening so please add your voice and be heard “It’s Time to Be Heard”
Defend Mental Health Services
March and Rally
Saturday 29th March 12:30
Meet Market Cross, Eccles for march to Meadowbrook
Next Saturday, service users, activists, families and health workers will be holding a march and rally to Defend Mental Health Services in Bolton, Salford and Trafford.
