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.
A mental health campaigner who convinced supermarkets to withdraw offensive Halloween ‘mental patient’ costumes from their stores killed herself at a psychiatric unit, an inquest has found.
Work by Rebecca Luscombe, known as Becki, went national in 2013 when she successfully started a Twitter campaign which resulted in the outfits being taken off supermarket shelves.
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.
Authorities in England have pledged to bring an end to the practice of detaining people with mental health problems in police cells.
The NHS, councils and police are now set to come up with plans for how they will achieve this, the government said.
Care minister Norman Lamb said real progress had already been made, and added that “in many parts of the country it’s now a thing of the past”
Make This The Biggest Meeting Concerning Mental Health Manchester Has Ever Seen!
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“WHAT MANCHESTER DOES TODAY THE WORLD WILL DO TOMORROW “e to be there !
The core ideal of the NHS, that makes it so beloved by British people, is its promise of healthcare free for all. That promise has now become incompatible with the reality of austerity.
By 2020, the NHS will require an extra £30bn just to keep services at their present level. This strangulation of funds has seen the NHS Mental Health Trusts lose £253m, 2.3 per cent of their funding. These cuts translate into a dramatic loss of vital support for those with mental health conditions
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.
