My first contact with Liverpool Mental Health Consortium (LMHC) was in February 2003, when I wrote them a very terse letter complaining bitterly that I had been unable to access a place at their national Snakes & Ladders Conference & denouncing them for exclusivity & poor communication.
Fast-forward 9 months, & they advertised a post with a person specification clearly stating that lived experience of mental distress was a ‘desirable quality’.
The World Health Organization has estimated that mental or neurological disorders will affect one in four people at some point in their lives. In the U.K., one charity says this proportion is far higher.
Yet the MRC spends just three per cent of its research budget funding studies into mental illness, most of which goes towards genetics or neuroscience.
Sarah Knapton, science editor Life events rather than genetics are largely responsible for mental disorders, say psychologists CREDIT: ALAMY Mental illness is largely caused by social crises such as unemployment or childhood abuse and too much money is spent researching genetic and biological factors, psychologists have warned. Over the past decade funding bodies like […]
