If mental health services fail, how will these vulnerable people be protected?
![The government has pledged to add over £1bn to mental health spending by 2020 [Image: Getty].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160921-mental-health.png)
The government has pledged to add over £1bn to mental health spending by 2020 – but will it happen and is it enough? [Image: Getty].
One in four people endure mental health issues at some time in their life – and anyone who has had such problems can have them again.
If the systems that help them to survive in society are taken away, then they may not be able to cope. I can see some of them making very bad choices if left to their own devices, while others may resort to the benefit system – possibly another bad choice.
You see, work capability assessors habitually deny benefit to those who deserve it the most. Even people who confess to suicidal thoughts are asked why they have not already followed those thoughts to their natural conclusion.
This Writer advises anyone faced with that situation to tell the truth. Say it is the Conservative government’s benefit system that is forcing you to consider it and that would be responsible, if you did act on the thought. Leave a note with relatives or friends to that effect.
We have a system in which the government absolutely will not honour its responsibilities unless there is a chance it will look bad.
So, if your mental health services are threatened, make sure the government is faced with that possibility.
The Government will struggle to properly improve mental health services with the NHS budget at current levels, an influential committee of MPs has found.
The Public Accounts Committee looked at how much funding the Government had provided to reach its goal of putting mental health on “parity of esteem” with physical health and found funding shortfalls would make the “laudible ambition” very difficult.
“We are sceptical about whether this is affordable, or achievable without compromising other services,” the report says.
The report says only a quarter of people who need mental health services currently have access to them, despite one-in-four adults being diagnosed with a mental health illness at some point in their lives.
While the parliamentary spending watchdog says “important first steps” have been made to parity of esteem, money and structures are seen a major barrier.
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They have failed, and they’re not protected.
“not prepared to fund” this is the root problem. Every options list, complex needs assessment, seminar, workshop, directive, meeting challenges, new pathways, innovations, interdisciplinary liaison commissions, combined strategies, all hypocritically and greedily mask this root problem. The Garnet and Hanlon suffering and the rest, is caused by this root. Lets look at the links in the chain and work back one link at a time to see where it originates. We start at the suffering heart of P. Then working back through the chain of those connected to P we come to the “not prepared to fund” Local Authority. Then as we move further back up the chain we come to those connected to the “not prepared to fund”root. Then, its there, we find the root in the hypocritical self serving greedy hearts.
autismandate – a brilliant chain analysis, as taught and used in DBT for us BPDers (don’t get me started with that effing artificial ‘diagnosis’), except with DBT chains it all leads back to us and how we ‘abnormally’ react to life’s pressures. Nothing about the insurmountable political and societal monsters who cumulatively grind us down to the point of self destructive coping behaviours, including suicide attempts. Just do a little mindfulness & all will be fine.
Of the MH services I have fought hard for and have so far received, most have been inadequately and/or badly delivered, and I have gotten worse as a result. That’s on top of the benefit system which has resulted in 2 breakdowns and my first psych hospital inpatient stay recently, so far….. And those are the thread bare services which do currently still exist. Why do they wonder why we feel hopeless????? But hey dear, how are you sleeping, how is your appetite – these are the important questions (I refuse to answer these now).
It’s grim now, with a grimmer future to look forward to under these callous tyrants in power.
all part of their aktion t4 culling the stock by any means yet neaths tonna hospital is still surving these cuts at the moment how long before this wonderfull hospital fails while our mps hold their hands out for more rises in pay norman law hay
There is not enough profit in mental health and the tories look upon it as a drain
When I was working in a young offenders institute we were getting a considerable amount of young men who should have received mental health care not imprisonment, the problem was the only way they could get the medical input they needed was in prison as care in the community actually means no care.
I was involved in a similar incident involving a person I know very well, over the last Festive season, so I can agree wholeheartedly with your comment. This person had to be arrested before anybody would offer treatment for what turned out to be a serious but treatable mental health problem. The police (Dyfed Powys) were extremely good with this; once this person was admitted for mental health treatment, they dropped the charge. But the fact of having to be arrested means matters have improved very little.
The service for mentally ill people has been underfunded since the early 1980’s if not before.and it has steadily got worse over the years ….Just think of the fortune privet developers have made with the closer of the old hospitals and how little of the money went back to providing services for the mentally ill. I know I worked in the field as well as latterly being a sufferer …..SAD times and the politicians still just pay lip service…….
i have clinical depression, i have to go for an assessmrny soon and if i am denied the £56 iwill no longer be able to provide for my family. i have already made plans to kill myself through hypothermia and alcohol, as soon as the cold weather comes. i cannot get help from local seveses, and see no other way. i have a number of health bonditions which means i yake about 15 pills per day, my wife has to hide them because i’m suisidle, buy i’ve been saving the up and may take them all at weekend. i hope the tory hovernment can find somthing usefull to spend the £56 on…
sorry i have bad eyes too and should have checked it before posting;-(
I have left your comment as you sent it because it demonstrates your situation, I think.
Your death by your own hand is precisely what they want.
As long as they can claim it is nothing to do with them, they’ll be quite happy for you to do that; they’ll save their pittance and your family will go without.
Do you really want that to happen?
It would be far better for you to do as I advise in the article. Write a letter saying the DWP’s assessment system is leading you towards suicidal thoughts and that you wish the DWP – and the Conservative government ministers who run it – to take responsibility if the worst happens.
Make it clear to the assessor at the appropriate moment that this is what you have done, and that you believe it to be an accurate description of the situation.
Don’t say anything else about it – why give them a possible excuse to squirm out of responsibility?
Let us know how you get on.
The government has already failed us, we are not protected and never will be!