As a self-confessed not-quite-all-there mental health outpatient, nothing makes me more angry than hearing about shortcomings in mental health provision. Nick Clegg’s heavily spun announcement last November that spending on mental health was to be increased somehow omitted to mention that in real and actual terms, spending has still be dramatically cut since this Tory-led government came to power.
Today I read that there is a major crisis in NHS care for 16-18 year olds to the extent that many severely ill children will be admitted to adult wards, something that only normally happens during moments of crisis.
You only need to become mentally ill – well, you don’t, but you get my drift – to realise how little is out there for you. It is believed that mental illness costs the country £100 billion a year, yet to politicians and policy makers, it is regarded, or rather disregarded, as small beer. If you can’t see what’s wrong with someone who suffers from mental illness, then it’s okay to ignore it. For young people, the effects of mental illness can be even more catastrophic than with some adults. The young mind is not yet fully developed, methods and techniques for dealing with some of its effects have not yet been formulated, learned and applied and decision-making will not always be based on mature consideration. In short, self-harm and suicide among the young is on the rise.
But still we ignore mental illness. I decided to ‘come out’ some years ago and most of the reaction I have received has been positive and supportive but I am not sure my experience is typical. After all, I’m far nearer my bus pass than my school days – frighteningly so! – and I’ve got through it in differing degrees. At least I am still here. And I am not sure if things today are much different to when I was growing up when I lost friends to suicide and saw others self-harming. I remember being shocked and thinking that we couldn’t possibly be living in a civilised society if young people felt so desperate, they were hurting or killing themselves.
But it looks like David Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ was part of his plan, not a statement on what the country was like. And yes, I can blame the government, the one before this one and, especially the one before that when Thatcher almost destroyed the country because everyone took their eyes off the ball. We were all right, Jack, and the darkness within our society was ignored and the mentally sick were ignored. That’s happening again now and I am very angry that it’s our young people, our future, who are suffering most.
We are talking now about young people in crisis, young people so ill that they need urgent potentially life-saving treatment now. But instead we are transferring them to inappropriate adult wards often hundreds of miles from where they live.
We need a debate about this and a decision. If politicians are happy to let our young people hang out to dry and suffer throughout their lives, then let them say so. Or just be honest and say that if we really want to help and protect the young and vulnerable, it will cost money.
Clegg has form with broken promises and to that he adds misleading commitments to increasing spending, only after he has cut it by far more in the past. He just wants to keep his vainglorious non job in the Cabinet – if he was a serious politician, he would be running a department too – and the plight of many of our young people is of secondary importance to him, always assuming he gives a toss in the first place.
