“For too long mental illness has been something of a hidden injustice in our country, shrouded in a completely unacceptable stigma and dangerously disregarded as a secondary issue to physical health.
“Yet left unaddressed it destroys lives, it separates people from each other and deepens the divisions within our society. Changing this goes right to the heart of our humanity; to the heart of the kind of country we are, the values we share, the attitudes we hold and our determination to come together and support each other.”
Hear, hear, I hear you cry. Great words, action coming at last. Hooray to the person with such vision and compassion. Hooray to Theresa May? What?
Yes, those were the prime minister’s words in January when she did what she does best: talk in vague generalities about a serious topic and then proceed to nothing about it. Today’s miserable budget was another example of the vicar’s daughter’s empty words.
It was not what Philip Hammond said about mental health in his speech today. It was that he failed to mention it at all. In fact, what he did could make things considerably worse.
We know that local councils are to get an additional £346 million for social care but beware the smoke and mirrors. £241 million of this figure is being taken away from housing budgets. Yes, that’s right: it’s not new money at all. Allow me to quote from the Mental Health Foundation charity:
“Decent, secure and affordable accommodation is fundamental to mental health and wellbeing, and those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are much more likely to experience mental distress.”
Ignoring housing issues is part of the overall attitude in this country that mental health issues are dealt with only when they turn into a crisis. Dealing problems “upstream”, as the experts put it, can prevent crises and if you prevent crises you save people becoming more ill and, as politicians should know, you can save money.
Many employers in the private and public sector get this and increasingly employ various systems of psychological counselling. Employers realise that a healthy employee is a more productive employee and an early intervention can save a lot of problems at a later stage.
Theresa May’s fine words were merely wind and piss, talking the talk but not walking the walk. We should have realised she said in a less quoted aspect of her speech that issues about mental health were “more about the stigma that still attaches to mental health than money issues”. Now I know this is a familiar mantra from politicians, that “we need to do more with less” but the truth is that we do need greater state investment – that means spending money – if we are serious.
The media will doubtless concentrate on 2p on a pint of beer and a minimum price for fags when they debate the budget’s contents tomorrow morning and most, I guarantee, will not even mention the illness that wrecks millions of lives all over the land.
Theresa May thinks you can deal with serious matters by making a speech about something and then kicking it into the long grass, so deep it will never be found. Today we learned that Philip Hammond is cut from the same cloth and that’s a depressing state of affairs. Literally.
