Tomorrow, Saturday 10 October 2015, is World Mental Health Day, to my mind one of the most important days of the year. It’s not just for people like me who have been through a lifetime of living in the shadow of the black dog, it’s for those who have lived with it all their lives and had no help at all, the abandoned ones, and for those for whom it has all been too much; the 6233 British people over 15 who took their own lives in 2013, an astonishing 78% of whom were men.
In an age where money seems to matter far more than anything else, let’s look at some more statistics:
50% of women with perinatal mental health problems are not being identified or treated. This is believed to cost the economy £8.1 billion a year.
70 million working days are lost every single year due to mental health issues, making it the leading cause of sick absence.
This is a small part of the picture.
All this is happening at a time when mental health provision, like everything else in the NHS, is being cut. How can this be?
I blame Margaret Thatcher for this. In fact, I blame her for almost everything that's wrong with Britain today. It was the 1980s when attitudes changed for the long term, where Britain embarked on a journey where "greed is good", that we must have whatever we want and have it now and others, no matter how weak and vulnerable, should be left to find for themselves. She is long gone but her poisonous legacy of selfishness remains. This was where Labour, under Tony Blair, failed us. There was much that was good about the Blair years, but his failure to address the tenets of Thatcherism, the Gordon Gekko view of the world, was the major failing. When the Tories won in 2010, not enough had changed, Cameron was able to simply carry on her grim work.
I mention the politics because it's important. Only politicians can change the world and only politicians can address the wrecked landscape as viewed by those with mental health problems. They have taken a long time to wake up to it.
In the last Conservative government in which some Lib Dems had jobs, mental health services were cut. Nick Clegg, in his vainglorious non job as Deputy Prime Minister finally woke up to the issue in the dying days of the last government in which they will serve for a generation, but it was too little, too late; feeling very much like tokenism. Under the current government, which talks left but walks right, mental health services are under greater strain than ever.
Do not expect Cameron or Osborne do use anything other than weasel words about World Mental Health Day, if they bother to mention it at all. And if they do, then don't believe them. Why? Because some 200,000 people are about to be tipped back into poverty by the cuts to working tax credits, millions of working people with lose over £1000 a year, some much more than that. These figures do matter because there are direct links between poverty and mental illness. The public sector is a place where management are over those who have the misfortune to fall ill, bullying managers disciplining staff and even sacking them if they are sick for more than a few weeks. Yes, if people are sick, they can be returned to the ranks of the unemployed. Where I used to work, this was called "caring for staff", which could only come from a government which really doesn't care.
More important than cure is prevention, early diagnosis and intervention can change and save lives, but this is the lowest priority of all with almost zero investment by successive governments. As the startling suicide figures from 2013 show, things are getting worse, much, much worse. They represent the failure of government, the failure of a society that Thatcher said never existed at all (it does).
Whether tomorrow's day is a big day, whether it is actually reported on, whether it changes the attitudes of governments and people, I have no way of knowing. World Mental Health Day is rarely reported on, especially if Strictly Come Dancing is on, or if there is a pub to visit, but I'm not going to stop banging on about it.
And if you are one of those one in four adults and one in ten children who suffer from mental health problems, you are not alone and there is something out there for you, someone who can help, someone who can help you start to turn your life around. You may never be totally free of the black dog and you might need help in terms of therapy and drugs to see you through, but that's okay, that's fine. Start with your GP. It could be a lifesaver.
But just don't leave it because it won't go away and it can get worse. Please don't let it.
