A little flaw in the UK’s ‘socialist’ medical service is poor provision for mental health. We have some of the leading surgeons in the world, some of our A&E departments are regarded as world-beaters too. To my knowledge hardly any of the staff were trained in Cuba or Russia and none of them is related to Che Guevara. But don’t you think it is rather nice that you can be taken to hospital and be treated regardless of your ability to pay? I mean imagine being there on the hospital bed not having to search for health insurance ID. Even better comrades many of our hospitals are actually quite good.
But I digress.
There is a flaw in our system and that is mental health. Only 16% of the national health budget is given over to mental care. Worse, the budget has recently been cut and services already under severe strain are now close to melt-down.
I have experienced the effect of poor public mental health provision myself. MY GP (local doctor) warned me that see a psychiatrist I’d have to be deemed to be suicidal, a danger to others or conduct myself in a disturbing manner in a public place (strange, politicians do this all the time). Instead, I would be put on a waiting list and would, instead, see a health worker – and this is what happened. Without a word of a lie within 20 minutes she decided I had borderline personality disorder! This rapid diagnosis may see reasonable until you consider I never mentioned suicide or hurting someone and thought angry and manic I internalised this to a degree so staying within the bounds of reasonable behaviour. I have to say I thought she was a bit of an idiot so left, walking through a waiting room with people sitting there perhaps to be diagnosed in a similar way.
A more serious outcome of our lack of mental health services is the increasing use of prisons to house people clearly in need of help not punishment. A further problem has been the degree of ignorance the general public show when it comes to serious conditions resulting in terrible things such as infanticide. There a number of cases I know of where mothers are currently serving life sentences for killing their children yet during trail a succession of Psychiatrists, Psychologists and others assessed the women and in nearly every case pinpointed a severe mental condition that provided partial or complete mitigation for the ‘crime’, dreadful as it was. Yet the Jury wouldn’t buy it. It was very depressing to see one woman be given a 25 year sentence yet being sure she was suffering from a severe mental condition (something the judge alluded to). The crazy thing was that once the trial was concluded she transferred to a secure mental health unit. Am I missing something here?
But light shine brightly across the horizon. There has been a succession of campaigns recently to highlight mental health issues at home and at work and not just serious conditions. They want to highlight the fact that one in four of us will experience depression of some sort it at some point in our lives, but this is nothing to be ashamed off. One trailer for a campaign shows someone who has been away from work for a while responding to someone asking how they. They respond by answering honestly about the depression they’ve suffered and how it made it impossible to work. A brave thing to do in the real world, but perhaps we do underestimate peoples’ willingness to understand sometimes and by ‘outing’ the mental health issues we begin removing some of the stigma.