This post from two years ago popped up in my Timehop for today. The timing is appropriate as this coming Thursday – 1 February – is Time To Talk Day, when we are encouraged to open a conversation on mental health issues.
Sadly, I don’t see any real change in the situation since I wrote this piece. The UK government has made some positive noises but has sidetracked itself in a major way with the issues surrounding the EU and our relations with other countries, particularly the US. Worryingly, with all that has been going on over there to destroy healthcare, there are signs that our government wants to move towards ever greater involvement of the private sector in the National Health Service. Funding for mental health care needs to be increased significantly, to meet the need for much better training for, and provision of, services. Everything I said in this piece is still germane and will, I fear, continue to be. In the absence of a national initiative to improve our mental health, we all need to take a good look at ourselves and what we can do to help. Please take a couple of minutes to read this and think about anyone you know who may need your support: those statistics I quoted won’t be getting better any time soon.
A few days ago there was a report in the paper of a study conducted by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, as part of the Health Survey for England. More than 25% of the 5,000 respondents said that they had been given a diagnosis of mental illness at some point. 33% of the females and 19% of the males reported this, and the highest rate was found amongst the 55-64 age group, where the figures rose to 41% and 25% respectively. The most common diagnosis was for depression, at 19% overall – 24% for women and 13% for men. At the extreme, one in 14 women has attempted suicide, and one in 25 men, yet the male suicide rate is more than three times higher than for females. These are scary statistics! There has beena great deal ofresearch showing that men are much less likely to recognise that…
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Take It Easy 
How on earth will mental health services or indeed any health services be funded in the future? It all looks bleak doesn’t it?
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Sadly, it does. The current government is blind to the damage being done by opening healthcare up to commercial concerns, and I can only see that getting worse after Brexit when the US holds us to ransom for a trade deal.
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An important topic at any time, Clive. I’m glad you brought it up here on your blog. We have October 10 here in the states, for Mental health day – but my sense it’s geared to helping individuals understand their own mental health needs. we also have May is Mental Health Month, too. Individual organizations plan many of their major events for May. But the idea of a day to “talk about mental health” is of great interest to me. Seems to me we each can “talk about it” to whomever we’d like. Sometimes just a simple conversation can make a world of difference. No solutions to offer, to fixes or diagnoses. Just a listening ear and a chance to let the topic of mental illness be a little less taboo.
Go course, the following day, Feb. 2, is our National Groundhog Day, when weathermen all over the US (and us common folk too) look to Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog in Punxsutawney PA, to tell them what the weather will be for the next six weeks. A nice long chat about mental illness feels like it may well be in order. :).
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Thanks for reading and commenting, Janet. 10 October is World Mental Health Day and is marked in many countries, including here in the UK. It comes under the auspices of the WHO and has a different theme each year, but the continuing objective is to increase knowledge of mental health issues and keep them to the forefront of health. Time To Talk Day is an initiative of the Mental Health Foundation here, and I’m not sure if it has spread elsewhere. Opening a conversation can be one on one, either with people you know or with strangers – I’ve done it at my local health centre and you can see the positive way it opens people’s minds. I may do a post on it – I’ve rather neglected mental health of late and it was, after all, why I began blogging in the first place!
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