EQUALITY FOR MENTAL HEALTH The Professional Cricketers’ Association is one of the signatories to Equality For Mental Health, a cross-party, cross-society campaign aimed at persuading the Government to help reduce the suffering of those with mental ill health by increasing investment in the provision of mental health services. As ministers make final decisions on the Spending Review, the campaign urges them to treat mental health equally with physical health and asks for the same right to timely access to evidence based treatment as is enjoyed by those with physical health problems. The campaign, launched by former mental health minister Norman Lamb, Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell and Alastair Campbell, urges ministers to accept that this will require additional investment in mental health services. ” But we are strongly persuaded that sustained investment in mental health services will lead to significant returns for the Exchequer, by reducing the burden on the NHS through the improved wellbeing of our citizens, by helping people to stay in, or get back into work and by helping young people succeed in education,” say the signatories, who also include former England captain Mike Brearley. ” We note the many comments from ministers and opinion formers acknowledging the huge cost of mental ill health not just to individuals and their families, including veterans of our armed forces, but to the economy as a whole. Some estimates put this cost as high as £ 100bn a year, spent on visits to A&E, lost jobs, unemployment benefits, homelessness support, police time, burden on the criminal justice system and prison places. ” So the moral and economic argument for a new approach is clear. And so is the human and moral argument. Indeed ministers have accepted that whatever improvements in attitude may have been made in British society, those who experience mental ill health still do not get a fair deal from our health services. In effect, they suffer discrimination in our publicly funded NHS. This must be addressed. ” To highlight just TEN of the many concerns we have in this area – 1) People with mental health problems do not enjoy the same access to services and to treatment as those with physical health problems. As many as three in four of children and young people experiencing a mental health problem get no access to treatment at all. And only 15 per cent of people who might benefit from talking therapies are actually getting such treatment. 2) Until this April there were no maximum waiting times for treatment for mental ill health, and we urge the government to use the Spending Review to show how these waiting times will be implemented and extended to cover all ages and all mental health services. 3) The financial incentives in the NHS discriminate against mental health. As a result, whenever resources are under pressure, mental health is the first to lose out. 4) Too many mentally ill people are being shunted around the country in search of a bed – with no accommodation for parents or carers – and in some cases children are being admitted to adult wards due to shortages – a practice which would never be tolerated in physical health. 5) Too few people who lose their jobs are having the mental health impact of unemployment taken into account, and so lack treatment that might help get them back into work. 6) Too many children and adults are still ending up in police cells rather than hospital when going through a mental health crisis. 7) Too many people are inappropriately in prison essentially because they suffer mental ill health or have a learning disability or autism. 8) We remain deeply concerned that people with long-term mental health conditions live on average 20 years less than the general population. 9) It is very troubling that certain ethnic groups, particularly African-Caribbean and African – are under-represented in children’s services and over-represented in adult acute mental health services and locked and secure services. People from these backgrounds face more frequent use of coercion, suffer more use of physical restraint, end up in contact with the police more often than others and have less access to talking therapies. 10) Vital research to gain a better understanding of mental illness and to establish the most effective treatments is compromised by inadequate funding. Whilst mental ill health accounts for around 23% of the overall disease burden, it only receives about 5% of research funding. ” We acknowledge that progress in awareness and understanding has been made. But this is not being matched by the levels of investment in an area which affects virtually every family in the country. We urge the government to seize the opportunity to end this historic injustice and commit the investment that will lead to an economically, and socially, stronger Britain.” {{ak_sharing}}
