Alastair Campbell, Danny Boyle, Sunderland FC manager Sam Allardyce and the archbishop of Canterbury are among more than 200 high profile figures who have signed an open letter that calls for equality between physical and mental health treatment before the government’s spending review.
The letter, also signed by Richard Curtis, Bob Geldof, Miranda Hart and Mary Beard, calls for the government to help reduce the suffering of those with mental ill health by increasing investment in services.
“We accept, and urge ministers to accept, that this will require additional investment in mental health services,” the letter states. “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.”
The letter highlights 10 major concerns over inadequate mental health care, including the lack of access to treatment, long waiting times, inadequate crisis care, use of police cells and the 20-year gap in life expectancy between those with mental health problems and the rest of the population.
The signatories note comments acknowledging the high cost of mental ill health, including to individuals and their families as well as 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,” they write. “So the moral and economic argument for a new approach is clear. And so is the human and moral argument.”
It took a matter of days for the signatories to sign up to the all-party campaign launched by the Liberal Democrats’ former mental health minister, Norman Lamb, Time to Change ambassador and former Labour government communications director, Campbell, and the former Conservative cabinet minister, Andrew Mitchell.
“I wanted to make sure I could find a way of maintaining pressure to achieve equality for people suffering from mental ill health,” Lamb said. “I feel very strongly about this issue, in part because of family experience. I feel driven to overcome this historic injustice. In essence, it’s basically discrimination at the heart of the NHS. If you have a mental health problem you don’t have the same right to access treatment on a timely basis as one with a physical health problem.
“I know from my time in the department that every Monday morning the leaders of the NHS and the secretary of states and ministers are poring over real time data from across the country on performance of hospitals, A&E standards, cancer targets, and 18-week referral for treatment targets. There is an acute focus, and of course the fear that opposition will attack you if you miss those targets. But until April this year mental health had no maximum waiting time at all. I forced through the first ever maximum waiting time standards for early intervention in psychosis and access to psychological therapies, but that’s the start.”
Lamb said he did not put the blame on any one individual government. “But now there is this growing recognition of mental ill health and the importance of addressing it,” he added. “This government could, if it chose to, deliver a very proud achievement by 2020. People like Alastair Campbell and others in sport and business have raised awareness in society by speaking openly about their own mental ill health, which is massively important in combatting stigma.”
The letter is the centrepiece of a wider campaign that calls for equality between mental and physical health. In addition to other political figures who have backed the call, among them the prime minister’s former advisor Steve Hilton, and nine former Tory and Labour health secretaries, the first signatories include senior figures from business and employment, faith leaders, culture and arts, sport, the military, civil society, education and medicine.
“Mental health is an issue whose time has come,” Campbell said. “That we have gathered in a matter of a few days so many voices calling for equality with physical health is the latest sign of that. The cultural depth and political breadth of people making that call cannot be ignored. In addition to making the human case for a new approach I think we can persuade the government of the economic case too. The spending review is the opportunity for the government to show that they understand this.’”
Mitchell said: “Mental health affects families, wider society and businesses. Improving access to mental health care will help save lives and reduce the impact of mental health problems on our NHS, our schools and our places of work.”
Original Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/02/public-figures-sign-lette...