Mike has put up a piece about a report by Paul Farmer for the mental health charity, Mind, which argues that the Tories’ refusal to invest in mental health is costing the British economy £105 billion a year. See http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/15/tories-failure-to-invest-in-mental-health-costs-economy-105-billion-a-year-says-report/.
The piece also states that Cameron is due to make a statement about his government’s policies towards mental health this Wednesday.
I am not surprised about the amount of damage neglect of the country’s mental wellbeing is doing to the economy. I have, however, no illusions that David Cameron wants to do anything about it. He will want to be seen as doing something about it, and so will probably make noises about how he and the government take this issue very serious, but any action taken will ultimately only be trivial and cosmetic.
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the country’s losing so much money because of this issue. Sick people can’t work, or can’t work as well as those enjoying good health. And very many people are being left very sick indeed by the government’s policies. If they’re threatened with losing their jobs, and their homes, or being unable to pay their bills because their jobs don’t pay, or they don’t get enough welfare benefit – if they’ve luck enough not to be sanctioned – and they’re saddled with a massive debt from their student days that they can’t pay off, then they’re going to be scared and depressed. And the Tory employment policies are deliberately designed to make people scared and depressed. It’s all to make us work harder, you see. It’s psychological carrot and stick, but without the carrot and the stick very much used.
Mike himself has reblogged endless pieces from welfare and disability campaigners like Kitty S. Jones and the mental health specialists themselves, blogs like SPIJoe, about how the number of people suffering from anxiety and depression due to the government’s welfare-to-work programme has skyrocketed. The latest statistics are that there 290,000 people suffering because of poor mental health due to the quack assessments carried out by Atos and now Maximus. And 590 people have died of either neglect or suicide due to being sanctioned. That no doubt includes people, who could have contributed to the economy, if they’d been properly supported. But they weren’t. They were thrown of sickness and disability, and left to fend for themselves. They couldn’t, and so they died. Just as prescribed by the wretched Social Darwinism that seems to guide the policies of these monsters in government.
The government’s big idea of helping people back into work is to tell them to pull themselves together, and put them through workfare. As cheap labour for big corporations that don’t need it, like Tesco. Now with the genuinely depressed and anxious, it isn’t the case that they don’t want to work. It’s that they can’t. I know from personal experience. There gets to be a point when you really can’t go into work. And it isn’t just a case of not feeling bothered or up to it either. You feel ashamed because you can’t work. And putting you back into work, before you’re ready, won’t help.
But that’s ignored, or simply doesn’t register with the New Labour and Conservative supporters of this vile and destructive welfare policy.
I’m reblogging Mike’s article now because it ties in with several programmes about depression and mental health issues this week. And 9 O’clock tonight on BBC 1 there is The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive Revisited with Stephen Fry. This is the sequel to a documentary he made, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, ten years ago. Fry’s bipolar himself, and in the original documentary he spoke to other sufferers, including Hollywood star Richard Dreyfuss and one of the very great stars of British pop in the ’90s, Robbie Williams. Fry was on the One Show on Friday talking about the show. He mentioned there was a much greater awareness of the problem. He described talking about it before pupils at the most elite and famous public school in the country, and saw his young audience nodding in agreement when he talked about self-harm. He stated that this was astonishing, as when he was at school no-one had heard of it.
Presumably Fry means Eton, and I’m not particularly surprised to find that some of the pupils were all too aware of what he was talking about. The entire regime at public school seems designed to turn the young scions of the ruling classes either into complete bastards, or absolute mental wrecks. I can remember reading accounts in the Sunday Express when I was at school, where ex-private schoolboys stated that they had been left emotionally numb and scarred by their experiences. And the former schoolgirls had similarly had an horrific time. When former pupil described how the girls at her school were perpetually in tears. So much for happy schooldays and jolly hockey sticks.
This Wednesday, at 10.45 pm, the BBC is screening a documentary, Life After Suicide. The blurb for this runs
The leading cause of death in men below 50 is suicide, yet people still seem reluctant to talk about the grim reality. Angela Samata, whose partner Mark took his own life 11 years ago, meets others who have suffered a similar loss. Those she meets include Downton Abbey actor David Robb, who talks about the death of his actress wife Briony McRoberts in 2013; a Somerset farmer and his five young daughters; and a Norfolk woman who is living with the suicides of both her husband and her son. Showing as part of BBC1’s mental health season.
And at a quarter to midnight the following evening, on Thursday, there’s the rapper Professor Green: Suicide and Me. The Radio Time’s blurb for this goes
This deeply personal, affecting film created a nationwide stir when it was first aired on BBC3 last autumn. “Crying’s all I’ve bloody done, making this documentary.” remarks Stephen Manderson, aka rapper Professor Green, describing the emotions that frequently overwhelm him as he tries to better understand why his father committed suicide.
His conclusion is simple: men need to talk about their emotions.
That helps a lot. One of the reasons why women are apparently less likely to commit suicide is because women have more friends, to whom they can confide and share their troubles. But in the case of general depression and anxiety, much can be done to prevent this simply by easing the immense economic and social pressures on people, pressures that have been made much worse through the government’s austerity campaign, as well as making sure there’s better understanding and treatment available for mental illness.
Well, that’s me done on this issue. As Dr Frazier Crane used to say, ‘Wishing you good mental health’.
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