World Mental Health Day on October 10th took the theme of good mental health as a universal human right.
In the UK, despite over 75 years of universal healthcare via the NHS, attaining good mental health as a human right is getting ever harder to achieve following over a decade of underfunding and policies that have exacerbated the root causes of poor mental health, such as poverty. Good mental health is still too often dependent on the circumstances you are born into and your ethnicity.
Once diagnosed, treatment can be difficult to access, with long waiting lists, and not of a high enough standard.
Children from the poorest families are four times as likely to have a mental health problem by the age of 11 than the wealthiest children.
Black people in the UK are four times more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act than white people. And people with severe mental illness face a 20-year shorter life expectancy than average in the UK.
The report – A Mentally Healthier Nation – published by the Centre for Mental Health on behalf of over 30 national charities, representing many thousands of people in the UK, calls for a long-term mental health plan that protects people’s mental health, reduces mental health inequalities, and improves mental health services nationwide.
The report asks for more investment in better and more equitable mental health services for treatment, but also for action to tackle the root causes of much poor mental health – poverty, racial injustice, and issues within the benefits and justice systems.
Full story in The Lowdown, 13 October 2023