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Do you Mind?
Posted Thursday 4 March 2010
Right, well this is my first venture into the blogosphere so be gentle with me, fellow bloggers.
Get involved: Do you know what to say if a candidate knocks on your door?After what seems like a lifetime of talk about elections, we are now only 10 weeks away from the general election, expected on Thursday 6 May 2010. To mark the final countdown Mind has launched our Do you Mind? general election campaign.
If opinion polls are to be believed, this election will be the tightest in recent memory. Last week polls put the Conservatives at a nine point advantage over Labour, but a recent poll over the weekend closed that gap to a mere two-point lead.
Over the past year, I’ve been in meetings with representatives from the three main political parties who have all agreed with Mind that mental health is on a tipping point which could see a permanent and lasting break through into mainstream public policy and politics. We’ve also had lots of nods of agreement about the need to make sure the lessons of the past recession are not repeated and we don’t see another generation consigned to the wasteland of long-term unemployment.
While these developments and nods of support are to be welcomed, now is the time for us to see the meat on the bone and for politicians and the plethora of candidates pounding the doorsteps up and down the country to essentially put their money where their mouths are.
With so many MPs standing down and marginal seats likely to change hands, this expected intake of new MPs will be huge. Rather like us campaigners, most people enter politics to change the world for the better – we simply choose different routes. We don't always agree, and it can take years and millions of people like you speaking up and making yourself heard. But when we do come to see eye to eye, those agreements can bring about real and lasting change to society and for individuals.
So when those candidates come knocking at your door, take the time to really press them about their own attitudes and views on mental health and what they will do to make a positive difference. Let’s make sure we elect a group of MPs who will lead the way in challenging stigmatising and discriminatory attitudes and behaviours to mental health, not add to them. It’s not much to ask for is it?
Novice blogger Vicki Nash is Mind's Head of Policy and Campaigns
6 Comments
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Reassuring that someone is advocating for the thousands suffering the 'invisible' disability.
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I have no faith in any party. I waited for a Labour government all my adult life and they turned out to be the best Tory government we've ever seen. None of them represent working class people, and both Labour and Conservatives keep trying to out tough each other on issues such as mental health and welfare, we're easy targets for them and nothing more. This government listened to us even less than the previous adminstration
I want a ballot paper which says 'none of the above'. -
My main concern, as a person with severe and enduring mental illness who is also lucky enough to be able to work full-time, is how my friends who are not so lucky are going to fare under the next government.
I've heard that Cameron has openly queried that all the people under 35 who are on various disability benefits could possibly be that ill and that apparently depression and anxiety are best cured by getting into work. This indicates to me that he has no interest in actually comprehending the real nature of disability caused by mental illness.
I don't think Labour are going to be much better given the way ESA is being administered. I'd like to think the Lib Dems would be, but they don't strike me as being particularly effectual.
It just makes me so angry to see friends of mine being harassed and bullied in a manner that makes their illness so much worse over sums in the region of 50 quid a month or refusals to supply vital equipment like wheelchairs, that they cannot afford themselves. It's like because they don't have paid work, they are not real people and have no rights to a life with the best health possible. And pretty much all the parties seem to agree that if you don't work, you don't count.
Why am I supposedly so much better than them because I am able to show up in the office from 9-5 every day? Why would the Tories be full of admiring comments for my efforts while busy having a go at my friends?
Of course, it's because I don't "let" my disability stop me - but that has nothing to do with it, I won the genetic lottery on medication response, and that's all there is to it.
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Here here Dee Dee, it's so very easy to judge people and there is an increasing divide I've noticed between service users who do paid work and those who don't [although of course many do unpaid voluntary work which seems to mean nothing now]. Why are those not in paid work so harshly judged by everyone? People don't react exactly the same to any circumstance. One person might kill themselves, another do really well and the next person somewhere in between. Yet services, [charities to a certain extent], everyone has jumped on this bandwagon that people's lives are just meaningless unless they are doing paid work.
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I very much agree with Dee Dee and Mindreader.
Forced to leave my last job, largely due to my mental heath difficulties - it was a great source of relief to qualify for incapacity benefit as I was not well enough to be looking for alternative employment. I did not feel I had been thrown on a scrap heap - just in receipt of essential financial support.
The government is right to look at ways of tackling discrimination in the workplace and improving access to meaningful, supportive and sustainable employment for people with mental health conditions, but not at the expense of those who are reliant on benefits.
Like many people I went on to suffer very badly at the hands of the DWP, Jobcentre Plus and their medical practitioners and my health deteriorated.
Last week's publication of a damning report on the implementation of the new employment support allowance, serves as a harrowing reminder that 'welfare reform' is predominantly a cost-cutting exercise, with an overwhelming disregard for peoples's wellbeing.It is difficult enough living with mental illness - to be persecuted for it is unacceptable.
In that the Department for Work and Pensions has proved itself unfit, disability benefits including IB, ESA (and hopefully its successor) should be the responsibility of a Department for Health and Social Care.
My vote will go to the party which demonstrates the strongest commitment to caring for societies vulnerable.
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Well, I can see why people are strongly encouraged to hold down a job if at all possible, because a steady income from a job gives you independence and peace of mind - no functionary is going to arbitrarily halve your pay like your benefits after an election even if it is at minimum wage.
I derive great peace of mind from knowing that I am independent as a result of working, even though my husband is also in full-time work and could support me and him. So it has major benefits.
But not everyone can work, and it's a practical, not a moral matter. I think things have gone too far and it's become a sort of puritanism purely for the sake of it. Some people cannot work. Penalising them doesn't change that.
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