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A day in history - MPs debate mental health
Posted Thursday 14 June 2012
Today, MPs will be debating the huge topic of mental health in a full debate in the House of Commons Chamber. The debate has been granted following a request by Charles Walker MP and me to the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee. A special thanks to our fellow MPs, Sir Peter Bottomley, Jon Cruddas, Mark Durkan, Dr Julian Lewis, and James Morris, for helping us demonstrate cross party support for this debate.
We have deliberately not restricted the debate to a specific issue because we want MPs to be able to talk about mental health in the way it affects them and their work as a Member of Parliament.
This might be personal or family experiences, experiences relayed by constituents and/or their carers, or views based on visits to local organisations or NHS services.
One of the issues raised most often is the stigma surrounding mental health. People are often reluctant to talk about their own experiences in public or to their employers or friends. Often, only close relatives, GPs or consultants will know what they are going through.
As well as dealing with the specific issues surrounding mental health care and treatment, we need to end mental health discrimination. We need mental health to be treated on a equal footing with physical health. I hope that having a House of Commons debate will contribute to this.
I applaud the work of organisations such as Mind and Time to Change who are working on this as well as newspapers such as the Sunday Express who have published their own Charter for better mental health.
In their joint briefing to MPs ahead of the debate, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists made the point that: ..poor mental health has an impact on every area of government policy: health care; benefits; housing and debt; social exclusion; business and employment; and criminal justice.
One of the points I will be making is that we need to listen more to the voices of people living with mental health problems. In my experience, once people have been through the mental health system they have a clear idea of what works and what doesn’t and yet too often their views go unheeded.
If we are to make the Government’s pledge, “No decision about me, without me” a reality we have to change that.
We know that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem in any given year and the World Health Organisation predicts that within 20 years, depression will be the second most common cause of ill health.
The NHS spends more on mental health than on any other condition, including cancer and heart disease.
I hope that the Government will explain, during the debate, the progress made on implementing its mental health strategy, “No Health Without Mental Health”. I also hope that MPs will be able to demonstrate during the debate both areas of best practice and areas where care needs to be improved.
Nicky Morgan
Nicky is MP for Loughborough, visit Nicky at:
www.nickymorgan.com or follow her on Twitter.
Nicky will be at the debate so she probably won't be able to answer comments today.
Watch the debate live from 2pm or follow it on Twitter #mentalhealthdebate
9 Comments
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Having just tuned in to this on the web after the start time what, has really hit me already about this debate is the very empty house that speakers are sitting in. I really thought the house would be full!
I just pray this poor turn out does not imply that actually MP's on the whole have little empathy for mental health? -
*"The NHS spends more on mental health than on any other condition, including cancer and heart disease."*
I'd like to point out that cancer and heart disease are specific conditions. 'Mental health' is is a whole range of conditions - the same as 'physical health' is. The above is a bit of an odd comparison, possibly included in those terms for the purposes of demonstrating the scale of need, and therefore priority, against common physical conditions; but actually portrays the impression which seems common even within healthcare circles that 'mental health' is one single condition, and therefore only justifies the sort of expenditure or facility that a single physical condition would be subject to...
By all means compare depression, or bipolar, or schizophrenia, or OCD with cancer and heart disease, but don't lump the whole gamut of MH conditions together as a viable comparison - it doesn't do the field justice.
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Phil - I think there were a lot of MPs who wanted to be there but had constituency engagements. There are often fewer MPs in Westminster on Thursdays anyway so I wouldn't read too much into an emptyish chamber. And, good point, JSD - in my speech I did say that mental health makes up 23% of the disease burden in the UK but only 11% of the NHS budget but, yes, point taken that mental health is an umbrella term and there are lots of conditions underneath that.
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Changing the existing legal restraints barring people with mental health issues from certain offices is excellent. It is removing an imposed impediment. However couching it with the current vogue word “discrimination” fills me with fear. We need to remove the impediment without unleashing a new rights-based jamboree with all the implications of fat fees for lawyers and fun for the professionally outraged.
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In reply to Phil & Nicky Morgan. I'm fairly sure the MPs have constituency engagements that keep them away from the chamber on a fairly regular basis, but it occurs to me that many of them chose to ignore those engagements on the previous day when Jeremy Hunt was trying to redeem himself over misleading Parliament. I would suggest that mental health was of less interest than the spectacle of a fellow MP being hauled across the coals...
While I realise attendance cannot be mandatory due to the distances MPs would have to travel, I have to admit I was quite disappointed, nay disgusted, at how few MPs bothered to turn up for such an important debate. -
As far as I see it, MP's talking about mental illness will now be used as a weapon against those on sickness benefit.
I watched some of the debate and it that time never heard anyone mention the misery being inflicted on the mentally ill through welfare reform. I heard CBT mentioned, at one time. The CBT cure all was originally going to be forced on people at the job centre but it did not get passed in the welfare reform act. -
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120614/debtext/120614-0002.htm
Hansard mental health debate 14 June 2012.
I apologise for my previous post not publised yet, there is reference to ESA and WCA. -
Dear Sir,
Where have the comments gone for today. they were on earlier
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I'll say it again as I've said it on a previous blog, high profile people talking about mental health problems is counterproductive. They are often lucky enough to be in well paid professions and rewarded for speaking out. They will not be herded into workfare programs where they'll be treated like shit or suffer the dehumanising welfare reform regime. The only thing that will happen is that 'Well despite our problems we managed to do well in so an so' giving the impression that we who are not in employment are just lazy losers.
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