Government moves to end stigma of mental illness
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The government抯 Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) has announced far-reaching proposals which it hopes will end the stigma and discrimination attached to mental illness and encourage people back into meaningful lives.
This week the unit launched its report, Mental Health and Social Exclusion, which calls for health services to focus on the social as well as medical needs of hundreds of thousands of people excluded from wider society by mental illness.
Around 900 000 people a year claim sickness and disability benefits for mental health conditions with particularly high rates in the north of England. According to the report, mental illness costs the NHS ?7bn ($140bn, �116bn) a year through care costs, economic losses, and premature death.
The report sets out a five year plan with an ambitious anti-stigma and discrimination campaign aimed at employers, schools, and the media, which it hopes will dispel cultural myths that people with mental illness are dangerous, unstable, and unemployable.
All psychiatric patients in hospital are to be given vocational advice and support, and trusts will be told to strengthen links with job centres. NHS day centres must be redesigned with a focus on re-integrating patients into the community via job training, advice about employment, education, or voluntary work.
Benefits advice is to be clarified to make the transition to work easier, and staff at benefits offices and job centres are to be given mental health awareness training. The report also sets out a new public sector duty to promote equality of opportunity for people with mental health problems. And as part of the "normalisation" process, people with a diagnosed mental illness will be allowed to sit on a jury or stand as a school governor.
Progress on the plan will be overseen by the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) and implemented on a local level by primary care trusts and local authorities. The report was welcomed by mental health charities, with some reservations over lack of funding for training and concerns that primary care trusts are already overburdened. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the UK mental health charity SANE, said the benefits system needed a massive overhaul to make it fairer and easier for people with mental health problems to use it.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists "broadly welcomes" the report, which highlights the "significant barriers" to inclusion faced by people with mental health problems.
The college抯 president, Dr Mike Shooter, said: "The stigma associated with mental illness can lead to people being excluded from many areas of life, particularly in the workplace."
But he said the college was "concerned that the proposed new mental health bill will actually increase the stigma associated with mental illness, by focusing on risk." He added: "It is vital that the SEU抯 report has a positive impact on the lives of people with mental health problems both in terms of improving the legislation and tackling discrimination."
Launching the report, which he said was a milestone in improving the lives of people with mental illness, Professor Louis Appleby, the national director for mental health, defended the new legislation. "The legislation would only be used to make ensure people get appropriate care when they can抰 recognise their own treatment needs."(London Mark Gould)
This week the unit launched its report, Mental Health and Social Exclusion, which calls for health services to focus on the social as well as medical needs of hundreds of thousands of people excluded from wider society by mental illness.
Around 900 000 people a year claim sickness and disability benefits for mental health conditions with particularly high rates in the north of England. According to the report, mental illness costs the NHS ?7bn ($140bn, �116bn) a year through care costs, economic losses, and premature death.
The report sets out a five year plan with an ambitious anti-stigma and discrimination campaign aimed at employers, schools, and the media, which it hopes will dispel cultural myths that people with mental illness are dangerous, unstable, and unemployable.
All psychiatric patients in hospital are to be given vocational advice and support, and trusts will be told to strengthen links with job centres. NHS day centres must be redesigned with a focus on re-integrating patients into the community via job training, advice about employment, education, or voluntary work.
Benefits advice is to be clarified to make the transition to work easier, and staff at benefits offices and job centres are to be given mental health awareness training. The report also sets out a new public sector duty to promote equality of opportunity for people with mental health problems. And as part of the "normalisation" process, people with a diagnosed mental illness will be allowed to sit on a jury or stand as a school governor.
Progress on the plan will be overseen by the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) and implemented on a local level by primary care trusts and local authorities. The report was welcomed by mental health charities, with some reservations over lack of funding for training and concerns that primary care trusts are already overburdened. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the UK mental health charity SANE, said the benefits system needed a massive overhaul to make it fairer and easier for people with mental health problems to use it.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists "broadly welcomes" the report, which highlights the "significant barriers" to inclusion faced by people with mental health problems.
The college抯 president, Dr Mike Shooter, said: "The stigma associated with mental illness can lead to people being excluded from many areas of life, particularly in the workplace."
But he said the college was "concerned that the proposed new mental health bill will actually increase the stigma associated with mental illness, by focusing on risk." He added: "It is vital that the SEU抯 report has a positive impact on the lives of people with mental health problems both in terms of improving the legislation and tackling discrimination."
Launching the report, which he said was a milestone in improving the lives of people with mental illness, Professor Louis Appleby, the national director for mental health, defended the new legislation. "The legislation would only be used to make ensure people get appropriate care when they can抰 recognise their own treatment needs."(London Mark Gould)