Friday 10 October was World Mental Health Day, and Emma joined South Tyneside Mind and other local groups at The People’s Café in South Shields Central Library to talk about tackling mental health stigma.
Emma told the audience about the urgent need to educate the public about mental illness so that sufferers could speak openly about their experiences. She also explained the challenges mental health service were facing because of budget cuts by the Coalition. You can read Emma’s speech below.
Also speaking at the event was Paul Johnson of the North East Mental Health Development Unit.
World Mental Health Day was founded in 1992. This year’s focus was on schizophrenia, which affects an estimated 26 million people worldwide.
Altogether one in four people will experience some kind of mental ill health each year.
Emma’s speech on World Mental Health Day
Good morning everyone
I am really pleased to be here and that you are all here to take part in World Mental Health Day, hosted by South Tyneside’s own Happiness and Wellbeing Network.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the network, it is a collaboration between our Council and a number of different community organisations.
As the name suggests the Network is about promoting positive mental health. It organises events like this one to spread mental health awareness, and uses its ‘Five a day for health and happiness approach’ to help people care for their own mental health and wellbeing.
Just like the body, there are everyday things we can do to keep our minds in good health. The Network encourages people to follow five steps each day:
To Connect with other people;
To stay active;
To reflect on the world around you and on your own feelings;
To always keep learning new things;
and to take the time to give back and do good for others.
These may seem like very simple things, but in our busy lives it is sometimes not easy to find the time to do them. But they do make a real difference. These things are an important part of what it is to be human, and it’s no surprise that without opportunities to socialise, share or explore the world around us anyone of us can feel unfulfilled and unhappy.
So I want to congratulate the Network for the excellent work they do and the difference they make to the lives of so many people in South Tyneside.
I now want to go on to talk a little more about World Mental Health Day, and mental health in the UK.
If you’ve taken the time to come here today, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is a huge gap between the way mental health and physical health are understood and treated.
Even in relatively advanced countries like the UK diagnosis is poor and treatment is inconsistent and there remains stubbornly little education about mental health. The result is that mental illness still carries with it a real stigma, and there are still a lot of common misunderstandings about mental health in our society.
For one thing, mental illness is far more common than most people would believe. Each year one in four people will experience some form of mental ill health.
For a lot of people this seems a surprising statistic, but when you speak to them they all know friends or family who have suffered from anxiety or depression.
In a lot of people’s minds, they don’t think of these as mental health issues. This is something we need to change, because these are the most common mental health difficulties people encounter, yet often they go unrecognised and unsupported.
Lack of education means that many people still have a fundamental misunderstanding of what mental illness is. For many people mental illness is still something characterised by strange, erratic or dangerous behaviour. So the vast majority of mental health problems, those which don’t fit the stereotype, often stay hidden or go unrecognised.
Because a depressed person’s behaviour doesn’t fit the stereotype, there is a belief that their illness is somehow less real, or at least less serious. It is too easy to dismiss as ‘just sadness’, when in fact it is entirely different. For some people with depression they are unable to feel anything at all. Some people have described it to me as like being dead and alive at the same time.
To an outsider it might seem like the remedy for sadness is happiness, and that a depressed person needs help taking a more positive outlook. But that simply isn’t the nature of the illness. It doesn’t follow that logic.
I think that the biggest and most important challenge we face in improving mental health is overcoming these misunderstandings. Too often mental ill health isn’t recognised because it isn’t seen as an illness at all.
We need to reach a point where the general public understand the nature of mental illness – the more we do that the better diagnosis, treatment and social attitudes will get. That is why World Mental Health Day is such an important event.
Of course, it is easy to talk about changing attitudes, but that is only part of the battle. No matter how well-informed our public is we still need dedicated mental health services that can support people in their communities.
Treatment for mental health is not something that happens overnight. It is not something that is ‘cured’ by a drug or procedure. The term ‘cure’ is not helpful when applied to mental health, and we should not think about it in the same way as we do physical illness. A doctor can tell you when an organ is functioning properly or when a virus has been killed off.
But a person’s recovery from mental illness varies hugely from person to person. Recovery is about helping a person reach a point where they want to be. There is no checklist or set timescale for that. You cannot tell a person they are mentally healthy if they do not feel it.
A recovery is generally a gradual process, and not always a linear one either. People will suffer setbacks, and they need to be supported every step of the way.
To do that we need accessible services that are able to dedicate time to each individual. Whatever a person’s route to recovery, they will need plenty of time to talk, whether that is one on one with a supportive and friendly face or through group therapy.
Unfortunately in the UK services are under pressure, and the funding is moving in the opposite direction. Investment in adult mental health services has fallen in each year of the Coalition Government.
Between 2011 and 2013 mental health trusts have seen their funding cut by 2% in real terms, even though demand for their services is increasing. Health cuts have fallen disproportionately hard on mental health.
Those services that remain are doing their best to cope with the strain, but in mental health it is hard to think in terms of efficiency savings – treatment takes time, and it needs people. Cuts to services mean that waiting times for things like talking therapies are increasing. They are one of the few treatments currently exempt from the NHS’s 18-week maximum waiting time, although I was pleased to hear this week that the Government is at last planning to correct this. I will certainly be on their case to make sure they stick to this commitment.
But more worrying is the situation in crisis care. The most difficult and dangerous time for a person suffering from mental ill health is before treatment begins, and even when a person is working towards recovery they will suffer setbacks. At moments like these crisis units make all the difference, and often do lifesaving work.
Yet today four out of ten mental health trusts have under-staffed crisis care. One in ten crisis teams are so stretched they are no longer able to operate a round-the-clock service. That means that some people will – at a moment of crisis in their lives – find themselves on their own. And these cuts are happening at a time when demand for crisis services is increasing.
So as well as changing public attitudes, we should not be afraid to be political in demanding more from our Government. Yes, we need to end the stigma around mental illness, educate the public and make our society more open and understanding about mental health issues. But we also need to get serious about treatment and make sure that the help is there for people who need it.
I look forward to a day when we no longer have scores of flowers and cards on the Leas because people in our town have felt so helpless and desperate they have taken their own lives and I look forward to a day when there is true parity for mental health services.
But in the meantime I wanted to end by talking about what we can do here today.
On World Mental Health Day we can all do our own bit to educate ourselves about mental illness: the experiences of those who have suffered from it; the route to recovery; the ways we can be supportive and help people towards that recovery.
We can explore our own knowledge of mental illness and recognise the gaps – things we do not understand and things we have yet to learn.
We can educate ourselves and start to think about how we can be more welcoming and more understanding – a better friend or neighbour or colleague to someone who is going through a tough time in their life and who may need someone to turn to. We can make sure that that person does not feel isolated, afraid or ashamed because of their illness.
We have a number of fantastic organisations here today who are all available to share their knowledge and answer questions. If we all leave today better informed than when we arrived, we will all be in a better position to make a difference.
This is how we make change – one person, one day at a time.