I’ve just got back from the launch in the Commons of ‘Rethink Politics’ an initiative funded by the Electoral Commission, supported by Rethink, the Mental Health charity, aimed at encouraging partcipation in politics by people who have been affected by mental illness. One of the successes of the project has been to get 5000 service users onto the electoral register. Another has been to train and support people to get involved in local politics and to understand how to influence their local MPs, Health Trusts, planning legislation and so on. Many of the barriers to political engagement are practical ones, which could easily be addressed. For example, the practice of sharing data held on the electoral roll for commercial use such as credit checks deters many people with mental health problems from registering. Recently we have had good new legislation to allow psychiatric inpatients, except those detained under criminal forensic sections, to vote in general elections. Now we need to get them to use that vote. I couldn’t help feeling while Adam Afriye, MP for Windsor, was doing his welcome to the Commons, that the same project would have been equally valuable to many other groups in society who feel excluded and who would gain confidence from getting involved in some similar initiative.
These are minor details, but important ones for those groups of people, however large or small they are.
Is it not a legal requirement for all people to be registered wherever they may live, or have they fallen until now between two stools and not got registered…. as out-patients… And not been lawfully registrable as in-patients?
My Lady, a good many people suffer mental illness imho more than 50% of the population. This ranges from depression, anxiety,agorophobia,eating disorders and many more quite debilitating illnesses. Part of their problems lay with bureaucracy especially from local Government who persistently invade the privacy of everyone, especially the poor. The amount of information they require for anything goes beyond need. The relatively simple act of applying for Housing Benefit requires huge amounts of form filling along with supplying large amounts of corrobation, most of which is unnecessary and superfluous. The invasion of privacy is astounding and the resulting stress from not supplying one item of evidence is mind blowing. Housing benefit is withheld, your rent isn`t paid, your landlord aggrieved and you are in the middle.
There have been some cases recently where the stress has been too much with local government and people have snapped. It is unfortunately understandable.
Local Councils have virtually no housing so people are forced into private renting. To find accomodation in that market is painful. First you have to find a landlord who will accept Housing Benefit, next you have to find a months rent, a months deposit and generally a £200 fee to the agency. A three bed property in the south, £800+ a month.
You`re looking for nearly £2000, with two kids. OK the Council MAY help but you will have to prove your income and every EXACT detail of your expenditure. Then they may take 3-4 weeks to decide by which time the property is let. So you start again. Your present Landlord is evicting you tomorrow….But don`t worry the Council failsafe of a grotty room, yes just the one for all of you with immigrants who will be housed before you is there. Oh and the doors not safe and the immigrants are from Eastern Europe where a system of secular violence prevails and they haven`t had time to integrate fully.
Pervasive invasion and an unjust system creates mental illness and criminality. Once there at that level you are typecast as a criminal and treated accordingly.
Then of course the system, media etc., states you should have the 42″ telly, broadband, a nice car and good clothes. More stress, more pressure and if criminality doesn`t get you mental illness will.
“… aimed at encouraging participation in politics by people who have been affected by mental illness”
Perhaps it is the case that too many people affected by mental illness are too involved in politics already! ‘Squiffy’ Asquith, Churchill, Charles Kennedy and others in both houses on both sides (alcoholism); Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, and Winston Churchill (depression); and probably more which you are more familiar with than I!
Yeah but they are not in-patients with a non-forensic background, Forensic ie more or less serious criminal record,
They are in-patients who will now have the right to vote, whether they are at the time in-patients or not.
Considering the closure of the big 19thC hospitals over the last 30 years, I don’t know what counts as “in-patient”.
There are some very small psychiatric units about these days, even run privately, whose patients will be very glad of their new found “freedom”.
Gareth Howell, yes you are right that everyone should register on the electoral roll but of course many hundreds of thousands do not for some of the reasons that Carl Holbrough mentions. But of course if you are registered at your home address until recently you were still not entitled to vote if you were a psychiatric in patient. In spite of the closure of the large mental hospitals there are still about 28,000 inpatient beds (down from the peak of 160,000 in 1955). Some would say not enough, I would say plenty if properly used.
Carl H the figure for the proportion of the population that experiences a ‘mental health challenge’ in their lifetime is about 1 in 4 not 50% but that’s a significant number and far greater than most parliamentarians realise.
Mark, cheap joke! Have you considered that there may be a benefit in having in parliament those who have experienced the difficulties mental ill health brings but are nevertheless able to continue to make a contribution and bring an understanding which is unique and valuable?
My Lady, the figures you quote, I take it, are official figures of those who ask for help. There are many that fall through the net or who soldier on because that`s what is expected of them.
I know of many men who have suffered anxiety, panic attacks and much more significant illness who are too proud to seek help. People who cannot cope taking solace in alcohol. People like me who have been agorophobic for 20 years who seek no treatment, no favours from the system such as sickness benefit but do what we can to carry on without becoming a mental illness statistic.
PTSD is nothing to be proud of, it is something a sufferer will be ashamed of, always feeling guilty, feeding the disease. We cope, we carry on but we are still here not recognised by your statistics.
If you ask ” Am I going mad” you`re not. YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. Think about this.
Of course you maybe correct maybe further up the ladder things are better but not in my experience or judgement. In the HoL it maybe 1 in 4, I don`t know but I know few people that haven`t either been prescribed anti-depressants, Diazepan or those that work it out with alcohol or other drugs. The Nation is in a far worse state than you can imagine…Oooh and I`m not being paranoid, least I think not.
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Baroness Murphy: One thing that does concern me is people coming here from mainland Europe with mental health problems and we have no visibility of them on the system.
Recently, I had to use a well known burger outlets parking because access to an adjoining retail car park was closed. Whilst I was unbuckling I could see in the rear view mirror somebody spending an overly long time foraging at a waste disposal bin. I watched him for a while and then he moved to another bin and started to do the same again.
I got out of the car and glared at him. He mumbled something back at me which I did not quite catch. On the way back from the retail park I felt very sorry for him thinking that “there but for the grace of God go I”. He was hungry, dishevelled and destitute.
I fumbled around in my wallet, I was out of cash, what I did have was a five euro note. I beckoned him across and tried to engage him in conversation. His English was not very good and it was clear to me that he was from abroad. I gave him the five euro note and went back to the car. I watched him out of the side mirror.
His face slowly lit up as though he had just won the lottery and then it slowly dawned on him that I had given him some currency that he could not spend. I set off wondering what would become of this man and the last of my cash. It was a spur of the moment thing and I have very mixed feelings about it. Was I right to do this or should I have just walked on by?
I was happy to see this today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8396147.stm
Employment and housing are indeed at the heart of the matter but understanding from the employer`s and Council`s point of view is vital. As my Lady probably already knows it is a tricky situation dealing with people in these circumstances. A depressed or anxious person often does not want to face normality, it has to be addressed with firmness yet leniency.