Mental Health

Some of you may recall the Sun's drooling headline '1,200 killed by mental patients' last week.  The Sun claims that it isn't really trying to stigmatise people with mental heal issues but rather draw attention to the number of people who have been let down by the poor mental health provision of this country.

Well, if that was true then they would point out that there has, according to the most recently available figures, been "a fall in homicide by people with mental illness, including people with psychosis".  They would also lead, as the Eastern Daily Press did, with a headline about the number of vulnerable people who have committed suicide while supposedly receiving support from the mental health profession.

Across the global north, one in four people will experience mental health problems in their lifetimes.  Most make a full recovery, some of us need on going care.  However a huge number of us struggle on without help, mostly because we fear what we will get if we speak out considering the 'Mental Patient' and 'Psycho Ward' Halloween costumes on sale this year.  That's just brilliant Tesco and Asda, just encourage the cruel stereotypes 'cause that's exactly just what we don't need.

Then people wonder why places like the Winterbourne View care home and Rycroft go on for years without anything being done about them.  It's because people with mental disabilities and mental health problems have been depicted as animalist, sub-human, violent monsters for years.  That's why the Government has been able to leave the mental care system so beggarly short of funds.  It's easy to syphon money away from the benefits of mentally ill 'animals' and give it to 'real people'.

I can well believe that people with severe and on going mental health problems are ten times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than they are to perpetrate it.  I should know I've been there.  I've been to the bottom of that deep, dark pit called depression and far from knifing someone else, all I wanted to do was curl up in a corner some where and just die.

Depression like that leaves it's marks but I did not have any help, either during my mental breakdown or for ten years afterwards until I was offered mental support while I was nursing my Mother during the treatment for her diagnosed terminal cancer.

This is why people with mental illnesses won't speak out - if we do, half the time we are ignored and the other half the time we might get help but only if it's coupled to people looking at us as if we are a threat to society.

One last thing, By law anyone who has been sectioned due to mental health problems has no human rights.  So all those nursing staff that beat them up can be done for cruelty and a breach of the Hippocratic Oath but not for a breach of human rights because the patients have none.