Bryony Gordon
It’s mad that there’s no money for mental health
Another day, another bleak bit of news about mental health provision in this country. In a revelation that will surprise precisely nobody who has ever found themselves in the unfortunate position of trying to seek help for a mentally unwell daughter or son, doctors have warned that some children and teenagers have to attempt suicide before they can receive help. An investigation by Pulse, a magazine for GPS, found that a third of family doctors said that the criteria for referrals to child and adolescent mental health services had become stricter. As Jonathan Heatley, a GP in West Sussex, put it: “One way to get to the system quickly is to attempt suicide.”
Every month I receive scores of messages from people struggling to get basic mental health care, either for their loved ones, or for themselves. These messages are so familiar to me that I am ashamed to say I have developed a sort of selfprotective hardness to them, in lieu of being able to offer any solutions.
And yet this quote from a GP, effectively saying that if a child needs treatment they need to first go away and attempt to kill themselves, still shocked me to my bones.
I am pretty sure there is not a single doctor or nurse who entered medicine imagining that they would have to advise their most vulnerable patients to go away and become life-threateningly unwell in order to receive help.
It goes against the grain of absolutely all good medical training. It would be like the NHS refusing to treat anyone not terminally ill or in need of intensive care – people with broken limbs or non-life threatening illnesses told to come back only when they are completely at death’s door, if of course they manage to make it as far as the hospital.
In 2013, David Cameron announced with great fanfare that mental health would enjoy parity of esteem with physical health. But the year is now 2020, and all sorts of promises to boost spending on mental health care have been broken and forgotten about, their main purpose being to make the Government look good, rather than making society’s most fragile feel good.
The truth is, it is fiendishly complicated to access mental health care in this country because, time and time again, the sector is paid only lip service by the powers that be.
They tweet about the importance of talking about your mental health, while neglecting to mention that – in terms of healthcare professionals – there is barely anyone to do this with, or that the ones who do exist are so stretched that their own mental health often feels precarious.
It is instructive that another GP quoted in the Pulse investigation said the majority of mentally ill people are advised to speak to charities to get help.
“Referrals come back saying they don’t meet the criteria,” said Maddi Ridley, “and suggesting where the child or adult can get support locally from our counselling services run by charities. But often they need a psychiatrist. We’ve seen quite a number of deaths by suicide in teenage children … the waiting list for counselling is 18 months.” I’m sorry to have to use the word “bonkers”, but that is what this is. Investing in good child mental health pays dividends down the line – ignore it and you wind up paying for it anyway, in terms of unemployment, crime, and various physical illnesses that invariably stem from mental illness. Not to mention the untold despair felt by everyone who loves the unwell child.
In the same week that the Pulse investigation was published, a major campaign by the FA to get men talking about their mental health was launched, backed by the Duke of Cambridge. It will supply football fans with mental health tools and encourage them to talk about anxiety and depression. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, and Nadine Dorries, the mental health minister, have eagerly applauded the initiative, as well they might when it gives them an opportunity to say they are doing something without actually having to lift a finger.
But Hancock and Dorries need to stop relying on royals and celebrities to preach the message of good mental health, and start practising it. It is not enough for politicians to say they care. When children are dying, the Government needs to do.