Reflections on World Mental Health Day

by Sandra Webster

I am writing this at the end of the Tory party conference. A week full of plenitudes and mumbles about equality and how the Tories are cool Britannia. I and many other people with long term illnesses and disabilities might want to insert Cruel Britannia instead. Folk with disabilities have been urged by Ian Duncan Smith to use work to escape from the difficult circumstances they find themselves in as they are unable to work. The Tories may describe themselves as being a “central” party, but I would go further than that, they are a party with a pitiless black hole of despair at their centre and a singularity to crush any human compassion.

On World Mental Health Day I have to celebrate all those who are getting by despite the Tory cuts. The folk who still campaign through their pain. Mental ill-health is a hidden disability. Some efforts have been made to encourage folk to talk about their mental health but sadly many still see it as nothing more than a dose of the blues, a few voices from the ether. The truth though is that friends, workmates and family have to make time to here how people are really feeling.

Ian Duncan Smith believes work is the way out and a disability should not be a barrier. We are hearing rumours about the wonders of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy the new panacea. The truth is research shows that any talking therapy helps people living with mental ill health find strategies to help. Professionals are raising alarms about the possibility that psychologists may be employed in job centres. What will these professionals be able to do? We have seen how many people have been let down by politically driven work capability assessments and found “fit for work”. For some the pressure has become too much. Suicide is rife – the single biggest killer of men between the ages of 20 and 50.

With mental ill health you can have good days and other days when basic tasks seem impossible. The barriers folk face are attitudinal: much more difficult to deal with than the physical ones. How does mental health fit into the government plans for the reform of disability benefits? Organisations have warned about the pressures being placed on the most vulnerable. Access to out and in-patient services are becoming more difficult. Child and Adolescent Mental Health services are creaking under the weight of referrals. More and more people will reach breaking point without any support networks.

Many people with mental ill-health find it difficult to advocate for themselves and more and more we are expected to manage our condition. Depression can prevent folk asking for help and even avoid the professionals expected to support them. With increasing case-loads tragedies will happen.

I watched the Tory Party Conference with more and more dismay. I knew it was coming but the vitriol and personal attacks on the vulnerable make me sad. If this is what life is like in a Better Together UK, are there people with humanity left? Then I remembered those outside who marched in protest of what was going on inside. To me we on this side of the fence are the most important. I predict the next Tory round of attacks on people living with mental ill-health will only get worse. I take comfort though that all of us can make a difference and that is my challenge to you on World Mental Ill Health Day. Look out for those you know, have conversations. Give a hug – virtual or otherwise.

We all need to look after each other.

Those who have been affected by mental ill health know the impact but also know the lessons about compassion and humanity that no-one can teach. That is why we need to stand together and challenge the rhetoric. We can do it together and one person at a time. Make a difference because you can. Reach out human to human and with hope to change the world.

Sandra Webster is the national co-spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party

Photo: by Hernán Piñera (Hug) [CC BY 2.0]