At the moment mental healthcare is mainly about changing the individual and reducing their psychopathology. Million and billions are put into the effort to drug up the nation, consider life's problem as illness and 'treat' undesireable behaviours. That's called the NHS and modern mental healthcare.
A drop in the ocean in comparison is the pittance spent on antistigma. Time to Change is the most significant antistigma campaign and it's not government funded which has been one of the best things for it because it has given it the independence to be effective in my opinion.
£20million is fuck all to make the structural change, by which I mean the fundamental change in society, that is required for the mentally ill to be part of society. To rectify the error in the way buildings were made it was mandated that public buildings need ramps and lifts so the widest proportion of the human race could use them. People with 2 legs, 1 leg or no legs could all use modern buildings.
Isolation, poverty and other impacts on the individual caused by stigma exacerbate mental illness. In other words becoming poor because you're mad or becoming alone and excluded because you're mad makes people feel worse.
Employment structures need massive changes to be made ready for the widest number of people of different abilites and types. This extends to learning disabilities which are usually discounted as mental illnesses (but I'm going to consider as mental illnesses).
People may not realise that much of mental illness is a construct and that it was the change in society in the 19th century that produced the mental healthcare system. The need for automotons for the factories and dark satanic mills, automotons who were created through the mandatory schooling system, meant that it was these types who prospered. Non-automotons, nowadays called the mentally ill, were disadvantaged only through the difficulty with which they fitted into the Second Wave/Industrial Revolution workplaces.
Psychiatry was invented to cope with that. Third Wave/Information or Ideas Revolution workplaces which were partially seen in the New Media-type organisations that were borne after the dotcom boom-bust were an example of how alternative workplaces could look and these would be places where automotons and the mentally ill could co-exist and perhaps without the need to label them as different.
And yet this isn't the really important area for structural change and antistigma. It starts with schools. It's where the worst discrimination and the best acceptance takes places. Most of all, I think it's where people can learn most. I remember some teenagers taking the piss out of an autistic person while I was on the tube. I don't think any of the other passengers were bothered but I had to mention that they were making fun of someone's illness.
The fat kid, the kid with specs, the dumb kid, the kid that looks like a girl, the kid that isn't cool, the kid that is poor, the kid that isn't fashionable, the kid that doesn't fit it - they're the many that are prejudiced against at school. The kid that's going through psychosis? That's the kid that's never even seen in school (and don't even get me started on how that may be the root of the supposed brain shrinkage shown in fMRI studies and little to do with a brain illness per se).
The reach of the many antistigma campaigns that have happened in the UK have touched the surface but know the iceberg underneath. Does anyone else understand that£20million (or three years worth of bonuses for the top earning exotic derivatives trader in the UK to put into context just how little that money is when compared with other things) is like holding a paper fan to the iceberg?
5% shifts in stigma and discriminations are just pissing in the ocean but they've managed to make sea levels rise. The problem is that £250 million is still pissing in the ocean and Time to Change don't have Lord Layard's health economics talent on their side.
But, perhaps, spending that sort of money on making the UKs work places mental health safe and accessible would do more to help people stay in work and get people off the benefits trap and into suitable jobs a lot better than a single form of psychotherapy for common mental disorders.
But what does this loser, drunk, drug addicted freak know anyway?
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