that social contact is an amazingly effective 'treatment' for mental ill
health the promotion of the community and their personal responsibility
to look after each other could bring significant gains over the next
decade in the quest for a happier nation.
What the hell am I talking about? The only research I've read (and there
isn't much ) on the effect of economic crisis on mental and physical
healthcare shows an extraordinary result. While physical health goes
down mental health goes up anti-cyclically with the trough and peak
respectively happening a year after the recession tipping point.
The study was in America and used weak proxy measures such as access to
healthcare but I think there's a partial truth in the result. America is
a strange nation where healthcare wasn't available for all back in the
day but it also has a culture of personal charity. It is my belief that
it is this informal system of state - society itself outside the rules
and regulations - that comes together to help each other in bad times.
Another effect might be people begin to value what's truly important
rather than what surplus wealth brings.
Speculation aside what I'm talking about is people being willing to look
after each other. They need to remember those they exclude. They need to
remember those who can no longer fit into the old social circles as
poverty means they can't afford to keep up with the costs of
socialisation. It'll take a big shift in UK culture but it's a necessary
one for people to begin to take responsibility for each others mental
health rather than relying on therapists and doctors to look after the
miserable and worried people of the nation. It's returning mental
healthcare to where it belongs: with the people.
The £173 million a year that 'IAPT is going to cost is not good value
for money based on the current evidence and health economics stuff. A
£30 million a year campaign (I just pulled that figure out of the air)
to promote the informal mental healthcare system could have significant
impact. Perhaps not as much as a well funded psychological therapies
scheme but putting the savings into ensuring people eat healthier would
offer additional benefits such that this solution would be considerably
more effective than the IAPT scheme at maintaining the mental health of
the nation.
I think it's pretty much in line with the Big Society thing too.
I think many people don't understand that the mental health system, in
the main, only exists because of society's dysfunction rather than any
problem with the individual. Society was made malformed after the
Industrial Revolution which forgot that humanity is a spectrum rather
than a single thing. It forgot that people are human. It made people who
succeeded by putting all their life into work and gave them no time to
support each other.
Here is an opportunity from the challenge of the upcoming crisis: to
heal the very fabric of society itself. To right centuries of wrong and
create a harmonious society for everyone where people are willing to
help out their mate, to take time out of their life to help someone in
need and to give of their own time rather than refer someone to a doctor
because they're too busy or self-involved to deal with another's misery.
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