Displaying items by tag: Mental Health

Mental health units and units with people with learning disability are often full, operating under massive strain, having to make use of agency staff, risking violence, using force and restrictive interventions and even seeing patient-on-patient assaults. Last summer, NHS England announced £76.5million of investment in the Transforming Care programme, to move people with learning disabilities out of hospital and into the community. Experts, however, warn that unless funding is properly pooled between local government and the NHS, problems will continue and thousands of people stuck in hospital settings will continue to be left without protection and without a voice. People with learning disabilities are being forgotten. It is a hidden problem. We have a responsibility to treat everyone as equal citizens. It is intolerable for people with special needs to be locked up, breaching their human rights, when they are capable of living with support in the community.

The charity Place2Be says, ‘At least three children in every classroom have a diagnosable mental health issue, and even more worry about everyday things such as school work, family life and friendships’. In Northern Ireland one in ten school children have a diagnosable mental illness, and in 2018 some 35,000 children were treated by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Across the UK schools are in the front line dealing with day-to-day anxiety manifesting itself in children. Many are developing programmes and offering counselling services. Body image, exam stress and bullying are the main topics they cover. In spite of financial and working time pressures for families, parents have an important role to play: quality time is the most important investment to be made in children’s future emotional health. See

Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has called on social media giants to ‘purge’ material promoting self-harm and suicide, in the wake of links to teenager Molly Russell's suicide. They could be banned if they fail to comply. The 14-year-old took her life after viewing disturbing content about suicide on Instagram. Her father believed Instagram ‘helped kill my daughter’. Instagram owners, Facebook, said they were ‘deeply sorry’. The charity Papyrus, working to prevent youth suicide, had a spike in calls to their helpline after the BBC reported the link between suicide and social media. Meanwhile, Facebook removed 364 ‘fake’ pages (with 790,000 followers) for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of a network that originated in Russia. Facebook said the page administrators and account owners represented themselves as independent news pages or general interest pages, but all were linked to employees of Russian-owned Sputnik and the facts were false. See

Therapists fear losing their jobs if they attempt to help a child explore why they may feel they were ‘born in the wrong body’. Therapists can only affirm a patient’s confusion or face being found guilty of ‘conversion therapy’. Meanwhile concerns are growing that teenage girls are turning to transgenderism as a coping mechanism in the same way many have with anorexia and self-harm. An anonymous child protection officer said, ‘If I have concerns about a child who says they identify as transgender, I can’t pass them on, as I could be labelled a bigot. But I have spoken off the record to GPs, education psychologists, and social workers, and many of us are questioning why so many young women are doing this to their bodies. We should at least be allowed to ask: “Are you sure?” It is a growing issue that needs to be addressed in a fair and balanced way.’

Child mental health has been a key priority for the Scottish government. But specialist services are struggling to cope with increasing demand, and mental health minister Clare Haughey said the situation was ‘unacceptable’. The target of 90% of children and young people starting treatment or having referral to specialist services within 18 weeks has never been met. Instead, waiting times have increased since the target was set. About one in ten Scottish children aged between 5 and 16 have a clinically diagnosable mental illness, and there has been a 22% increase in the number being referred for specialist treatment in recent years. Children may receive little or no support or advice while waiting for treatment, causing conditions to deteriorate or make it more likely they will drop out of the system during the process. Early intervention services are patchy across Scotland.

Sally, now 20, believes her mental distress should have been spotted years before she received treatment that helped her. She says she became ill when she first started secondary school. Teachers noticed, describing her as ‘an odd child’, but in the end Sally had to ask her doctor for help herself. She was 16 and on the edge of suicide before she got any effective treatment. The charity Young Minds says it is not uncommon for families to have to wait 18 months even to get an assessment for their child, let alone treatment. In December, the government announced plans to overhaul children's mental health care in England, with proposals limiting waiting time to four weeks and allowing children to access mental health support in schools. Now a report from MPs has branded the strategy ‘unambitious’, providing no help to most of the children who need it. But ministers reject this suggestion, saying their proposals will transform the system.

More people are reporting consistent unhappiness, with women more likely to do so, an NHS survey has found. The Royal College of Psychiatrists said women are more likely to bear the brunt of domestic and caring responsibilities. Almost a quarter of 45- to 54-year-olds are mentally ill, but numbers drop as women get older. 16% have severe problems past 65, and 14% at 85. Christians are recognising the need to reach those with mental health diagnoses, but often those in the church with these diagnoses suffer in silence. Having heard that the joy of the Lord is their strength or that they need only pray more to be healed or that happiness will accompany the faithful, many who suffer from mental illness keep their diagnosis a secret. Pray for all those in need of counselling and pastoral care, and for Christian counselling services to be known about more widely. See also

The Christian mental health organisation Livability called for churches to be more honest about life's difficulties. A survey found that half of UK adults (26 million people) would feel uncomfortable or unsure about telling others if they experienced a mental health problem. The director of Livability said, ‘It's about creating communities where we talk about our well-being. There's a real need for us to start normalising the level of conversation that we have in our churches. There's a negative impact when we don't talk about these things.’ He encouraged churches to move away from criticism and adopt a culture of honesty, with leaders talking about their own emotional and mental well-being. The survey found that people aged between 16 and 24 are most likely to experience mental health issues. To be called a ‘snowflake’, implying that you are easily offended or hurt, is damaging to mental health.

Poor mental health costs £99bn and causes 300,000 people to leave work each year. NHS antidepressant drug prescriptions more than doubled in ten years, and mental health provision is in crisis. Christians struggle to know how to engage with this growing problem. Our silence has compounded the sense of isolation by those with poor mental health; alternatively, our easy answers or immediate spiritualising of the issues leaves people feeling misunderstood or stigmatised. Experts agree that relationships and community are important for our mental health. Therefore churches can play a significant role as they seek to be communities of authentic relationships where people don’t have to hide their struggles but appropriate boundaries are also respected. Nonetheless we struggle to find a framework out of which to form our response.

Christian Vision for Men (CVM) has welcomed a new campaign by the mental health organisation Time to Change, which urges men to support their friends if they suspect they're suffering from mental health issues. The 'In Your Corner' campaign asks men to be more open and supportive of their friends. A national survey of over 3,000 men found that 86% would feel comfortable supporting a friend who has a mental health problem. The research also highlighted that men who wouldn't feel comfortable in such circumstances hold these common beliefs: ‘I wouldn't know how to support them’ (58%); ‘I don't know anything or much about mental health, so wouldn't be much help’ (34%); ‘I'd probably say the wrong thing and make it worse’ (34%). CVM’s Jeremy Geake said that any form of connecting such as texting a friend or meeting for coffee is valuable in helping to tackle mental health issues.