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Let's get tough on mental health problems
10/10/18 .
News
The Men's Health Forum has called on government to provide prompter mental health services and address more directly the causes of mental health challenges.
In a series of tweets, the organisation said:
We welcome anything that improves the conversation about mental health and suicide but it needs more than new job titles. It’s time to get tough on mental health problems by providing services when people need them. Currently, as the BMA have shown, waiting times of 6 months to a two years for NHS mental health services are commonplace. This is way too long. We also need to get tough on the causes of mental health problems by addressing the insecurities in society that cause them to develop - insecure housing, insecure employment and, for young people, insecure futures.
To mark World Mental Health Day, the UK government announced new funding – up to £1.8 million – for the Samaritans. The Prime Minister also that health minister Jackie Doyle-Price will become the UK’s first Minister for Suicide Prevention.
The Forum added: 'We warmly welcome as a step in the right direction the government’s support for the Samaritans, which the organisation estimates will fund about 10% of its helpline costs for four years. With current waiting times for NHS services, this excellent organisation, who are all volunteers, are often the only place many people have to go.'
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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