One man in five dies before the age of 65.
TOGETHER we can change that.

Psychosis: men untreated for longer

14/10/14 . Story

It takes 50% longer for men with symptoms of psychosis to get help than women, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

In general it takes four and a half weeks for men to get a prescription after the onset of visible psychosis symptoms compared to three weeks for women.

There are also variations in treatment time according to ethnicity. On average, the wait for the black or black British ethnic group was longer than for other ethnic groups. For this group the median wait was five and a half weeks, compared to three and a half for the white ethnic group and four weeks for the Asian ethnic group.

Kingsley Manning, Chair of the Health and Social Care Information Centre said: 'There are wide variations in the time it takes for people with psychosis to receive treatment and should lead to questions for the health service about why these differences occur; whether some groups take longer to initially seek treatment for their symptoms or due to other factors.'

The special report into Duration of Untreated Psychosis (DUP) focuses on adults who are referred to NHS funded Early Intervention in Psychosis Services (EIS) is complicated by inadequate data. Providers should record information about DUP where they provide EIS services but not all providers do. There were 28,115 people in touch with EIS in 2013-14 with inadequate data on 5% of them.

 

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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Charity registered in England and Wales (no. 1087375). Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (no. 4142349).