In the UK, 14 million people - one in five - live in poverty. The welfare state has shrunk, there have been drastic cuts to local authority budgets, and many social services have been eliminated. Austerity is continuing, child poverty is approaching record highs, the NHS remains underfunded, many mental health wards are crumbling and decrepit, there is a growing shortage of psychiatrists, especially in child and adolescent mental health services, and waiting times for mental health treatment are increasing.
In this context, it is unsurprising that more than four out of five people exhibit the early signs of poor mental health, approximately one in four people experience a mental health problem each year, and one in eight children and young people have at least one mental disorder.
This nationwide crisis brought together mental health campaigners and practitioners, service user groups, unions, and the public at the Mental Health Crisis Summit 2019 in London at the end of September. It was organised by Health Campaigns Together, Keep Our NHS Public, and Mental Health – Time for Action. Themes that ran through the event included how poverty contributes to mental ill health and how structural change is needed, demands for an end to austerity and the underfunding of the NHS, calls for the social model of health to become standard and UK law, demands for the end of the ‘hostile environment’ in the NHS, and discussions about how service users must be prioritised in any conversation about mental health.
