Last week, our mental health spokesperson, Danny Bowman addressed the Durham Union on mental health and the important work Parliament Street is doing to make progress in this important area.
Danny touched upon the serious barriers in which stop people from receiving quality mental health treatment in our NHS. He alluded to long waiting-times a large factor in the deterioration of individual’s mental health. He talked about the importance of timely treatment that can support people at the start of their mental health troubles instead of waiting for it to intensify arguably costing more money to the economy, with the need for more sophisticated treatment.
Danny spoke about the research Parliament Street had done on mental health. He discussed the recent research which showed that UK police forces were dealing with more than 195,000 mental health incidents in one year alone. He added that Parliament Street research showed that Accident and Emergency departments in the United Kingdom had dealt with over 160,000 mental health related incidents in 2016. He said how he believed such research showed that other public services were picking up the pieces from the lack of investment in mental health services. Although, he did allude to the fact that progress has been made by the current government, but stressed a cross-party solution is needed to solve the current crisis.
Danny delivered the argument, that an invest to save model could solve the mental health crisis. He alluded to the fact that the (Centre for Mental Health, 2010) declared bad mental health cost the United Kingdom economy £105.2billion a year. He believes an investment over a 10 year period of £1 billion each year could change the tide on this issue.
Danny finished by showing through his own story that mental health provision works. He talked about how he started with no qualifications when leaving school at 16. Now, at the age of 23, goes to University of York, works for Parliament Street, Vice-chair of a national eating disorders charity and has run an international campaign shows that anything is possible when good mental health provision is implemented, adding ‘I’m nothing special, there are thousands of young kids that could achieve their potential with adequate mental health treatment’.
