In the past few weeks, the news has broken that, due to a scarcity of specialist medical units, children with mental health issues are being assessed in police cells. This state of affairs is completely unacceptable, and is yet another example of the real impact of the crisis of capitalism on people’s health and lives.
In the past few weeks, the news has broken that, due to a scarcity of specialist medical units, children with mental health issues are being assessed in police cells. This state of affairs is completely unacceptable, and is yet another example of the real impact of the crisis of capitalism on people’s health and lives.
Detainment in a police cell can only worsen the mental state of a young person experiencing a breakdown. It is bad enough that this happens to adults, but the involvement of children is an extra, damning indictment on the state of our underfunded medical services.
“Close to collapse”
NHS mental health services are generally “running dangerously close to collapse”. A report by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) has revealed that in the last two years, the number of staff specialising in mental health has fallen by 3,853, 213 of which are doctors, and the rest nurses. Over the same period, the NHS’ 57 mental health trusts have lost a combined £253m of funding.
As a result of this, we have incidents like those mentioned above, where a lack of funding leads to unnecessary trauma for patients who are already suffering a great deal. The HSJ found that the number of beds have been cut by 846 across 45 mental health trusts – nearly 20 per trust. There are many reports of patients being moved from overcrowded local services, away from the support of their families. The moves can sometimes be hundreds of miles – in one case, found the HSJ report, a patient was relocated nearly 300 miles from Yorkshire to the South West. One cannot help but be shocked by these incidents.
Suffering in limbo
Perhaps more shocking are some of the waiting times for NHS mental health patients. A Mind report from 2013 shows how more than half of mental health patients wait for more than three months to receive treatment, with a further 12% waiting more than a year. Those who can afford it (one in ten, according to the report) are forced into shockingly expensive private treatment. Those who cannot are left suffering in limbo.
Another survey, undertaken jointly between the mental health charity Mind and The College of Social Work, shows that at the same time as mental health services are being cut, demand for them is increasing rapidly. We quote from the Mind report on the survey:
“More than three quarters of mental health social workers and more than 90% of chief executives of local Minds who responded to the survey said that the mental health of people living in the communities where they work has got worse over the last 12 months. Over 90% of chief executives of local Minds said they have seen an increase in the number of people accessing mental health services over the last year with 73% experiencing people seeking services for the first time. More than one in five social workers reported seeing more people in crisis.
Social workers and the charity managers agreed that benefit cuts, unemployment and to a lesser extent poor housing were the main factors driving up the increase in demand for mental health services. More than 90% of Mind managers said benefit cuts and unemployment were partly responsible for the increase and 89% thought that poor housing was also playing a part.”
A future of stress, insecurity, and uncertainty
In a 2012 report, the British Medical Journal estimated that there were nearly 1,000 more suicides between 2008 and 2010 “than would be expected if pre-recession trends had continued”. This was just at the beginning of the crisis, long before cuts to public services.
The effect of capitalist crisis on mental health is not hard to understand. The future looks bleaker by the day. Though the Tories might sing about a recovery, it is not being felt in the streets. Wages are low and falling, even without inflation being taken into account. Housing and rent are skyrocketing, as are utilities. Food and other necessities are going up in price. And at the same time, benefits and services are being privatised and slashed, leaving those cut loose by the capitalist system totally abandoned to penury. Yet only 30% of the cuts have been introduced! Even those previously better off layers of the working class, like teachers and lecturers, are under attack. Hard-working students worry about the dole queues and shelf-stacking that await them after graduation day. How will they pay the rent? Most move back in with their parents. The most conservative analysts say austerity may have to last until 2020 – others say even longer.
Everyone is worried for the future. There is an epidemic of stress, insecurity, and uncertainty about how to make ends meet. In this respect, the mental health crisis is no surprise.
Capitalism is rotten to the core. The working class have been forced to pay for the crisis, not just with our wallets, but with our mental health as well. Only a new society, based not on greed for profit, but the common interest of humankind, can end this mass misery. As Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary wrote,
“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
Let us tear down the sick capitalist system and transform this great idea into reality.
