Now as Prime Minister, I want us to go further. I want us to employ the power of government as a force for good to transform the way we deal with mental health problems right across society, and at every stage of life.
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For years, the only people who have stood up for those with mental ill health have been civil society groups and charities. Now I want us to build upon your success and the fantastic work that many including those here today are doing.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/1683.html
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Organisations such as Mind who have led the way in helping those experiencing mental health problems. The Heads Together campaign – and the fantastic leadership shown by their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry – that aims to break the stigma surrounding mental health problems.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/1683.html
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And the tremendous campaigning work by Black Mental Health UK – with whom I worked at the Home Office – to expose injustices in the way black people with mental ill health in particular are treated, and ensure politicians take action to put things right.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/1683.html
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So you are leading the way – but today, I want us to forge a new approach recognising our responsibility to each other, and make mental illness an everyday concern for all of us and in every one of our institutions.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/1683.html
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What I am announcing are the first steps in our plan to transform the way we deal with mental health problems at every stage of a person’s life: not in our hospitals, but in our classrooms, at work and in our communities.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/1683.html
This starts with ensuring that children and teenagers get the help and support they need and deserve – because we know that mental illness too often starts in childhood and that when left untreated, it can blight lives, and become entrenched.
There is, for example, evidence to suggest an increase in self-harm among young people, with the number of 16- to 24-year-old women reporting self-harm increasing threefold – to 1 in 5 – between 2000 and 2014.
And we know that the use of social media brings additional concerns and challenges. In 2014, just over 1 in 10 young people said that they had experienced cyberbullying by phone or over the internet.
So first, we will introduce a package of measures to transform the way we respond to mental illness in young people starting in our schools.
We will pilot new approaches such as offering mental health first aid training for teachers and staff to help them identify and assist children experiencing mental health problems. And we will trial approaches to ensure schools and colleges work closer together with local NHS services to provide dedicated children and young people’s mental health services.
These steps will accompany a major thematic review – led by the Care Quality Commission with input from Ofsted – looking at services for children and teenagers across the country to find out what is working, and what is not.
Following this, CQC and Ofsted will consider how their future joint programme of inspections can ensure child and adolescent mental health services are properly held to account for performance.
And alongside these reviews, later this year, we will bring forward a new green paper on children and young people’s mental health to transform services in education and for families.
These measures will build on the work we are already doing to put a stop to the untold misery of hundreds of children being sent halfway across the country to access mental health services.
By 2021, no child will be sent away from their local area to be treated for a general mental health condition.
But treatment is only part of the answer. We must look at what more can be done to prevent mental health problems, and work with you to capitalise on the crucial role civil society has to play in helping young people – and indeed people of all ages – build resilience.
Second, I want us to do more to support mental wellbeing in the workplace. So I have asked Lord Stevenson, who has campaigned on these issues for many years, and Paul Farmer, CEO of Mind and Chair of the NHS Mental Health Taskforce, to work with leading employers and mental health groups to create a new partnership with industry, and make prevention and breaking the stigma top priorities for employers. Because mental wellbeing doesn’t just improve the health of employees, it improves their motivation, reduces their absence and drives better productivity, too.
We will also review employment discrimination laws for employees with mental health problems to ensure they are properly supported.
And we will do everything we can to get the right support to those with mental health problems who are out of work. For example, through our global leadership on social impact bonds – which drive investment in social outcomes – we are already providing up to £50 million to support those with mental health issues back into work and to help local areas tackle the link between drug and alcohol dependency and co-existing mental health problems.
Third, I want to ensure more people get the support they need, when they need it, in their communities. So we will make up to £15 million of extra funding available for community clinics, crisis cafes, and alternative places of safety to support a wider range of preventative services in the community, and ensure that charities, churches and community organisations can access funding to run them, too.
And we are already investing over £10 million to support the fast track Think Ahead programme – which aims to increase the number of high-calibre mental health social workers – by at least 300.
Fourth, we will rapidly expand the treatment available by investing £67.7 million in digital mental health services. Online therapy has the potential to transform the way mental health services are delivered by allowing people to check their symptoms, be triaged online and receive clinically-assisted therapy over the internet much more quickly and easily, assuming it is clinically appropriate. These treatments have been tested in other countries and they work. In the right cases, they can offer access to treatment far quicker than traditional services.
Fifth, we will right the everyday injustices that those with mental illness encounter – starting by examining GP forms relating to mental health and debt. Because sometimes those whose illness has resulted in debt, or means they are struggling to pay their debt, have to prove their mental ill-health to debt collectors and pay their GP to fill in a form to do so. Such a process can worsen both mental illness and financial difficulties, so we will work with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute to consult on these forms, with a view to ending the practice.
And finally, today we are publishing a strengthened cross-government suicide prevention strategy, which sets out a comprehensive plan to reduce the suicide rate in this Parliament, and targets those most at risk such as young and middle-aged men, those in contact with the criminal justice system and those in the care of mental health services. Because, on average, 13 people kill themselves every day in England, and if we want to improve the life chances of current and future generations, we need to address this shocking reality.
And in addition to all this, we will ensure that the NHS itself takes the steps it needs to ensure that parity means just that: parity. We will hold the NHS leadership to account for the extra £1 billion we invested in mental health last year. We will make sure that mental illness gets the attention it deserves, in funding, research and technology investment. And we will be clear that when NHS leaders are redesigning services and developing new local solutions, mental health should get its full weighting.
As I have said these are just the first steps in our plan to transform our approach to mental health in this country. Meeting this challenge will take years and require more than government action alone – it will need a sustained effort on the part of everyone in this room and everyone across society.
But this is a historic opportunity to right a wrong, and give people deserving of compassion and support the attention and treatment they deserve. And for all of us to change the way we view mental illness so that striving to improve mental wellbeing is seen as just as natural, positive and good as striving to improve our physical wellbeing.
For too long, mental illness has been something of a hidden injustice in our country, shrouded in a completely unacceptable stigma and dangerously disregarded as a secondary issue to physical health. Yet left unaddressed, it destroys lives, separates people from each other and deepens the divisions within our society. Changing this goes right to the heart of our humanity; to the heart of the kind of country we are, the attitudes we hold and the values we share.
I remember the reaction when, back in 2012, Charles Walker and Kevan Jones spoke in Parliament about their own personal challenges with mental illness. The courage of those 2 MPs – Conservative and Labour – to speak out in this way, encouraged us all to put aside party differences and come together in solidarity.
That sense of solidarity will be essential in helping us to transform the support we offer those with mental health conditions and to defeat the stigma that makes addressing this issue so much harder than it should be. But I also believe that in a wider sense, that commitment to strengthening the bonds we share as a union of people, can be a defining part of how we meet the great challenge of our time and bring our whole country together.
It is by tackling the injustice and unfairness that drives us apart and by nurturing the responsibilities of citizenship that we can build that shared society – and make it the bedrock of a stronger and fairer Britain that truly does work for everyone.
Thank you.
