500 signatures reached
To: Jeremy Hunt
What's Happening to Our Mental Health Services?
We urge Jeremy Hunt to take seriously the enormity of unmet need in our Mental Health Services, and to committing to providing adequate, ring fenced funding for mental health services.
Why is this important?
In the news we see daily reports of the deterioration in the quality of Mental Health Services, e.g.: seriously troubled children being sent 500 miles from home to find a hospital bed; patients with eating disorders locking themselves in their bedrooms and starving themselves in order to prove their need for help; police having to deal with health emergencies by detaining patients in police cells. Too often patients are offered standardized telephone consultations or brief treatments that are meant to cut costs, but can lead to greater expense down the line when those patients are forced to return for help repeatedly.
Shortages of funding and trained professional staff are resulting in:
• professionals not having the time to listen and decide the best course of treatment for adults and children seeking help;
• worried parents not finding the care they and their children need to ensure the good mental health of the next generation;
• a revolving door of admission, discharge and readmission instead of the long term care that is needed;
• frontline staff not having the experience and support to provide ‘asylum’ - i.e. a truly containing and therapeutic environment in which to heal.
• a lack of resources to provide proper care in the community
The Government promises millions in more funding for mental health, but that money is not ring fenced and is being used to plug funding shortages elsewhere in the NHS.
Shortages of funding and trained professional staff are resulting in:
• professionals not having the time to listen and decide the best course of treatment for adults and children seeking help;
• worried parents not finding the care they and their children need to ensure the good mental health of the next generation;
• a revolving door of admission, discharge and readmission instead of the long term care that is needed;
• frontline staff not having the experience and support to provide ‘asylum’ - i.e. a truly containing and therapeutic environment in which to heal.
• a lack of resources to provide proper care in the community
The Government promises millions in more funding for mental health, but that money is not ring fenced and is being used to plug funding shortages elsewhere in the NHS.
