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Mental health stigma at work, hearing voices and Scotland

Nearly half of workers in the UK would not be happy to reveal a mental health problem at work, a new survey reveals.

This is sad but hardly suprising news, as mental health stigma still seems incredibly strong. A recent discussion on CareSpace illustrated that even workers in social care, which would probably be more enlightened on these issues than other sectors, would have second thoughts about disclosing mental health problems.

Of course World Mental Health Day is on Friday and it will be interesting to see if it gets any decent coverage.

Meanwhile, it seems the situation for children with severe mental health problems in Scotland is similar to that in England, with Scotland's Mental Welfare Commission raising concerns about the number of children in adult wards.

New research suggests people who don't suffer from schizophrenia can also hear voices but just don't find them as distressing. The findings also suggest a traumatic past can predispose people to hear voices and the long-term effect of that trauma and whether it is dealt with can decide whether those voices are experienced as distressing. The research is important in the the wider origins of schizophrenia debate but did rely on a very small sample and it's possible that non-psychiatric groups do not experience voices in the same way.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that new social care minister Phil Hope is also the mental health minister.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on October 8, 2008 3:28 PM.

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