September 2011 Archives

The following is a guest post by Michael Richmond, who has just published his first novel, Sisyphusa, an allegory of the mental health system.

If there's one conclusion I've come to after five years of suffering from it, it is that mental illness doesn't happen in isolation. We know that one in four Britons will suffer from a mental disorder in their lifetime. The World Health Organization even predicts depression will be the second most widespread illness in the developed world by 2020.

But mental illness is not just statistics or distant "others," far removed from regular human activity. It is all too human. It is dependent on how we order our own individual worlds and how we relate to other human beings. We evolved as a social species and it was largely thanks to our ability to co-operate that we outlasted other early humans. In recent decades political, economic and cultural shifts have made society far less socially interdependent and far more greedy, selfish and acquisitive but this goes against our evolutionary biology. We are not built to go it alone.

Scarring void

I know this from my own experience of an isolating episode of depression. My family have been my loyal "tribe" and taken care of me. However, my inability to engage with wider society or reconnect with the friends I used to know has left a scarring void in my life. Mental illness must not be just a burden for the individual sufferer or their family because it is reflective of the society we have built. The social breakdown, health and wealth inequality, celebrity, consumerism and binge culture that we see around us all affect our mental health. These damaging phenomena are a monument to the unfettered market that has ruled our lives.

The policy of 'care in the community,' which has been pursued for the last thirty years, represents a more humane approach compared to the large Victorian asylums. These imposing buildings were conceived of more as quarantines where the uncomfortable truth of "madness," an ever-present throughout human history, was sealed off as an act of segregation. However, despite this move towards inclusiveness and a softening of political language the reality is still too often one of isolation, stigma and neglect if not outright abuse. By accepting that sufferers of mental illness are a part of and not apart from society, we must now accept that aspects of our society are contributing to our dire problems with our mental health. It is also crucial that there is widespread acceptance that mental illness is something that can befall anyone.

Thankless struggle

The pervasive neoliberal mantra of 'private good, public bad' has ring-fenced large swathes of the economy as beyond regulation but if the supreme aim of every country is to create an amenable business environment then the wellbeing of its citizens can never be more than an afterthought. Instead we're left with reactive government measures in health, crime, education and environmental policy being largely a thankless struggle to clean up the mess wrought by an economic system that fosters inequality, promotes narcissism and propagates that all human meaning resides in the relentless pursuit of material wealth. Too much of healthcare becomes "fire-fighting" when much more should be prevention and care.

I prefer the argument for helping people to lead healthy and meaningful lives but even those with a solely economic view of humanity must deduce that it costs much more to deal with the effects of these problems than it would to begin to tackle them at root. Research by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson for their book, The Spirit Level, reveals that more unequal societies have higher rates of mental illness and do worse on various other social indicators. They write that mental illness is closely related to status anxiety and so more unequal and callous countries leave more people marginalised, more 'losers' and more problems for us all.

Such high levels of mental illness mean this issue can no longer be brushed under the carpet. Is there any issue which touches nearly everyone's lives yet is so ignored or misunderstood by politics and media? Our rates of mental illness demand that we re-examine our attitudes and language towards the concept of 'madness.' For mental health workers and carers, who see all this play out on the front line, I only wish that their jobs could be made easier by changes at a political and economic level. I also wish that they could be spared the re-organisations, managerial initiatives and arbitrary targets which prevent them from doing what they do best - caring for patients with humanity and compassion.

Will you be incorporating this into your social work practice in the UK? I would be interested to hear from anyone who tries it out.

There was an interesting piece in the Guardian earlier this week about a reporter who spent a week trying to integrate into their lives some of the tips for happier living produced by Action for Happiness.

The experiment was apparently not without success. I know Action for Happiness also produces information about encouraging a happier workplace and I wonder if any social work/care teams have tried implementing any of their recommendations. Or perhaps you'd like to try them out - feel free to tell me how it goes!

One of the things AoH recommends is meditation and the Guardian article specifically referred to a site called Headspace which encourages people to start meditating for 10 minutes a day. Has anyone tried it? Again I'd be interested to hear how it went. In fact, I might try it myself and report back here on how it is going. Now, if only I could free up 10 minutes each day...

Here at Community Care we are keen to do our bit to support Woolly Hat Day 2011.

On November 4, people across the country will be putting on woolly hats and raising money for homelessness charity St Mungo's.

Community Care editor Bronagh Miskelly (top right) is one of a select band of knitters who have created one of 30 promotional orange hats for the campaign.

But before sending the fashionable hat off to St Mungo's we couldn't help but try it on. Orange is very much the colour of the season and I think you'll agree that the photograph above proves conclusively that you can both be stylish and charitable.

Mental health charity Sane has launched a nationwide Black Dog campaign to raise awareness of depression.

Winston Churchill famously referred to his depression as the "black dog" and Sane plans to install at least 40 black dog sculptures around the UK.

Sane chief exec Marjorie Wallace explains: "We hope the physical presence of a black dog will help people to define their experience of this invisible condition and provide a language in which to express inner feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness."

I went to see the show Ruby Wax - Losing It at the Duchess Theatre in London this week. It's a performance of two halves, the first involves Wax telling the story of her own breakdown and admission to The Priory and railing against the artificiality and shallow nature of our society and its obsession with fame.

Wax is accompanied by her friend the pianist and singer Judith Owen and while the show contains lots of serious messages it's funny too and the half went by quickly.

The second half is where the whole experience really starts to have some resonance though. The performing stops and Wax and Owen, who has also experienced depression, just sit at the front of the stage and take questions from the audience.

I've been to many conferences where the floor is opened up to questions and they usually prove painfully difficult to generate. There were no such problems here though and members of the audience shared their experiences of mental illness and how they dealt with it and were happy to discuss issues such as stigma and access to services.

The interactive element made Wax's first half performance make sense as part of her mission to get people to open up about mental health to help tackle stigma and provide support to each other. She revealed she hopes to launch a website soon where people with depression can support each other - a mental health Mumsnet. The theatre is also playing host to a number of open forums where people can listen to expert speakers and get advice from professionals.

(Pic: Trevor Leighton) 

It's Dementia Awareness Day tomorrow (17 September) take a look at the various events and ways you can get involved. You can join the campaign here.

Also, check out this brilliant video:

Well done to Norrms, who has spearheaded the whole Dementia Awareness Day initiative. You can check out his blog on CareSpace.

Comedienne Ruby Wax has recently started a five week run of her show Ruby Wax-Losing It at London's Duchess Theatre. Accompanied by singer/pianist Judith Owen, Wax reflects on her own breakdown before engaging in a conversation with the audience about the issues raised.

The duo are also holding open forums at the theatre for members of the public. The forums, held in partnership with mental health charity SANE, will feature guest speakers from the fields of psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience, and will also provide an oppurtunity for memebers of the public to share their experience of mental illness.

The upcoming sessions, which take place from 2-4pm, will feature:

• 13th September - Professor Peter Fonagy, head of research, Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, UCL
• 20th September - Dr Mark Collins, consultant psychiatrist, The Priory Hospital Roehampton
• 26th September - Professor Mark Williams, director, Oxford Mindfulness Centre

Apparently, Wax's long-term goal is to establish a place, like Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, where people can go to talk about their mental health issues.

Sounds interesting and I hope to find out more and see the show next week.

People living in countries with a more progressive tax system are generally happier than those in countries with a flatter tax system, a study suggests.

Someone should tell UK chancellor George Osborne, who has been urged by certain economists to remove the 50p rate. Unfortunately, he seems far more interested in punishing public sector workers and unemployed for the financial mess we now found ourselves in.

Meanwhile, reading fiction seems to have interesting psychological effects - improving empathy and fulfilling a need for social connection.

And finally, aerobic exercise may reduce the risk of dementia.

I'm very excited to announce the launch of You Care, a new microsite developed by Community Care for people working in residential and domiciliary care.

We designed and built it ourselves so it's very pleasing to see it go live. Hopefully it will prove to be a useful resource for the UK's adult care workers and there's also lots of jobs on there!

More than a third of EU citizens suffer from mental health problems, new research suggests. While the figure has increased since the last survey in 2005, that is accounted for by the inclusion of a number of previously excluded conditions.

The researchers noted that mental health treatments were "unusually deficient" when compared to other health conditions.

They called for screening of children for anxiety to prevent future problems.

Depression in women has doubled since the 1970s.

And it appears that mental health conditions are starting earlier, with the increasingly insecure world in which young people are growing up blamed. We've torn down most of our safety nets, structures and employment paths in favour of out-of-control markets and "flexibility" in recent years so it should hardly be surprising. (This analysis/rant is inspired by Tony Judt's Ill Fares The Land - which is well worth a read).

(Pic: openDemocracy on flickr)