Will British PM honor promise to fund mental health services?
Ahmed Kaballo
Press, London
The British elections have concluded and the Conservative party won a thumping majority. Now the constituencies that were once considered to be in the labor heartlands that voted conservatives for the first time in decades are expecting their new government to fulfill some of the big promises made during an election campaign.
One of the areas that the Conservative Party promised to address was the mental health in the UK. They promised an extra £975 million going into mental health services every year and an extra 1,000 extra staff in NHS mental health services.
Press TV spoke to Hip hop artist Dan Lynch, who recently lost his brother to suicide and lost his mother to suicide when he was just a child to ask him about what he thinks of the state of mental health support in the UK.
Suicide rates are currently rising in the UK, with 6,507 suicides registered in the UK in 2018 and three-quarters of those being men. Men in the UK aged 20 to 49 are more likely to die from suicide than any other cause of death.
Experts declare that there is a national crisis in the UK that needs to be addressed.
Six of England's leading mental health organizations have argued that poor mental health carries an economic and social cost of £105 billion annually in England and businesses lose £26 billion due to mental health every year, yet only 25% of adults with depression and anxiety get any treatment whatsoever.
Dan lives and grew up in Kings Norton's Three Estates, a location of large public housing located in the Northfield constituency that voted conservative this election for the first time since 1992. The constituency is one of the most deprived in the UK and has the worst record in the country for low pay.
Over 50% of people in this area are paid less than the living wage of £7.85 an hour – reaching up to 63.1% for women.
We asked him if he felt that poverty was a factor for mental health issues within his community.
It is a long year ahead and all the main political parties have made big promises with regards to the NHS and funding mental health services, but as the Conservative Party won the election with a huge majority, it is on them to deliver on their promises, otherwise here in the UK the problem is just going to get worse and worse.
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