It’s good to talk, and at the moment there’s a lot of talk about mental health and, in particular, about the mental health of young people.
I’m thinking, of course, of Theresa May’s recent speech, in which she announced a government green paper on children and young people’s mental health services, mental health first aid training for schools and a few other measures – to be funded apparently out of thin air – because mental health has been “a hidden injustice in this country” for far too long. From whom this injustice has been hidden was not specified.
BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network on Wednesday launched a year-long campaign “to encourage young people to explore issues surrounding their mental health”. My Mind and Me aims “to get young people talking about mental health, to reduce stigma around mental illness, and to raise awareness and understanding of mental health issues that affect young people”.
To assist them in this, they have partnered with the National Citizen Service (NCS) to create a group of “social action champions”, a group of young people from across the UK, who will work with the stations to help shape the campaign, sharing their own experience and leading discussions on “the key issues around mental health”.
Giving young people a platform to discuss these issues is certainly important. There is nothing more powerful than hearing directly from people about their experience, especially from people who are far too often stereotyped or simply ignored altogether. To hear an individual talk on their own terms and in their own words allows for a human-to-human connection that cuts through cliches and stereotypes. The result can be transforming. And as Ben Cooper, controller at Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network, put it:“From prime ministers to our young listeners, we all recognise the need to change attitudes to mental health.”
It’s good to talk, but I cannot help feeling there is something of an elephant in the room. I confess that I listened to Theresa May’s speech, and much of the discussion that followed it, with my jaw hanging apishly open.
This government and the previous one have presided over the decimation of mental health services – “a car crash”, according to Prof Dame Sue Bailey, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, speaking in 2014. She was just one of a chorus of voices, from patient groups to professional bodies, carers and mental health charities, all shouting the loudest, most urgent of warnings – it certainly wasn’t hidden from the government.
And between 2010 and 2015 funding for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) was slashed by £50m, despite massively increasing demand.
Even setting aside both of those things, consider how, as a society, we are failing our young people.
However inconvenient the fact may be, mental health is not some discrete entity. The mental wellbeing of young people cannot be considered in isolation from the issues that affect their lives: the education system, benefits, housing, employment practices. In all these areas, the needs of young people have been trampled on over and over again by the boots of political expediency. And now they are supposed to believe we care about their mental wellbeing.
It may be that My Mind and Me is going to address these issues and I very much hope it does.
In 2016, winners of Radio 1’s Teen Awards, which included a mental health category, were invited to meet the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who praised their “inspirational work”. All fine, except that mental health problems have repeatedly been shown to be most prevalent in those countries with the highest levels of financial and social inequality.
And I know it seems churlish to point that out, but it would really be the bitterest of ironies if raising awareness of mental health issues became a means of avoiding confronting the factors that contribute to them.
Young people’s mental health services need cash not empty promises | Clare Allan
