The Governments Mental Health Strategy notes that this is the first government to give an equal weighting in policy terms to mental and physical health – regrettably this is not the case with regard to this report. In 300 pages there are 4 are devoted to mental health.
According to this report an estimated 6.1m people suffer from anxiety and depression in England. While it notes that currently just over 2% currently get access to IAPT services it draws no link between the relationship between housing insecurity, financial vulnerability and poor mental health.
This is a serious omission; by focussing on individual illnesses and diseases the CMO does not make a consistently strong link with ‘the causes of the causes’
Peoples social and economic circumstances affect their mental health and wellbeing. If people feel good about themselves and in control then they are more likely to be able to live healthily.
In presenting lists of data with no apparent order to them the report fails to give a clear message about where we should start from; particularly wth regard to the prevention agenda, and fails to empower local DsPH and Local Authority Cabinet Leads for Health with clear messages about pratice. She repeats the same mistake that JSNAs have been criticised for locally – lots of data and no clear view about priorities.
It is disapointing to include reference to the life course on pages 14 and 15 of the document and then to structure the report as a series of lists that ignores this framework.
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