New Statutory body as an alternative to the NHS for mental health and hidden disability

Good question IrishInManchesterUK  

I'd like to share my response but a trigger warning it isn't easy to acknowledge and based on my personal observations and analysis I think it incredibly unlikely that any government will be brave or wise enough to enact it in the foreseeable future unless there is some sort of revolution in the way society currently is run.

W/r/to Iain 's comments re costs.  What about the saving?  NHS England consideration of this  in a paper in 2012 was "Mental health problems cost UK economy at least £117.9 billion per year (5% of UK GDP in 2019)"   source:: https://www.england.nhs.uk/aac/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2022/09/B1482_research-demand-signalling-national-mental-health-programme_september-2022.pdf

The people paid to do the jobs in the service would be spending the money they get paid and being taxed on it - so that isn't a hole into which money is paid and disappears it remains circulating in the economy... 

As to where the people and service would come from, well - just because it takes time and care for new and novel crops to grow doesn't mean we should stop planting them.

So with my respect to Iain the cost and resources issues are not particularly good arguments in my opinion.

The question instead might be how successful a separate mental health and hidden disability service would be...

The evidence that I have encountered from research and from personal experience is that prevention, as ever, is far better than cure.

Take anxiety and depression - these it seems are somewhat resistant to "cure" when established (ironically I find that a somewhat depressing and stressful thing....)

So from a pragmatic basis a body set up to identify who are at risk of mental health problems and support them before they occur makes most sense to me.  The benefits of finding out which wells in London were causing typhoid fever in Victorian London and stopping people from having and indeed wanting to drink from them are historical fact that is difficult not to find persuasive perhaps in this context.

Which leaves the question of what society does for those already "broken beyond repair"...

I'd say the new service proposed would be best put at findings ways of helping such people find meaning and value in life that acknowledges the harm they have received, compensates them for it and stops blaming those burned by a fire that other people have started and mismanaged.

This would financially cost but still in my opinion be "better value" for all of society as an overall saving versus the current costs.

The "savings" would be of real importance to the well-being and lives of very significant proportion of people and maybe to society as a whole.

Like I said somewhat pessimistically at the beginning of my answer tho'...

best wishes

Good question IrishInManchesterUK  

I'd like to share my response but a trigger warning it isn't easy to acknowledge and based on my personal observations and analysis I think it incredibly unlikely that any government will be brave or wise enough to enact it in the foreseeable future unless there is some sort of revolution in the way society currently is run.

W/r/to Iain 's comments re costs.  What about the saving?  NHS England consideration of this  in a paper in 2012 was "Mental health problems cost UK economy at least £117.9 billion per year (5% of UK GDP in 2019)"   source:: https://www.england.nhs.uk/aac/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2022/09/B1482_research-demand-signalling-national-mental-health-programme_september-2022.pdf

The people paid to do the jobs in the service would be spending the money they get paid and being taxed on it - so that isn't a hole into which money is paid and disappears it remains circulating in the economy... 

As to where the people and service would come from, well - just because it takes time and care for new and novel crops to grow doesn't mean we should stop planting them.

So with my respect to Iain the cost and resources issues are not particularly good arguments in my opinion.

The question instead might be how successful a separate mental health and hidden disability service would be...

The evidence that I have encountered from research and from personal experience is that prevention, as ever, is far better than cure.

Take anxiety and depression - these it seems are somewhat resistant to "cure" when established (ironically I find that a somewhat depressing and stressful thing....)

So from a pragmatic basis a body set up to identify who are at risk of mental health problems and support them before they occur makes most sense to me.  The benefits of finding out which wells in London were causing typhoid fever in Victorian London and stopping people from having and indeed wanting to drink from them are historical fact that is difficult not to find persuasive perhaps in this context.

Which leaves the question of what society does for those already "broken beyond repair"...

I'd say the new service proposed would be best put at findings ways of helping such people find meaning and value in life that acknowledges the harm they have received, compensates them for it and stops blaming those burned by a fire that other people have started and mismanaged.

This would financially cost but still in my opinion be "better value" for all of society as an overall saving versus the current costs.

The "savings" would be of real importance to the well-being and lives of very significant proportion of people and maybe to society as a whole.

Like I said somewhat pessimistically at the beginning of my answer tho'...

best wishes