Skip to main content

Shame on the UK!

I have listed below some bullet points relating to a condition which is not convenient or comfortable for politicians, healthcare chiefs and society to talk about. Can you guess what I'm referring to?


  • It cost the UK 70 million working days last year
  • That figure is up 24% since 2009
  • It costs the economy between £70 and £100 billion per annum in lost productivity, benefit payments and absence from work
  • It causes 28% of illness for the NHS but gets just 13% of the budget
  • Three quarters of those affected receive no treatment
  • Spending on this illness is going down in real terms
  • 50% of affected adults have their first illness by age 15
  • 75% of affected adults have their first illness by age 18
  • 25% of adults suffer some form of this illness all of the time
  • In my medical degree, this illness was granted 7 weeks in 5 years
  • It is not a physical illness so is not thought of in the same way
I hope by now you have guessed what it is because all health begins with mental health - whoever we are!

http://betweendenbighandkeele.blogspot.com/2013/07/mental-health-societys-problem.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A golden opportunity for Denbigh?

Mini outbursts of discussion continue do their rounds on social media regarding the present state of our town in Denbigh. The temptation to bemoan the status quo is seldom far away as we seek to compare the past with the present. The world around us has changed radically since the second world war and it is often a great challenge for us all to keep abreast of that change. Sixty years ago, it was still fairly normal to see a horse and trap coming to town. Such a sight today would bring the town to a standstill - if indeed there were any shoppers there. The way we communicated sixty years ago was mainly by word of mouth with the written word still being the domain of the pen in our hand. The way we shopped has changed radically too although not always as much as some people think. In those days it was still fairly standard practice for a local shop to deliver their goods to households within a few miles of their premises. In recent years, the ubiquitous supermarkets have been quick
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons in Democracy

The quest for democracy is a long road with a seemingly intangible destination. The last week has shown us just how elusive it can be. The Labour Party in the UK continues to struggle with the decision of their electorate to choose Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Whatever one's political leaning, the behaviour of Labour Party MPs in recent weeks has hardly emboldened the public to engage with the political process. If democracy is the result of asking the people what they want, the recent election of Jeremy Corbyn has provided one of the most overwhelming mandates in history. Such was the public desire for his election, there was no need for a second ballot. We might be forgiven for thinking that even the most arrogant of MPs would have to take such a result on the chin with a modicum of good grace. Not so. Their behaviour in recent weeks has been an insult to the masses who did their bit by engaging with the leadership election during the summer. The legacy of such behaviour is c
Post a Comment
Read more

Who Cares?

At a time when the fortunes of the NHS continue to dominate the news, I was fortunate this week to attend a medico-legal training day. Rather than bore people with the latest legal positions on various aspects of healthcare, I would instead prefer to concentrate on some of the frankly extraordinary facts which emerged on the day. I found many of them so astonishing, I felt the need to share them with a wider audience for reasons I will explain later. Before I dive in to a statistical frenzy, let me quote the words of the Health Secretary of Tony Blair's first Cabinet in 1997, "The best place for a lawyer is on the operating table.......Lawyers are milking the NHS of millions of pounds every year - money that would be better spent on healthcare". But do we all appreciate the validity of those words? In 1996/7, there were around 4,000 claims for clinical negligence - negligence being the breach of a legal duty of care owed to one person by another which results in damag
Post a Comment
Read more