At some point 1 in 4 adults will experiencesome form of mental health episode in their lifetime and now 1 in 10 children are being diagnosed with mental health issues. There is a severe lack of therapists, funding and help within this sector. In 2012 alone just under 6,000 people committed suicide in in the UK, 77% of whom were male.
The way mental illness is diagnosed and treated needs to be changed aswell. We need to put mental health issues into two categories, neurotic and psychotic. With neurotic illness such as depression, anxiety, PTSD etc don't necesarilly need medication and in fact are better being treated with talking therapy. But all too often GP's who have no formal training in pschotherapy and harldly any time spent learning about mental health, are prescribing anti-depressants and forms of valium when most of the time they are not needed and are doing more harm than good. However with Psychotic based illness, psychois, schizophrenia etc then medicated psychiatric treatment is needed.
In the UK we have a severe lack of psycho therapists within the NHS, we desperately need them to cut down on the amount of drugs prescibed wrongly and to offer cheap affortable talking therapy for people who deperately need it.
We aim to get bodies like the UK Council of Psychotherpaists (UKCP) to work alongside the NHS to offer these required services, but they will need to get a tax break and VAT exemption for this to work. We also want to end the stigma surrounding mental health and for people not to be ashamed and open up and talk. Talking helps and can save lives.
Thank you for you support.
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