The public voice for health and social care

Shaping the conversation on mental health

Share This Post

Many charities and organisations used 10 October – World Mental Health Day – as an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the impact of mental health problems on diverse groups of people and challenges that need to be overcome to meet their needs.

Healthwatch England also played its part by sharing our latest published insight on the topic with a range of stakeholders. Our aim was to prompt discussions about how policy and services can be shaped to improve support for people, ahead of publication of the government’s full Major Conditions Strategy, which includes mental health, in 2024.

Here's a summary of various reports published this week:

Racism affects mental health through generations, so affected communities should be involved in designing more equitable mental health services (Centre for Mental Health)
More than three-quarters of surveyed people feel the cost-of-living crisis has affected their mental health (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy)
Only one in 10 nursing staff think the government is achieving parity of esteem [e.g. the same maximum waits for treatment] between physical and mental health care (Royal College of Nursing)
The Samaritans and 20 other charities have written an open letter to the Chancellor calling for renewed local suicide prevention funding to be announced in his Autumn budget.
Mind charity comments on CQC data showing more than 17,300 serious patient incidents were reported in the last year by NHS mental health staff
More than 105,000 counselling sessions were delivered to young people on mental and emotional health and wellbeing in the past year by the charity Childline

Want us to stay in touch?

Information

Further Information