Legal News

The annual BMA medical students’conference has called for an end to cuts to the mental health budget.

Medical students attending the London conference are also calling on the General Medical Council (GMC) to help medical students have more face-to-face contact with mental health patients, in a bid to reduce the stigma of mental health issues and promote more understanding of mental health conditions.

The students also called on their BMA representatives to help promote mental health awareness week at medical schools.

The students have called for the British Medical Association (BMA) to lobby the government to include mental health and wellbeing issues in the national curriculum for schools, in order to educate young adults about their own mental health and further help reduce the stigma of mental health conditions.

Third-year medical student Susan Fishwick from Hull York said, “A healthy dialogue on mental health should be encouraged from a young age.”

First-year Manchester University medical student Emma Runswick said that 50 million prescriptions for antidepressants are issued every year – and the mental health charity Mind has reported increasing numbers of calls to its helpline.

She added that long NHS waiting lists for mental health therapies meant other agencies were having to step in and offering psychological therapies to mental health patients.

Her colleague at Manchester, Charlotte Auty, said that – compared with patient who have physical conditions – mental health patients lost out, with longer waiting times for treatment, which might reinforce a stigma that mental health is “not a real illness”.

The government is encouraging the NHS to offer more talking therapies such as counselling to mental health patient with conditions like anxiety and mild to moderate depression; as well as more home care with seven-day phone support, rather than institutionalised care in an acute care unit.

Mental health is a central focus of all three main political parties in the run up to the 2015 General Election – and Labour leader Ed Miliband has now given his support to the Sunday Express’s campaign “Crusade for Better Mental Health”.

At the weekend, Mr Miliband visited community gardening projects in Doncaster, which are funded by The Health Lottery.

He said that his support for mental health projects and the Sunday Express mental health campaign was spurred on by a “heartfelt” letter written to him by a pupil at the school his wife attended, West Bridgford School in Nottinghamshire.

The schoolgirl told the Labour leader of her struggle to obtain help for her mental health issues.

Mr Miliband said:

“I have since met her in the House of Commons and she said if she could have got help sooner, she could have avoided having to stay in an institution.

“What does this require? It requires awareness by teachers and others and a school that is going to be responsive to these issues.

"There is a massive amount that we have to do to solve the challenges we face, which the Sunday Express has rightly highlighted.

“This requires not just health services to do their job, it requires communities and society as a whole to do its job."

The Labour Party has set up a mental health taskforce headed by the chairman of Bart’s Health NHS Trust, Sir Stephen O'Brien, to draw up a strategic plan for mental health reform if Labour is elected to government in the General Election.

It is estimated that three children in every classroom may have a diagnosable mental health condition which requires treatment, but many children may not be getting the services they require.

Duncan Lewis Mental Health Solicitors

Duncan Lewis is a specialist firm of mental health solicitors and can advise on access to mental health services and issues such as detention under the Mental Health Act 1983.

Duncan Lewis is also one of the UK’s leading providers of Legal Aid services and in some cases can advise the carer or next of kin of a mental health patient on treatment issues, including treatment reviews or access to mental health services for prisoners.

For expert help with mental health law contact the Duncan Lewis Mental Health Solicitors Helpline on 0203 114 1124.