Mental illness has no respect for fame!

Its been interesting this week listening to the radio and the Various reports of famous people that feel they have been crippled by mental illness and unable to perform, this got me thinking. Not being able to perform basically boils down to them being unable to do their jobs, unable to work.

In 2013 131 million sick days were taken in the UK resulting in £8.3 billion directly lost to the UK economy of which 40% was due to mental illness. So that is 52.4 million work days - 1 million a week - costing £3.36 billion a year. But the true cost in the UK £12 billion a year through lost production, recruitment and absence.

The governments NHS budget at the time was £117 billion of which £9 billion was spent on mental health services that's 7.6% of the total budget allocated to an area of health care that accounts for 40% of all work place absences. To compound the situation since 2013 there has been a 20% increase in demand for mental health services while in real terms the budget has been reduced by 8%.

Now I'm no economist or accountant, and I know the above numbers aren't the full picture. As with politicians I also know that statistics can be used to argue different sides of the same argument. But that said the above numbers just dont make sense.

Even without the black and white proof of the above financial evidence most people see the results of an underfunded health service and especially the underfunding of  mental health services.

1 in 4 people will suffer from  mental illness at some point in their lives with 75% of those never getting any treatment. Why? As many types of mental illness are there answers to this question. But through experience, professional discussions and research I would suggest that a very conservative estimate would be 25% of all sufferers cant get access to mental health services.

When I broke my leg - a non life threatening issue - I had to wait in my local A&E for about 6 hours on a Sunday evening to receive the needed treatment - nurse, doctor, x-ray and plaster cast.- Then after I came out of plaster I saw a physiotherapist within two days with 4 weekly follow up appointments. So why when my brain breaks - which can be life threatening - does it take not hours, days or even weeks to get treatment and access to help, but months leading to years?

There is literally thousands of stats and figures that I could include to show how many problems mental illness causes to individuals,family and friends, society, economy and government. So why is its treatment such a low priority?