Mental Health Issues - Petition

Hey guys,

UNILad have post a petition that I thought was actually quite helpful, titled:

        Jeremy Hunt MP: Waiting Times For Young People’s Mental Health Services Must Be Cut

And here's the information:

UNILAD challenges the government to tackle the mental health epidemic at the root, and fast. As Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt MP is best placed to help solve this issue.

To do this, the government needs to cut mental health service waiting times for young people, by shortening the timeline of their pledge to introduce maximum waiting times by 2022-3. If not, our country will lose countless young lives in the meantime.

On average, a child waits a decade from the moment they suffer their first symptom of poor mental health to receiving treatment. Furthermore, two committees of MPs published a report on May 9, saying the government's plans will take too long to come into effect and will ‘fail a generation’ through complacency and inadequacy. 

At such a crucial stage in young people’s development, mental health issues should be treated as a matter of urgency. Diagnosing and treating issues early will help deal with problems before they develop into something worse.

If the government is really serious about tackling the mental health crisis, they need to finally take decisive action.

Here's a link if you want to read more about it: https://www.change.org/p/jeremy-hunt-mp-waiting-times-for-young-people-s-mental-health-services-must-be-cut?recruiter=296637141&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=autopublish

Fast Mental Health Treatment Is Important

I read this and nearly skipped over it until I thought back to my own treatment and how my referrals to Cognitive Therapy or any other treatment didn't get processed for a month to six weeks each time! Problem in my case was that by the end of the six weeks, I had either lost the motivation to treat my anxiety or I'd gone through the 'bad phase' and so it was no longer helpful. 

Imagine the people that are suffering from severe depression or something worse; do they have six weeks to wait for a response, let alone an appointment? Anyone who's had depression will know that getting the motivation for anything at all is nigh impossible, let alone trying to cope that many weeks after. If you're reaching out to the doctor for help, chances are you're already at your lowest point and are pretty desperate to receive treatment or therapy. It must be awful to then be stuck on a waiting list while you're battling those thoughts.

Then there are those who have suicidal thoughts, how are they going to cope with the waiting times? I hate to imagine, though I do know people who can only have one therapy session a month because of how full the lists are and both of those people have attempted suicide before! It really does need changing.

NX