Last week, Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones, together with South Central Ambulance Service, announced that specialist mental health nurses will be based in the police control room to deal with emergency calls involving people with mental health issues.
These days if you watch any fly on the wall police documentary you will see just how much police time is spent helping people in these circumstances.
This initiative, announced during mental health awareness week, is therefore very welcome.
We talk a lot more openly about mental health these days. And this is true across government departments too.
In my various government roles, I have seen first-hand why looking after our mental health is so critical and what the consequences can be when we don’t.
As the prisons minister, I saw a disproportionately high number of offenders arrive in prison with both neurodivergent conditions, such as autism, and acute mental health problems, including schizophrenia.
Without the right support, these individuals will always find the prison environment and efforts to rehabilitate them incredibly challenging. Simple tasks such as filling in forms or understanding the prison timetable can send these individuals into a spiral.
Putting in place dedicated neurodiversity officers at every prison, something I announced during my time as prisons minister, is a positive step. This will enable those with neurodiverse needs to engage with education and rehabilitation while serving their sentence. There is also good joint work in HM Prison Service, working with the NHS, on mental health treatments.
In schools, the number of children identified as having a ’probable mental health condition’ has grown year on year. Some of this is because we’ve got better at recognising the symptoms, but there is also an apparent increase in underlying prevalence. Covid of course did not help; much has been written too about the potential links with new technology.
This is not unique to the UK. It is a pattern repeated across the world, including countries such as France and the USA.
I’ve written before in this column about the introduction of mental health support teams for schools. These are specialist teams attached to a cluster of schools to help identify children in need of extra support. The number of these teams here in Hampshire has been growing and will grow further (and I met with the team from Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service - Helen Dove and Richard Levell pictured above with me - recently for an update). We have also offered a training grant for a mental health lead within all schools, and a majority of schools have now taken this up.
And of course, in the jobs market, as I saw when I was employment minister, one of the biggest impediments to work is poor mental health. A rising number of people - and especially younger adults - are now citing mental health as a reason for not being employed. The pandemic, again, exacerbated things, with some people still putting the pieces back together today.
But we know that for many, except of course in really acute cases, being in work - with the routine, purpose and social interaction that that brings - can be beneficial for mental health.
In all of these examples, the answer lies with having the right treatment or plan, in the right place at the right time. Shining a light on the issue, as mental health awareness week does, is a good place to start.
To find out more about the Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, visit: https://hampshirecamhs.nhs.uk/
