Mental Health and Well-being of Londoners

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered mental health and wellbeing of Londoners.

First, I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to raise the important question of the mental health and well-being of Londoners. Mental health touches all classes and cultures in London. In consequence, it is important not just that it be viewed within the paradigm of health care but that we understand that all elements of London’s socio-economic development are deeply rooted in the well-being of our city’s residents. Unless we start seriously to tackle what I believe to be a rapidly unravelling crisis of service provision for mental illness, we will begin to see dire ramifications surfacing in all aspects of society, including education, family stability and public order.

As the House will be aware, I have thrown my hat into the ring to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. If anything, this has sharpened my interest in these matters. Fundamentally, however, my interest in this subject derives from the fact that my mother was a nurse, and in the latter half of her career, she was a dedicated mental health nurse. I saw the mental health system through her eyes—the problems, the challenges—but above all I saw that she loved her job and that she genuinely loved the people she nursed. Through her, I have always had an instinctive idea that people with mental health issues are human beings, too, and deserving of our love and care.

For three years, I was privileged to be shadow public health Minister, and I was able to meet and learn from many dedicated workers in both the public and voluntary sectors in the mental health field. The sad truth is that mental health provision has long been chronically underfunded, and now, during a time of unprecedented demand, the concern is that spending might be falling dramatically in real terms.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

On the point that funding might be falling, we in London also face the problem that the cost of living is growing. Many people working in public services such as mental health nurses and workers in mental health care are often low-paid in comparison to others. People who come to see me are having difficulty finding places in London and some services are finding it difficult to recruit staff, which has a knock-on impact on the standard of services. I wonder whether my hon. Friend would comment on that.

[Ms Abbott]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. As he says, there are cost of living issues. Then there are spiralling housing costs. Health care in London has some of the biggest turnover and some of the highest vacancy levels of any health care provision in the country. The pressures of the cost of living crisis and the housing crisis are making it increasingly difficult to provide permanent staff to meet the health care needs in general and the mental health needs of Londoners.

I shall focus in my speech on the cost to London of the mental health crisis and the importance of parity of esteem between mental and physical health, about which Members on both sides of the House have spoken. It is important to stress it, because we are nowhere near parity of esteem when it comes to the questions of finance and resources. I also want to talk about the mental health and well-being of London’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and about the growing crisis of mental illness among our children, adolescents and young adults. I shall also deal with something not often spoken about—mental health issues in our black and minority ethnic communities in London.

It is important, because mental health is sometimes a marginalised issue, to talk about the huge cost of the mental health challenges to London. Recent figures indicate that almost a million adults of working age in London—15.8% of the adult population—are affected by common mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. I was in the House about 18 months ago when Members of all parties bravely talked about their own experience of depression and how they felt a stigma and found it very difficult to get treatment.

It is estimated that 7% of London’s population have an eating disorder, that one in 20 adults has a personality disorder; that 1% of Londoners are registered with their GP as having a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, bipolar and other psychoses; and that nearly half of Londoners are anxious. London has the UK’s highest proportion of people with high levels of anxiety. In addition, almost a third of Londoners report low levels of happiness, which must clearly be exacerbated by the cost of living issues we have mentioned. The number of Londoners reporting low levels of happiness is well over 2.5 million. We London MPs see many of them in our surgeries week after week.

In basic economic terms, almost £7.5 billion is spent each year addressing mental health issues in London, while according to the Greater London Authority, the wider health, social and economic impact of mental illness costs the capital an estimated £26 billion. In social care costs alone, London boroughs spend around £550 million a year treating mental disorder, and another £960 million each year on benefits to support people with mental ill health. There are some concerns about the changes in welfare and the—