Tag Archives: mental health

Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow MP writes: Mental health – changing attitudes, tackling stigma

By Paul Burstow | Wed 19th October 2011 - 3:52 pm

Paul Burstow visits Duke McKenzie's

At our party conference in Birmingham, I was asked the question; “what issues can we campaign on at the next general election?” Given that this was during the health Bill Q&A session, I imagine most people in the audience expected me to focus on NHS reform. Instead I talked about mental health, and in particular our party’s long standing campaign for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. There are many obstacles to overcome but we are making progress …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
The Voice

A Radical Activist Grandma writes… Lib Dems must make their voice heard on mental health and disability issues

By The Voice | Thu 29th September 2011 - 12:15 pm

Suzanne Fletcher had an experience many Lib Dems have experienced at the party’s conference: she’d prepared a speech but there was not time to call her during the debate. However, Lib Dem Voice is delighted, with Suzanne’s permission, to share her thoughts with our readers…

The speech I didn’t make at Lib Dem conference on the Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) and Work Capability Assessments
First of all congratulations to the Disability Consortium for their well-run campaign to get people to come and vote in this debate, although I was certainly going to be here anyway, along with my colleagues from Stockton, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 7 Comments
Helen Duffett

MPs with mental illness will no longer be automatically disqualified

By Helen Duffett | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 7:48 pm

The government announced today the repeal of a law which automatically expels MPs from Parliament if they have a serious mental health condition.

This morning on Daybreak TV, Nick Clegg spoke about the abolition of Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983:

Today we are announcing that we are repealing an old-fashioned outdated law which means that MPs at the moment are disqualified from being MPs if they have a mental health problem which goes on for more than six months.

We are scrapping that – it is a relatively symbolic thing because it has never been used – but

…

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Posted in Election law, News and Parliament | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Tim Farron MP

New mental health strategy

By Tim Farron MP | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 2:55 pm

Mental illness has always been a somewhat taboo subject. Yet 1 in 4 of us will experience some sort of mental health problem in our lifetimes. The first rally I ever helped to organise as an MP in my constituency was to prevent the closure of our local mental health ward at Westmorland General Hospital. You would have thought, with the stigma that surrounds mental health, that turnout would have been fairly low, but on that day back in January 2006 as I marched to save our local mental health services I was joined by over 3000 people. …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
Sara Bedford

A personal view: ending the stigma and waste of mental illness

By Sara Bedford | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 7:07 pm

Less than two months after he was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg made a widely-reported speech at the Guardian Public Services Summit in St. Albans, on the subject of mental health. Nick pointed out that “One in four Britons suffers from a mental illness at some point in their lives. One in six is suffering at any given time. Mental health issues directly affect most of Britain’s families today.”

It was laudable and maybe surprising for Nick to use a keynote speech so early in his leadership to highlight such an unfashionable subject. For there is no doubt that mental health issues are seen by some as not really an illness, but some spiritual or character weakness on behalf of the sufferer. And yet most of us have either suffered with mental illness, or have a close family member who has done so.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 8 Comments
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