I'm sure I have used the "one in four" statement many times. I have argued like many others before me that one in four people will have an episode of mental ill health/distress in their lifetime. The figure has been used by many to make people realise how we need to recognise and indeed de-stigmatise the number of people who need help but above all compassion for their situation.
But now we seem to have a new one in four. This new figure (actually based on a 2007 paper) argues that of those who have a mental health problem only one in four will actually be receiving treatment/help/assistance/support.So of that quarter of the population that need help only a quarter will be receiving it.
Quite an astonishing figure. Especially as the cost of this failure to treat /help is dwarfed by the savings to be accrued by returning people to a better place. As you can tell the argument is being underpinned by financial arguments (not surprising considering the London School of economics are involved) but isn't this really a moral issue?
Imagine if you will a quarter of diabetics only receiving treatment and a situation where retinopathy or gangrenous extremeties or indeed blindness were casually accepted. You can't really can you. Or even where a failure to treat for up to a year was accepted as a consequence of "how services are organised"
We do seem to be dogged by low expectations, fatalism and even a sense of nihlism when it comes to mental health.
