One in four

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.

Keep Calm and Carry On

The slogan that has probably been most read for years, and the product of a campaign that thankfully never was. I like many people I am sure have seen it on T shirts, posters, television presenters and even on on a coffee mug! Perhaps we will never know who penned this amazing instruction to the British people in the event of a German invasion, but it seems to sum up an approach to life that is pretty timeless. You can actually imagine for most people this would not have been to difficult to do as it's so close to the national mind set. I can actually envisage that life would have gone on as it was and that people would have adjusted to the awful circumstances that would have arisen following an invasion. The new rules, the sense of helplessness and the real hope that all would have been over ridden by a positive force that was awaited.
Pretty much like the staff in the NHS at present really, stoically carrying on quietly with their duty. Remaining calm and carrying on in the hope that the present invasion of cold political imperatives will pass them by.Of course they remain calm as its essential for the people they care for that they feel safe in a situation where they are vulnerable,
I  really hope that they and indeed all of us who care about the NHS do not feel they are being told as in my other rather more up to date alternative coffee mug slogan to "Shut up and deal with it".