We believe that mental health is not something that only exists inside individuals and for which each individual is responsible. Instead, we think that each person’s emotional wellbeing is something that is produced socially. We all have a responsibility as a community to look after each other.
We know that austerity and rising wealth inequality have had a devastating impact on the mental health and emotional wellbeing of people in this country. To start to heal the damage we need to do more than just provide individual solutions but also work towards creating a society together that causes less emotional harm to its citizens. We know too that our different types, combinations and degree of privilege influence the ways and extent to which we are affected.
We are aware that the increasing risk posed by climate breakdown and the ecological crisis is affecting individual and community physical and mental health across the world, with those from the most marginalized communities who have contributed least to the damage suffering the most in terms of loss and trauma.
We drew on manifestos by service user groups National Survivor and User Network, Kindred Minds and the five indicators of a healthy society from the 2015 briefing paper, The Psychological Impact of Austerity.
Our manifesto is organised using these 5 qualities of a psychologically healthy society; agency, security, connection, meaning and trust. We name the policies that could help us to both recover from austerity and ill-health and move toward a society that does not make us sick and enables good health. Alongside this manifesto, we would also want to implement all the policy principles of the Institute of Health Equity’s ‘Fair Society Healthy Lives’ report to ensure health equity.
We know that austerity and rising wealth inequality have had a devastating impact on the mental health and emotional wellbeing of people in this country. To start to heal the damage we need to do more than just provide individual solutions but also work towards creating a society together that causes less emotional harm to its citizens. We know too that our different types, combinations and degree of privilege influence the ways and extent to which we are affected.
We are aware that the increasing risk posed by climate breakdown and the ecological crisis is affecting individual and community physical and mental health across the world, with those from the most marginalized communities who have contributed least to the damage suffering the most in terms of loss and trauma.
We drew on manifestos by service user groups National Survivor and User Network, Kindred Minds and the five indicators of a healthy society from the 2015 briefing paper, The Psychological Impact of Austerity.
Our manifesto is organised using these 5 qualities of a psychologically healthy society; agency, security, connection, meaning and trust. We name the policies that could help us to both recover from austerity and ill-health and move toward a society that does not make us sick and enables good health. Alongside this manifesto, we would also want to implement all the policy principles of the Institute of Health Equity’s ‘Fair Society Healthy Lives’ report to ensure health equity.
Agency
Agency is the subjective sense of having control over one’s life, having power to make decisions and shape the future. Many aspects of people’s lives, communities and environments feed into their level of perceived agency, including poverty, good quality work, and meaningful participation in decision making.
To support people’s capacity for agency, policies should:
To support people’s capacity for agency, policies should:
- Embed co-production and meaningful participation into the development, design and delivery of policy and public services. Public services that are paternalistic, didactic or punitive, are known to disempower people and reduce their feelings of agency.
- Implement the social model of distress and disability in mental health. (The social model means distress or disability is not located within the individual but in the way society is organised).
- Address the complicity of the psychological industry as a whole (theory, research, practise) in obscuring the impact of people's contexts and the operation of power on their mental health and emotional wellbeing.
- Promote informed choice, respecting people’s own understanding of their difficulties. This includes ensuring alternatives to medication are available, including a wide range of longer term therapies and other interventions that are genuinely accessible and adequate to the needs they are intended to address.
- Community psychology approaches, which draw on a social model of psychological distress and well-being should be mainstreamed into public services, with mental health practitioners working systemically to address social causes, as well as individual.
Security
Feeling safe is central to being a happy and healthy person. Material security, for instance having safe housing and a predictable income, is protective for mental health. Creating environments where children can develop emotional security and secure attachments provide solid foundations for life-long resilience and wellbeing.
We call for policies which actively strive to increase material and emotional security, such as:
We call for policies which actively strive to increase material and emotional security, such as:
- Address insecurity in the benefits system, including the catastrophic impacts of benefit cuts, Universal Credit and sanctions on mental health by ending Universal Credit and creating a system that ensures no-one becomes destitute, including ending re-assessment for benefits in its current form. Universal Basic Services and Universal Basic Income (5) should both be investigated as potential economic policies that could play a part in supporting financial security for all.
- Address the crisis in young people’s emotional wellbeing and mental health in schools. End high stakes testing in schools, funding Special Educational Needs (SEND) properly, create a properly funded, genuinely comprehensive schooling system. Abolish OFSTED or radically reform it to encourage schools to promote real learning instead of fear, as asked for by young people in their letter to OFSTED (6)
- Children’s mental health is not just about having therapists in schools. Children’s mental health, like adults will also improve when they and their families live in a healthier society.
- Address housing insecurity and the impact of the housing crisis on mental health and wellbeing. This could include introducing laws that would enable councils to build council and genuinely affordable housing directly. Introduce other policies like protection for tenants and rent controls that would make renting more secure.
- End precarious employment and ensure all jobs pay the real living wage (4).
Connection
Connection to others is a basic human need, and people experience social exclusion as painful. Where people have more contact and involvement with others, they experience a greater sense of connection and belonging, which is protective for emotional wellbeing. Connection to nature is also important for our psychological health and not all communities are equally able to access green spaces or outdoor activities.
Society needs to support people’s capacity for connection and belonging, for instance through:
Society needs to support people’s capacity for connection and belonging, for instance through:
- Promoting democracy, participation and co-production throughout society, not only in mental health and social care services, but also in workplaces and communities
- Addressing the loneliness crisis in our communities through investing significant resources into community-owned and community-led activities, groups and businesses and ensuring there are adequate community and public spaces available and free to use. Making sure public transport is fully accessible, cheap to use and there is adequate provision, especially in rural areas.
- Improve our capacity to connect with each other by addressing rising inequality in our society and reducing the time we are forced to spend in waged work, with a range of economic measures, like Universal Basic Services/Income, a four day week, employment rights, and housing provision for all.
- Promote our connection to nature through encouraging and subsidising outdoor activities across the lifespan from school through to older adulthood. Ensure there are green spaces for all communities to access and use. Promote through public health education the importance of nature and green spaces as essential to our health and well-being and how this connects to issues such as the climate crisis.
- Promote the crucial importance of addressing the climate crisis if we wish to maintain our capacity to increase community wellbeing through connection to nature and the natural world.
Meaning
The ability to live a meaningful life, whether through work, relationships or creative pursuits, is central to wellbeing. Having a sense of purpose, meaning and hope are central to recovery from mental health issues, and also are protective in the face of difficulties.
Policies which can improve capacity to live a valued life:
Policies which can improve capacity to live a valued life:
- Promote meaningful and good quality work by improving employment rights and ensuring adequate pay and working conditions, including employment rights for people in precarious work and bogus self-employment, like those working for platforms like Uber and Deliveroo.
- This should include addressing the crisis of mental health and emotional wellbeing for health and social care workers by ensuring they are properly paid for their work, ensuring all employees have a meaningful say in how workplaces are run and over their roles, and that workloads are manageable and achievable.
- Provide meaningful support for those in society who do the work of caring for others, including parents and those who care for family members.
- Policies like Universal Basic Services, Universal Basic Income, or a 4 day week, that reduce the time it is necessary to spend in waged work could give people more time to create a life that is meaningful for them.
- Provide an alternative narrative for a successful life, as distinct from the dominant narrative that prioritises excessive consumerism. This might include the sense of meaning and belonging we get through relationship with each other and with the natural world. Protection of the natural world, and engagement with issues such as climate change, can support these changes to our dominant narrative. Highlight improved mental health outcomes in individuals and communities less driven by the consumerist narrative and more connected to nature.
Trust
Trust is a crucial component of wellbeing in individuals, communities and society. Societies that are more equal and socially cohesive have citizens who trust each more. People living in more trusting societies have higher levels of subjective wellbeing, lower levels of mental health diagnoses, and a range of other positive social, and health outcomes.
We call for policies which help to support people’s capacities for trust, which could include:
We call for policies which help to support people’s capacities for trust, which could include:
- Funding independent service user groups and service user led research and interventions for mental ill-health. Ensure that any service user advice to NHS trusts and research comes from independently funded rather than in house service user representatives, to ensure their advice is independent.
- Addressing the multiple disadvantages to good mental health faced by BME people by establishing a ‘Race inequality commission’, addressing institutional discrimination, and ending all aspects of the ‘hostile environment’.
- Recognising that austerity has hit the most marginalised communities the most, public institutions must work hard to win back the trust of those communities.
We hope that this manifesto can be used by psychologists and anyone who cares about mental health and wellbeing in the UK to hold our politicians to account by engaging in the democratic process during this election and beyond.
Go to your local hustings (where parliamentary candidates answer questions from the public), speak to your colleagues, write to the newspaper, take part in our week of action, and make yourself heard.
Go to your local hustings (where parliamentary candidates answer questions from the public), speak to your colleagues, write to the newspaper, take part in our week of action, and make yourself heard.
