Mental Health Statistic Is Flawed - "One In Four" of UK Population is Incorrect

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Polly Paradoxrot Says "1 in 4" Is A Flawed Statistic

Its an overdue article running on the Guardian : Is the oft quoted "statistic" 1 in 4 (suffer eventually from mental illness) a realistic projection ?

Jamie Horder on the Guardian questions it :

"It's taken as fact that one in four people will suffer a mental health problem, but the research is less conclusive"

We at UserWatch think its not the quote so much as why its being used that needs examination and UserWatch was contacted by two mental health Users who gave these reasons and the analysis of political and mental health charity sub agendas for its social use :

1.

"The problem with the 1 in 4 statistic is that its a socially engineered lie used by Government mental health quango NIMHE - now the National Mental Health Development Unit - and leading mental health charities like Mind, Rethink and the Mental Health Foundation to justify Walden II-like social policy goals on the back of wildly exagerated claims about the dire state of the nations mental health.

It's certainly telling that the main mental health charities who have received massively duplicated anti-stigma campaign funding on the basis of the 1 in 4 stat have declined to comment on the debunking of the 1 in 4 myth and we really should be looking more closely at Government mental health policy, the lack of independence of Britain's leading mental health charities, their conflicting service provider vs representational roles and increasing dependence on Government for contracts and scrutinising outfits like the secretive Mental Health Foundation which inserts itself on to various Government mental health advisory bodies in order to sell a range of faddish CD based treatment 'toolkits ' through captive NHS networks from the Foundation's luxury suite of offices on the South Bank.

It's time to brush aside the silly 1 in 4 agenda and re-focus on challenging the Government's discriminatory exclusion of all NHS mental health services from the Patient Choice agenda , a discriminatory policy the mental health charities have ignored because they are more interested in securing Government contracts."

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The way the figure 1 in 4 has often been used socially and economically by the mental health charities - all of which are highly involved with each other's economic and bidding strategies - is to sell to the public the notion that "stigma" too is prevalent and that has been used in turn to skew vision into somehow its all society's fault that people with mental health conditions cannot get work .

1 in 4 thus has a use and its use, is manipulation of social vision towards an argument which in turn is constructed for an "anti-stigmatising" social cause .

Closer examination of the 1 in 4 charity and Gov't led anti stigma approaches reveals quite a money making making machine for the MH charities who have not seriously challenged Government to stop discriminating against all MH Users to give them legal "patient choice" mechanisms for instance .

That equal human rights reform has been missed even though its clear many non acute (non sectionable) MH Users need to choose service designs that help them have equal rights as the general population does with surgery and other medical legal "patient-choice" menu's of options.

Thus "1 in 4" have the largest Gov't stigma being operated against them as from Jan 2009 whereby the Directions and Guidance to PCT's forbade patient choice mechanisms to MH Users .. When checked with the DOH its ALL MH Users . The Jan 2009 DOCUMENT IS HERE - its signed off by the Sec of State's senior civil servant

Is 1 in 4 a true figure ? Possibly not . But the way its being used is to ramp up the chances of the MH charities (in league with parts of Govt) to bid for large pots of lottery cash and "convince" everyone through projects that we are all subject to each other's discrimination that hold us back from a life of work and recovery. That is questionable . The quickest way to treat people with equality in MH is for the Government to open the doors of Patient Choice mechanisms and to stop denying that mental health equal rights agenda .

Is there a part industry out there exploiting the Mental Health economy and trying to steer it too (with claims of 1 in 4 ) etc

Of course, its possible to point directly to it , and it does involve the interest of big MH charities and their policy steering networks . They need examining ."

'Nuff Said ..