Making a reality of social inclusion for people who have experienced mental distress is the task of the National Social Inclusion Programme. SPN is an associate body of the programme and to strengthen the partnership you will soon be able to link directly from this site to the NSIP site to keep up to date with their programme.
There are two big problems with social inclusion. While it is a nice honeyed phrase it means everything and nothing to people. Everybody is in favour of social inclusion – except of course when it comes to asylum seekers, paedophiles, foreign criminals, people with personality disorders and the list goes on of people who the popular press feel are outside the ambit of normal society. And normal society seems to be defined as decent hardworking families so maybe those without work or unable to work, or those whose relationships have broken down are outsiders too.
That’s one problem- those to be included tend to be defined by politics and the press. The other is that the government blows hot and cold on this issue dependent on whether it is meeting its self –imposed targets. The threat of missing its teenage pregnancy target and its called Respect agenda have put
the need to tackle deep-seated problems back on the agenda. Hilary Armstrong has been given the remit but the history of non-departmental ministers being able to make a difference isn’t encouraging.
What would make a difference in mental health isn’t so much the detailed work being undertaken by the NSIP important as that it is. It would be tackling the daily reality of the discrimination experienced by those with a history of mental distress and by seeking to promote better understanding . The public reaction to the Sun’s ‘Bonkers Bruno’ headline suggests that people are more aware and sensitive than the tabloids credit. But the dumbing down effect of programmes like ‘Big Brother’ mean that a breakdown of a contestant in prime time TV creates as many headlines and viewers as does a sexual relationship.
So lets see some real money put behind the SHIFT campaign. Lets see ministers in the Department of Health taking the wellbeing agenda seriously and challenging the media moguls about their responsibilities instead of cravenly sucking up to them (read Piers Morgan’s The Insider). And lets see people who have experienced mental distress taking a lead from Melvyn Bragg and speaking out about their experiences.
And let us know your experiences of discrimination so that we can feed these into the campaign for real social inclusion.
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