http://youtu.be/P1akkr0Ycq8
Action on mental health could help save London up to £26 billion a year
The scale of mental ill health in London is costing the capital around £26 billion a year, a new report commissioned by the Mayor Boris Johnson has revealed today.
In any given year, an estimated one in four Londoners will experience a diagnosable mental health condition. A third of these will experience two or more conditions at once. According to a Department of Health report, the impact of mental ill health is greater than cancer and cardiovascular disease. It represents around 22.8% of the total, compared to 15.9% and 16.2% respectively .
Close to £7.5 billion is spent each year to address mental ill health in London. This includes spending on health and social care to treat illness, benefits to support people living with mental ill health, and costs to education services and the criminal justice system. However, these costs are only part of the total £26 billion lost to London each year through such issues as reduced quality of life and productivity.
The Greater London Authority report provides a range of data, highlighting the direct and indirect costs of mental ill health to the city’s economy. For example, at least one in 10 children is thought to have a clinically significant mental health problem, and the impact of childhood psychiatric disorders is estimated to cost the capital’s education system approximately £200 million per year.
In social care costs alone, London boroughs spend around £550 million a year treating mental disorder, and another £960 million is spent each year on benefits to support people with mental ill health.
The report shows how London’s businesses are also affected – it is estimated that a staggering £10.4 billion is lost each year, including £7.2 billion due to increased worklessness. £920 million alone is lost annually to sickness absence, and a further £1.9 billion is lost to reduced productivity.
The Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: ‘This report is a rallying cry to increase yet further our response to this very pressing and pervasive issue. There are still many misconceptions about what mental ill health is, how it happens and what can be done about it. The result is that those struggling with mental ill health often go unnoticed and unsupported. It affects our relationships with others, limits educational achievement and increases sickness absence and worklessness. Indeed, the effects of mental ill health impact upon each and every aspect of our lives.’
Launching the new report London Mental Health – The Invisible Costs of Mental Ill Health, Deputy Mayor Victoria Borwick said: ‘This timely report reveals how far-reaching the effects of mental ill health are, not just on individuals and their loved ones, but on wider society and indeed the economy. It shows that this is not just an issue for health and social care professionals, but also for politicians and business leaders. It is vital that we work together to support people living with mental ill health and to mitigate the wider impacts which are so costly to London’s economy.’
Professor Martin Knapp, Professor of Social Policy, London School of Economics, who was on the report’s working group, said: ‘The fact that mental health problems have enormous consequences is well known, but the findings in this report illustrate just what a pervasive impact they have on the capital’s population. £26 billion a year is far too high a price to the city, and much of it is because we are not addressing individual and social needs properly. Those costs will continue to rise if we do nothing. I want the findings of this report to spur the wider London community to help meet those needs.’
Mental ill health is one of the priority areas identified by the London health Board, and the Mayor is keen that it is an issue that will be considered through the London Health Commission led by Lord Ari Darzi. The Deputy Mayor Victoria Borwick will also advocate for the issue, including representing the Mayor at the Pan-London Dementia Action Alliance and by acting as a mental health champion as part of the Local Authority Mental Health Challenge. Mental health will also be integrated better into the well-being activities being coordinated through the Mayor’s Healthy Schools London programme. Mental health is also one of the issues tackled by the Mayor’s Workplace Health Charter, which was set up to encourage and support employers that create a health enhancing workplace.
The report is available to download from – www.london.gov.uk/mentalhealth.
Hypnosis for meeting your Higher Self
Rapid induction by Don Spencer
Religion and Health: The more we know the more we need to know
Allan Kardec and the Development of a Research Programme in Psychic Experiences
A paper by Professor Alexander Moreida-Almeida presented at the Parapsychological Association & The Society for Psychical Research Convention 2008. Winchester – UK. Proceedings of Presented Papers v.51:327-332, 2008
Psychiatrist Edith Fiore talks about eathbound spirits
Clairvoyant Diagnosis
This experiment assesses the accuracy of a non-medically trained Spiritualist medium in her ability to identify a medically diagnosed disease. The case is also illustrative of the discovery of one earthbound attached spirit and one discarnate entity that uses energy for its own survival that is transmitted by a living human. The dynamic relationship between the disease and the discarnate entities is implied.
Click on the image for a transcription.
Demonic attributions in nondelusional disorders
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
Belief in demonic influence has repeatedly been described as a delusion in schizophrenic patients. The goal of this explorative study was to examine the frequency, as well as the psychodynamic and social functions of such beliefs in a sample of nondelusional patients.
METHOD:
The sample consisted of 343 psychiatric outpatients who described themselves as religious. In semistructured interviews they were asked to give their view of demonic causality of their illness.
RESULTS:
A high prevalence of such beliefs was not only found in schizophrenic patients (56%) but also in the following groups of nondelusional patients: affective disorders (29%), anxiety disorders (48%), personality disorders (37%) and adjustment disorders (23%). Belief in demonic oppression tended to be associated with lower educational level and rural origin, and was significantly influenced by church affiliation.
CONCLUSIONS:
Beliefs in possession or demonic influence are not confined to delusional disorders and should not be qualified as a mere delusion. Rather they have to be interpreted against the cultural and religious background which is shaping causal models of mental distress in the individual.
- PMID:
- 10494064
- [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Comparison of brazilian spiritist mediumship and dissociative identity disorder
Abstract
We studied the similarities and differences between Brazilian Spiritistic mediums and North American dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients. Twenty-four mediums selected among different Spiritistic organizations in São Paulo, Brazil, were interviewed using the Dissociative Disorder Interview Schedule, and their responses were compared with those of DID patients described in the literature. The results from Spiritistic mediums were similar to published data on DID patients only with respect to female prevalence and high frequency of Schneiderian first-rank symptoms. As compared with individuals with DID, the mediums differed in having better social adjustment, lower prevalence of mental disorders, lower use of mental health services, no use of antipsychotics, and lower prevalence of histories of physical or sexual childhood abuse, sleepwalking, secondary features of DID, and symptoms of borderline personality. Thus, mediumship differed from DID in having better mental health and social adjustment, and a different clinical profile.
- PMID:
- 18477886
- [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]