Warning lights flashing as the UK goes backward on mental health stigma

14 October 2024, 15:01

It would be easy to look at World Mental Health Day last week and the extensive coverage that was dedicated to it and assume the incredible progress that’s been made on attitudes to mental health continues unabated.

Sadly, you would be wrong. The progress we’ve made is fragile, it’s not fixed and attitudes can go backward. And this is what our new research at Mind into attitudes to mental illness - released last week - shows us is happening.

I started my career as a social worker in the early 1990s and thankfully, we’re a world away now from how we talk about mental health then. We’ve seen steady improvements in attitudes, behaviors, understanding and knowledge around mental health.

This progress is the work of social movements in the UK and around the world working to change attitudes and portrayals of people with mental health problems, creating space for people to speak openly about common experiences like depression and anxiety, creating services that serve those who need them.

Can you hear the but?

On several key measures of public attitudes to mental health, things are headed in the wrong direction.

Most worrying is the falling belief that people with mental health problems can fully recover; the falling numbers of people who say they’d be willing to live with or near someone with mental health problems; and the falling trust in the community being the best place to recover.

These findings aren’t a surprise to me. There is a sense among many people working in mental health that something has changed, that progress isn’t what it was. This is exacerbated by the fact that we have two million people currently stuck on waiting lists for NHS mental health services, many of whom will reach crisis point.

And as I watch the deteriorating portrayals of mental health in parts of the media and on social media, I worry these trends will continue.

We know public attitudes to the most vulnerable in society can harden in straightened times. The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis will likely have played a part in hardening attitudes, as it became more difficult to access services and for people to recover from mental illness.

We know that the economic picture is unclear and that government spending will be tight.

But we know we desperately need investment in mental health to make sure mental health care is there for those who need it. And we need investment to make sure people have the basics of housing and food so that poverty is not a driver of mental health problems.

Whatever the drivers, we cannot sit back and watch the incredible progress we have made go to waste. So what next?

We all need to make a commitment to ramp up again our efforts to campaign and to tackle stigma. We need to deliver radical change, especially for those of us most at risk of exclusion and poor outcomes from the existing system. Because tackling stigma is foundational to any improvements in the nation’s mental health.

If mental health problems are a source of ignorance, prejudice or discrimination we will not get the reform and investment. That’s why we need to make sure no mind is left behind.

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Dr Sarah Hughes is Chief Executive of Mind, the mental health charity.

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