Together for Mental Health Strategy
Our Welsh Government have just given their report on this previously unheard of strategy. which claims that discrimination in general seems to be decreasing (how so ?). They go on to say that more than 50% of the Welsh public are not willing to have someone with a mental health problem care for their children. Also, that such a person should not be allowed to hold office ( How do they know how many there are at present, and how will they find out if anyone wishes to represent a constituency has ( or is now ) ever suffered a mental health problem ? Should we begin a national witch-hunt to weed out all of these unsavoury, untrustworthy, and possibly dangerous characters by creating a CRB-type check for anyone who wants to care for children or wants to stand for their community ? The above questions show stigma of the worst kind, which is prevalent amongst most of the population.
When this topic has been raised before, I suggested that we should make all those is the 'mentally ill' generality wear yellow stars, so that they may be easily identified and avoided at all costs.
The report / paper goes on to confirm that most parents and people in employment feel that stigma and discrimination of the mentally ill is increasing. Most patients know already that even mentioning the word 'depression' kills off any chance of employment with most corporate entities. However, if you're homosexual or of a non-Christian faith (in traditional dress ), speak broken English or even Welsh, you'll be hired immediately as a demonstration of the national policy of 'Equality'.
Therefore Equality isn't really equality at all because the mentally ill are not included and may be stigmatised with impunity. In spite of this, our incompetent government announces that planning a second phase of this battle will take place next year under the ridiculous title - 'Time to Change Wales', which looks to tackle stigma. The rest of the report brings bile up to my throat as it is full of the type of rubbish and rhetoric shown in all government attempts to show "commitment to ending this" ( yeah right ). Any patient who laps up this type of empty promise, should contact the Time to Change Wales programme manager, Anthony Metcalfe .
Frankly, you'd be better off claiming to be a short, black, bald-headed, short-sighted, homosexual
scientologist, with Polish Muslim parents who don't speak a word of English, but manage to make a good living from their poppy fields ! You cannot legislate against Stigma any more than you can eliminate prejudice or religious dogma. R. W.
N.B. Fellow Patients - watch out how some doctors and nurses react when your categorised as being a sufferer of a mental health problem.
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