Mental health has a distorted appearance to the outside world, for some it doesn't even identify as a discipline. Too abstract in its treatments to fit in alongside the NHS powerhouses yet too institutional to make up a part of 'alternative healthcare' mental health, like its patients, can feel a bit isolated from the rest of us. Yet it's key to remember that WHO (the World Health Organisation) defines Health as a complete state of physical, social and mental well-being not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, our mental happiness is just as important as our physical well-being.
Professor Matthew Hotopf works at the local Maudsley Institute apcae with King's College Hospital on Denmark Hill. He has undertaken research into epidemiology (the science that studies the patterns, causes and effects of health in populations), pallative care and mortality all within mental health. Speaking to Alleyn's Medical Society this Tuesday he wanted to spread the awareness of mental health as a serious issue and the problems which have arisen from oppressive and unethical treatments such as electro-convulsive therapy and lobotomy in the past and its segregation from the rest of the healthcare system.
Historically there has been a geographic split between mental health and health. During the 18th and early 19th century the large teaching Hospitals of London were all very centrally located, with a ring of mental institutes formed around this area and the treatments available were either extremely experimental in nature or non-existent. During this time the care of mental health was extremely institutionalised, in the majority of cases the institutes which housed these patients sought not to cure them but to divide them from normal society. However our knowledge of psychiatry has developed hugely in the last 50 years and words such as 'retard' and 'imbecile' are no longer used to describe those with mental disorders or learning disabilities. The publishing of the white paper 'Valuing People' in 2001 saw one of the greatest steps forward in the government supporting people with mental health and is a mark of the progress made within the NHS.
Prof Hotopf talked about how mental health was involved with other aspects of healthcare and his job; a large number of A&E patients suffer from PTSD and depression. This means Prof Hotopf is often involved with working alongside colleges in other departments, he noted how this kind of work has made headlines recently as the women who took her own life and that of her newborn child's was suffering from a major perinatal disorder, something he has often come across.
To finish Prof Hotopf considerig how mental health can affect life expectancy and showed us how people with mental diseases are 3-5 times more likely to suffer depressive related conditions and have life expectancies up to 20 years shorter. He stressed that these statistics highlighted the importance of our mental health and of how it affects our health as a whole, in other words there is no health without mental health.
For further reference about mental health see 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' By Oliver Sacks
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/250877/5086.pdf
-'Valuing People' the White Paper published 2001
See the 2010 BBC 4 documentary 'Mental: A History of the Madhouse' for information about the Victorian psychiatry treatments.
-Izzie
