New consortium wins £18 million bid to fight growing problem of mental health discrimination


"We're 20 years behind race discrimination… We have to take this on."
Person with mental health problems, March 2007.

'Moving People' promises to change the culture of mental health forever in a ground-breaking bid to battle the growing problem of mental health stigma and discrimination, aiming to reach some 30 million people across England. Today, the Big Lottery Fund has announced an award of £16 million from its Well-being programme, matched by a further £2 million from Comic Relief (1), giving an historic opportunity to Moving People, a mental health charity partnership led by Mental Health Media, Mind, Rethink and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

People with mental health problems are one of the most excluded groups in society:

84 per cent experiencing problems in getting jobs, mortgages, healthcare, friendships, relationships (Mind survey, 2004).
55 per cent of young people (NUS and Rethink, 2001) wouldn't want anyone else to know they had mental health problems.
49 per cent of people with mental health problems have been harassed or attacked (2).
33 per cent of this group report having been dismissed or forced to resign from jobs (3).
Yet 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health problem. New research (4) shows that attitudes in England towards mental health have worsened further, contrasting with Scotland, where a strong anti-stigma campaign has changed attitudes:

17 per cent increase in belief that the mentally ill are prone to violence in England, up to 34 per cent, compared to drop of more than 50 per cent from 32 per cent to 15 per cent in Scotland.
Only 65 per cent of people now believe that people with mental health problems should have the same right to a job as anyone else.
Only 42 per cent of Londoners disagree that 'One of the main causes of mental illness is a lack of self-discipline and willpower'.
32 per cent of Londoners think 'There is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people'.

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Simon
Viewpoint Webteam