Mental health: build fightback

Socialist Resistance no38 | page 5-6

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A RECENT survey showed that two thirds of mental health trusts have been forced to scrap plans to improve services because of cash pressures, while beds and services are closing and mental health jobs are being lost in London, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire Yorkshire, Cumbria, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and many other areas.

Northamptonshire consultants have published a devastating response to plans by the Daventry and Northants PCT to slash mental health and learning disability services in the county: it's time far more top doctors threw their weight behind the fight to defend these vital services.

There is no doubt that mental health is being seen around the country as a "soft target" for cuts as PCTs wrestle with budget deficits: the Northants consultants are not the only ones complaining that the list of cuts proposed (to resolve deficits elsewhere in the NHS) "shows every sign of a hastily contrived and randomly generated list of cuts designed to deliver an arbitrarily imposed and groundless figure".

At risk are of course the improvements and developments in mental health serv-