Mental health campaigners have welcomed a new government consultation that has put the working lives of people with mental health conditions, as well as their treatment, at the heart of its strategy.
The New Horizons paper on the next 10 years of mental health policy is being consulted upon until October. It has recommended that by 2020, more psychological treatments should be more widely available, people should have access to individual care packages, and more work should have been done to tackle the stigma of mental ill health in the workplace.
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Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health chief executive Angela Greatley said: “We warmly welcome the government’s commitment to creating healthier workplaces. Mental ill health costs British business £25bn a year, so action to improve mental health at work should be a national priority.”
Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, added: “As a nation, we can’t go on pretending that the term mental health only applies to a small group of people – those with a diagnosis. Everyone has mental health that needs to be looked after, and the costs of not doing so are huge in terms of human suffering and to the economy.”
