Author: Anna Bird, Policy Officer, Mind
Attitudes to people experiencing mental distress within our society are deteriorating. In July 2007, the Department of Health published statistics showing that, compared to 1994:
- significantly fewer people now agree that residents have nothing to fear from users of mental health services in their neighbourhoods,
- there has been a ten per cent drop in people agreeing that ‘people with mental health problems have for too long been the subject of ridicule’,
- the number of people agreeing that we should adopt a more tolerant attitude towards people with mental illness in our society has decreased by a staggering twelve percentage points.1
The British Social Attitudes survey (2007) found respondents were more than 20 times more likely to be uncomfortable if a person with depression or schizophrenia moved in next door than if a person with a physical disability or sensory impairment was to do so.2
With such high levels of stigma and discrimination operating within our society, it is hardly surprising that people living with mental distress experience high levels of harassment and abuse in the community. People experiencing mental distress are more likely to be the victim of domestic abuse, and older people with depression experience more elder abuse than those who do not have a mental health problem. International research suggests people with severe mental health problems are eleven times more likely to be the victims of violent crime in their community than the general population.3 Disability hate crime statistics from Scotland show people experiencing mental distress face even more harassment than most other disability groups.4 Mental ill-health is linked to multiple disadvantage – poverty, unemployment, social exclusion. People on low or no income find themselves in run-down areas, where high levels of anti-social behaviour are the norm and the local police are too over-stretched to cope.
Building strong, safe communities is a must if we want people experiencing mental distress to have the opportunities the rest of the population takes for granted: the chance to meet people, feel at home, work, engage in leisure activities, build a family. But the challenge is immense. It involves training criminal justice agencies to work better with people experiencing mental distress, because too often we hear accounts of cases being dropped purely because of a witness’s mental health. It is about preventing crime - harassment and bullying must not be tolerated. It is also about allowing people the space, time and support to speak out when they are scared or victimised, so that injustices cannot flourish. But the real key to building safer neighbourhoods, is greater than any of those changes. We need to understand that inequalities in safety and security are a discrimination issue, in which society as a whole is implicated. Until people experiencing mental distress are no longer feared, ridiculed or considered uncomfortable neighbours, their right to a safe community cannot be guaranteed.
- TNS (June 2007), Attitudes to Mental Illness 2007 report (Shift/CSIP)
- Rigg, J (2007) Disabling attitudes? Public perspectives on disabled people, in Park A, Curtice J, Thomson K, Phillips M and Johnson M (eds.), British Social Attitudes: the 23rd Report – Perspectives on a changing society, London, Sage
- Levin, A (Sept 2005), People with mental illness more often crime victims, Psychiatric news, Volume 40, No. 17, pp16.
- Disability Rights Commission and Capability Scotland (March 2004), Hate crime against disabled people in Scotland: A survey report