MENTAL ill health affects more people each year than cancer or heart disease, with one in four people in Britain affected. Yet it is one of the most overlooked services in the NHS.

Southwark Pensioners Action Group (SPAG) has been campaigning to create “a place of sanctuary” at the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in Denmark Hill for those in mental health crisis.

The group is aiming for a safe site for those in distress, especially children, young people, pregnant women and mothers with babies who are having to use the King’s College Hospital A&E.

SPAG health spokesperson Tom White said that “King’s hospital is dealing with approximately 400 mental health cases a month, even though the Maudsley Hospital is literally across the road.

White said that 2,000 leaflets were issued at a protest last week and not one person spoke out in disagreement. Groups like Keep Our Lambeth NHS and Unite the Union supported the campaigners on the day by attending with banners.

“I’ve been in touch with the two princes and Kate [Middleton], and we received a nice letter saying ‘unfortunately because it involves government buildings’ they are not allowed to get involved with us. We just wanted them to stand outside the building in support,” he added.

White said that the group will be having a meeting with Labour MPs Neil Coyle, Harriet Harman and Helen Hayes, who have sent solidarity messages to SPAG, very shortly. 

They have agreed to bring up the issue with the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in Parliament.

Coyle said that the government had “slashed back” mental health services and other support, such as crucial benefits.

“In December the DWP were forced to admit they had misassessed around 220,000 people with mental health problems for personal independence payments but, six months on, have not paid a single person their entitlements despite the legal ruling,” he said.

“And even for those who can access care, some bad old signs are re-emerging. Less choice and control over services for people with mental health conditions and their families as well as a rise in coerced treatment. This simply should not be happening.”

The MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark said it was “astonishing” how much of the work he does overlaps with mental health, including foodbanks, homelessness, policing and welfare.
Harman said she “vigorously opposed” the closure of the 24-hour emergency clinic at the Maudsley in 2007.

She added: “I have remained concerned about whether the overstretched A&E at King’s College Hospital, under pressure inflicted by government cuts and missing its four-hour waiting time target, can cope with demand and whether a crowded A&E ward is the right place for people suffering acute mental health problems.”

SPAG thinks A&E would be “an awful place” for someone in a mental health crisis due to its “hectic, busy and sometimes aggressive” reception area.

Hayes said: “Mental health must receive parity of esteem with physical health, but currently falls far short of this.

“This can only be achieved through increased funding, and I am calling on the government to make additional funding available to SLaM [South London and Maudsley] to ensure that everyone who needs mental health care and treatment can access it without delay.”

The CEO of Maudsley has previously boasted that £2.8 million was saved over the last year by cutting beds, says White.

“Yet a 16-year-old girl from Southwark who needed a bed was told the nearest one was in Manchester,” he said. “She was there for seven weeks and the family had to spend £60 a day in fares just to see her.

“The government is saying that mental health is receiving money. It is the Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group that holds the purse strings, but we need to know how much is being spent, and if services are getting the right amount.”

“It’s not even political, we just feel very passionate about this,” he said. White remembers how he first got involved with the campaign.

“There was a man, about 25 years old, telling paramedics who were trying to help him: ‘I would just like you to be in my head for a day and hear these voices telling me that I am useless.’ That really struck me.”

White says he doesn't know why the mental health services are pushed aside, but it was “grossly unfair.”

“We are fighting for the rights of mental health patients to be treated like anybody else,” he says. “That’s all were asking for.”

The campaign group is also calling for an end to cuts to children and young people’s mental health services.