The one thing you can guarantee about statistics used by
politicians is that they are flawed. Usually simply wrong, sometimes falsified and
fudged to prove something they don’t actually prove, but more often they are just interpreted
and deployed polemically. Better still, why bother with any real statistics at
all? Just quote vague numbers and hope to provoke a visceral call to arms. Thus
does Ed Miliband talk about ‘the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our
age’, which he says ‘blights millions of people's lives’.
Millions, Ed? How many millions of people do you adjudge
to be actually mentally ill, rather than a bit down in the dumps? On LBC Radio today he talked about a One Nation approach to mental illness; about putting it
at the TOP of the political agenda. So, what are you saying, Eddy-baby? That
the economy, immigration, the EU, education et al should take a back seat to
lunacy? That we’re a nation of nutters? Well we did suffer thirteen years of Labour
rule after all.
Then, with a conjurer’s braggadocio he brandishes a
bouquet of fragrant, tragic, magic numbers to back up his claims; that mental illness costs
the NHS an extra £10 billion and the wider economy £26 billion a year. So in
his estimation the total cost of dealing with mental health issues is more than
our military defence budget? Where do these numbers come from and how in hell can you quantify something quite so nebulous as mental health?
He attacks Jeremy Clarkson and Janet Street-Porter for ‘belittling’
sufferers and making light of suicide and
depression. Naturally Jezzer does what he does best and comes back with, “I'm not sure he's right in the head.”Gotta love JC! But Janet SP
is bang on with her analysis; we give in all too quickly to that which most of us could resist, deny or shrug off.
Depression is very much the slippery, difficult-to-prove
malaise du jour for those who wonder why happiness eludes them. Some find Buddhism, but who has the time these days? Of course I’m not going to deny
that real depression exists, or that it hurts. I've been there. I've curled up
in that foetal ball and wept myself to sleep. I've felt all alone in the dark, worthless
and wounded and wanting it all to end. I've longed for somebody to tell me it wasn't my fault and here, take your lithium and all will be well.
But it wouldn't be well, would it? Just as diagnoses of ADHD
have been encouraged by the makers of Ritalin, the nutjob industry is keen to sell counselling and tranquillisers to desperate housewives and needy under performers
in all walks of life… You’re not fat, you’re disabled. You’re not thick, you’re
‘special’. You’re not mediocre, you just have low self-esteem. It's not your fault, you have an addictive personality. Mostly self-pitying bollocks. So now, you’re not
just stressed out, you’re proper poorly; Pop a pill, Popeye and join the wacky races...
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
Taking a public stance against anybody denying the scale of this partly imaginary
problem is just another opportunity to engender faux outrage. Insensitivity is the
favourite thing to get sensitive about these days. So I expect a bit of hate for writing
this. Why, only last night I got blocked for saying much more gently what I'm saying now; that much of the problem lies with a too-ready tolerance of anything and everything and once again it's a case of the minorities dictating to the masses. I think you'll find that's the opposite of democracy and Miliband is quite sane enough to exploit it for knee-jerk votes.
But what do I care? In words from everybody's favourite Dark Side, "I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, been over the
edge for yonks, been working me buns off for bands... I've always been mad, I
know I've been mad, like the most of us...very hard to explain why you're mad,
even if you're not mad..." Mad? I'm livid!
