By Tom Penn:
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities launched their inaugural campaign on October 5, to coincide with Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s speech at the Global Mental Health Summit in Paris.
The initiative, which is simply the latest campaign on behalf of Better Health-Every Mind Matters (the NHS portal-cum-GP for tips and advice on mental wellbeing) involves answering five simple questions which then form the basis of a personalised ‘Mind Plan’.
In a recent article I said that Chris Whitty (under whose ‘professional leadership’ OHID operate) should not be trusted with a toothbrush let alone a more expanded role in public health, and he has immediately validated my remark with his new Office’s very first and childish take on the nation’s downward spiralling constitution.
Taking the quiz for the broken-brained, I answered each of the five questions with the most concerning option available: ‘always feel extremely low, extremely sleep deprived, always extremely anxious, extremely stressed, and been worrying about Covid-19, money and health issues’, and this was the resultant, personalised six-point Mind Plan: ‘relax your muscles and mind, reframe unhelpful thoughts, try a wellbeing audio guide, get the ‘Feeling Good’ app, do a little activity every day, and be prepared: feel calm.’
Retaking the quiz multiple times I soon realized that no matter the answers any six of around 50 or so wellbeing tips are generated, which can then be swapped out for others regardless; meaning the combined efforts of both OHID and the NHS have produced a single, editable list somehow deemed applicable to all mental health conditions no matter the severity.
Essentially, OHID and Whitty have come up with a randomised widget that due to the very nature of its dunderheaded design can be said to be neither personalised nor a plan. You have to hand it to the man: he is a paragon of consistency.
NHS Director for Mental Health Claire Murdoch said in relation to the campaign: ‘The last year has taken its toll on people’s mental health but NHS staff have responded rapidly to treat more people with mental health issues than ever before. The NHS is here for you.’
According to new research commissioned by OHID, half of all adults in England have suffered negative mental health impacts due to the pandemic. That Murdoch believes a widget capable of clearing the backlog, and the relaxation of muscles an effective treatment for a potential mental breakdown is a sure sign of her own shattered mind. The NHS has not been here for anyone for a very, very long time now.
True to form there is no mention of the wellbeing impact of the Covid-19 response on children. One can only assume such an assessment a needless use of financial resources as, currently being biologically vaccinated against negative wellbeing, they have little use for OHID and the NHS’s dotty online tips and tricks: those are reserved for the new children of Empire – grown-ups.
Sajid Javid’s speech in Paris was equally infantilising, and just like his slap-headed accomplice Whitty is not qualified to use a toothbrush, neither is Javid qualified to operate the nation’s universal head-massager.
‘There’s never been a more important time to talk about mental health, after our shared experience of this pandemic. Our mission must be for mental health to be treated with the same urgency as physical health.’
Like Murdoch, Javid’s own faculties must surely be in limp-mode if he feels the pandemic has been a shared experience. I very much doubt that any in government or big business were judged suitable for inclusion in OHID’s negative wellbeing research, and was not the most important time to talk about mental health when the first lockdown was enforced as a countermeasure to the spread of Covid-19? And if the Health Secretary’s mission is to put mental health on a par with physical health vis-a-vis treatment then we truly have stepped off the precipice: care facilities now running skeleton services and blighted by max-security style protocols.
The Health Secretary then goes on to state that 24/7 crisis hotlines, mental health apps, and virtual consultations ‘were new ways of working that we were forced to adopt’, the positive upshot being that a decade of change has subsequently been ‘crammed into two years.’ Forced to rapidly adopt systems already earmarked for implementation: a statement so morbidly transparent when read, that one can actually see the functional areas of Javid’s cerebral cortex doing the Conga.
We are moving into an age of normalised mockery. Not content with precipitating the very crises they then purport heroically to tackle, our government then take to podiums to taunt and jeer at the victims.
Welcome to Lunatic Asylum Britain: where children are biologically vaccinated against anxiety, suicidal citizens are told by a widget to ‘try a new hobby’, and public health offices advise that we all just calm down; whilst they tazer us with wellbeing directives and stand there laughing at our fits.
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