Topic: Expanding Mental Health Resources
Country: United Kingdom
Delegate Name: Allyson Suandi
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All United Kingdom position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
The horrifying, scandalous problem of mental health has been highly disregarded in the United Nations and is still an outrageously difficult and thought-provoking issue in both developed and developing countries. The World Health Organization must address mental health as it is an extremely overlooked issue for something fairly common, as it affects one in four people, which ranges from depressed students to substance abusers. The United Nations must take into deep consideration on how mental health affects the livelihood of people, especially with the continuously increasing need for mental health care. Mental health most definitely constitutes within the World Health Organization’s definition of health and therefore must be considered when meeting the United Nations sustainable development goal of ensuring healthy lives. The issue of mental health being neglected occurs in both developed and developing nations. There are not enough mental health services and workers in developing nations as a whole and in certain regions that contain a vast amount of brutality and discrimination where it is severely necessary. Ensuring mental health is an topic that all countries, no matter what the financial status, needs to work towards. The United Kingdom, although an developed nation with high status, still struggles with ensuring mental health for all of its people. In a 2018 report, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service has been dealing with an inadequate amount of beds for patients, long wait times, and difficulty to access proper treatment. In another report from the Care Quality Commission, the State of Mental Health services 2014-2017, stated that to provide good condition mental health care services the United Kingdom must address the shortage of mental health workers and facilities, demand, and unsatisfactory clinical information systems. The amount of people who travel up to hundreds of miles away to find treatment has rose by 40% in the last few years. 23% of younger individuals have not been given treatment yet because of “high thresholds” and that only when “something goes drastically wrong” before care is provided. Ideally, the government looks for a future where care for mental health can be provided close to home and in hospitals throughout the community. When dealing with mental health, the majority of people that the United Kingdom need to especially provide assistance to are students with anxiety and/or depression, as well as pregnant women and new mothers. The United Kingdom also plans to invests an additional 1.3 billion euros in mental health services by 2021. This enhanced funding will hopefully help the United Kingdom works towards better facilities and services, more workers, and for the betterment of its people. The United Kingdom urges other nations to seek a comprehensive solution that works towards the creation of new facilities in troubled regions in developed and especially in developing nations as well. The United Kingdom would like to defined these troubled regions as areas with a vulnerable population where there are lots of violence or crime filled places, areas with poverty, areas with terror, places with discrimination, and specific areas with high mental illness rates as a whole. The United Kingdom plans to use it’s own Five Year Forward View for Mental Health plan as a guideline when creating it’s resolution. The UK would also like to see public awareness being spread worldwide on mental health as a whole and its significance, advocating for psychological well-being, better treatment for mental health, advocating and educating on the prevention of mental health issues, etc. The United Kingdom would also like to work towards more treatment specifically on school children, veterans, pregnant women, refugees, and prisoners. The United Kingdom understands that the workforce for mental health issues must rise in order for all of this to happen and for the existing workforce to have better training. The United Kingdom would like to work specifically with the International Mental Health Collaboration Network and Working Group, which are two NGOs that can help nations across the globe to help with the implementation, raise public awareness, and provide funding. The United Kingdom hopes that by using non-governmental organizations, the organizations would help support and facilitate the implementation of these plans. The United Kingdom however also strongly suggests that nations should begin setting aside government money specifically for mental health if they are so able.
