Our vision
A second pandemic
With the COVID-19 pandemic this paper explains the emerging second pandemic, mental health. It also provides a comprehensive set of solutions to ensure mental health issues are treated properly.
A second pandemic: Improving mental health services for every generation
This paper provides a new plan to protect and improve mental health within the UK. It does this by finding solutions for people at every stage of life tailored to their needs in early, middle and old age.
Quick summary
- We want a mental health system everyone can fall back on. That’s why we support an NHS umbrella, a single NHS IT system or compatible IT systems, legalised drugs for medical uses, and an NHS watchdog.
- We believe mental health support should be easily accessible within the education system. This would be achieved by integrating CAMHS into the education system, reforming Ofsted, flexible lessons with online learning, specialised mental health GPs for young people and fewer exams.
- Supporting mental health needs to be at the heart of the workplace. This includes referral units for businesses, workers on company boards and collective bargaining with a say over mental health, an anonymous complaints system for workplaces, flexible working, giving workers the right not to answer work related contact from their employer out of hours and a Guaranteed Minimum Income.
- To support our seniors, we support better social care and creating more community spaces. This would include creating new or expanding existing community hubs, a Guaranteed Minimum Income top-up for pensioners, free social care, a long-term social care fund and intergenerational care.
Authors
Pushkin Defyer
Alumni Network Chair
Pushkin was previously on the executive of the Young Liberals and is now a member of the Labour Party. He has worked with candidates from multiple parties during election campaigns, mainly supporting them with his knowledge of digital campaigning.