Category: “Mental Health”

Ed Miliband’s speech on mental health today is a significant – and good – moment in the campaign to improve understanding and treatment of mental illness in Britain. It is perhaps particulalry significant that this is his first major policy speech since he launched the theme of One Nation Labour at the party conference a [...]

Interesting morning in a series of meetings covering variously alcohol abuse, Page 3 girls (and the campaign to get The Sun to drop them and so catch up with the modern world), banks and their diversity policies and various specifications to do with a new bike. Forgive me if for now I focus on the [...]

Sunday Times columnist India Knight and the charity MIND got into a good old ding dong yesterday after she wrote a column (which I have posted below) on the slew of celebrity memoirs revealing the author to have had depression. As the row kicked off, she and her supporters sought to justify her piece by [...]

Just as the media were looking for any signs of Vince Cable moving against Nick Clegg this week, so when we come to the Tory conference, there will be an even greater focus on Boris Johnson’s positioning vis a vis David Cameron. Boris, and the possibility of him being the next Tory leader and PM, [...]

A woman named Lucy Rocca recently sent me the following email. ‘I first became aware of your personal interest in alcohol issues in the UK, after watching your excellent Panorama programme about the middle classes’ growing binge drinking crisis, back in February. My business partner and I have both had personal struggles with alcohol but [...]

Out early-ish today to do breakfast telly (sandwiched between discussions on Kate Middleton’s breasts and Cheryl Cole’s hair) on the Mental Health Discrimination Bill which is getting its second reading in the Commons right now. One or two people even more Labour tribal than I am got a bit antsy at my expressing support and [...]

The excitement (mine) is mounting … Not quite to the peak of the day I trotted out in front of 72000 people at Old Trafford with Diego Maradona (I never talk about it as regulars know) and three other World Cup winners as team-mates … Nor even an excitement to match election days 1997, 2001 [...]

I have introduced you before to my friend Mark Wright, a Labour activist and Elvis impersonator. He does however have an even bigger musical passion than The King, namely The Boss, and alerted me to an interview Bruce Springsteen has given to The New Yorker, in which he talks about his father’s mental health problems [...]

I must admit to being a bit grouchy with Random House publicity for getting me up for another early start in order to spend much of the morning as a panellist on Channel 5′s The Wright Stuff. I am not a daytime telly kind of person … Yet I really enjoyed it, not least because [...]

As promised, here is the piece I did last night for The Independent on the two MPs who spoke in the Commons about their mental health problems, who were later followed by Sarah Wollaston and Andrew Leadsom. I know many people with mental health problems who say they can deal with their symptoms, but what [...]