I am on a mini-mission to explore the mental health arena in Hornsey & Wood Green. Quite a high percentage of people who come to my surgery are in difficulties – whether with housing issues, neighbour disputes, benefits or whatever – and it seems to me that they have wandered into these difficulties because of mental health issues and been caught in a downward spiral. A commonish one – for example – would be someone who has lost their home because of falling into arrears through being hospitalised for a mental health problem who cannot then be discharged from the hospital because there is nowhere to go.

So today I visited Mind. Seemed to be an excellent facility – but clearly lacking adequate funding for treatment which involved talking to people: long waits for therapists etc. In fact, that was a repeating theme across all mental health services – that the Government was clearly keener on funding drug therapies rather than talking therapies. The other issue that struck me was the lack of knowledge about how to access them amongst the general public.