Mental health used to threaten liberty

Surveillance state disguised as suicide prevention

- JOHN MORSE

AT a meeting of Hampshire County Council's Health and Wellbeing Board in Winchester on June 15, the authority's proposed Mental Wellbeing Strategy and Suicide Prevention Action Plan was introduced in a report from Simon Bryant, Director of Public Health for the county.

The strategy has been developed collectively with partners of the multiagency Hampshire Improving Mental Wellbeing Board. It'emphasises a preventative approach to address the wide range of factors that influence mental health and wellbeing. The plan is to make 'suicide prevention... everybody's business!

Winchester housewife Teresa Skelton challenged the contents of the report, and the prospective strategy outlined in it, with a deputation during the meeting's public participation slot. She stated of the Action Plan that "it reads like a massive piece of administrative over-reach in the making". She continued: "The true scale of the mental health problems it claims to be addressing does not begin to justify the level of mass surveillance the report seems to be recommending.

"Page 41 of the document claims bizarrely that 'everyone is at risk of suicide. This does not sit very well with the statement further down the same page that suicide rates in England are declining, except among one group, under 25s - especially girls and women."

"If suicides are getting less", she asked, "why should official surveillance even vaguely need to be more, and what on earth is there to say we are all'at risk'?" Of the report's text, Mrs Skelton pointed out that it is "riddled with disturbing language, vague definitions, and unsubstantiated claims."