Tory Wedges Have Thin Edges

So this rather Nasty government are considering making the mentally ill conform to their idea of ‘treatment’ – or face losing their benefits.

Let’s leave aside for now the fact that this government have presided over the biggest cuts in mental health services ever. The fact that this leaves it as such a poor service that suicides have risen, self harm has risen, and getting help is a huge difficulty, with huge waiting lists already – even before a sudden influx of all these threatened mentally ill patients.

We’ll leave that aside.

What is more disturbing is that government is starting to adopt powers that it should never have: the forcible treatment of those who are ill.
They start with talk of ,talking therapies’ and ‘CBT’ – but what happens if the ill person complies with this, manages to get an appointment to see a mental health professional, and takes whatever treatment is deemed ‘right’ by the government – and does not get well?

Will this person then be judged to be ‘faking it’? And benefits withdrawn?
Or will they then be required to have deeper treatments – poisonous drugs that harm liver, brain, heart, hormone regulation, weight regulation? Or Electro Convulsive Therapy? Brain surgery?

The government is taking to itself powers to coerce ILL people into treatments that are – on test after test – often found to be only a few per cent better than nothing at all, yet which can substantially harm the patient’s physical health.
Yet, these representatives-turned-rulers (have a read of how democracy truly disappeared in 30s Germany) appear to show no end to their lack of compassion – they will do literally anything to ensure their gravy train is not derailed, almost any act to increase profit for corporations (in this case, Big Pharma), and all things needful to ensure that more and more people are denied their rightful benefits.

The disabled – and especially the mentally ill – were among the first to be exterminated by the National Socialists in the 30s; in the twenty-first century, their ideas rise again from the ashes of millions, which starts always with denigration, followed by denial, and ending in destruction.