Generation Grundeinkommen via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Matthew Smith, Professor in Health History, University of Strathclyde
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
When BBC journalist Rory Carson sought online consultations for a potential mental health issue, three private clinics diagnosed him with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They charged between £685 and £1,095 for these consultations, which lasted between 45 and 100 minutes, and all prescribed him medication.
ADHD is a highly controversial disorder which emerged in the US in the late 1950s during the cold war, and quickly became associated with stimulant drugs such as Ritalin. Now diagnosed throughout the world, ADHD is central to many debates about neurodiversity.
While Carson’s Panorama investigation into its treatment attracted plenty of criticism, the fact that this disorder could apparently be diagnosed quite casually online is concerning. When he subsequently had a more rigorous (but free) three-hour, in-person consultation with an NHS psychiatrist, he was told that he did not, in fact, have ADHD.
Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. In this series, we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.
Society’s increasing awareness of mental health issues and demand for mental health support has been driven, in part, by social media and easier access to information online. While this is no bad thing in many ways, the related increase in self-diagnosis (including among children and adolescents) is clearly open to abuse by some organisations offering costly diagnoses and treatments.
But there is another reason for this rapid growth in private mental healthcare. In England alone, the NHS spends around £2 billion per year on private hospital care for mental health patients – equating to 13.5% of its total mental health spend. Due to the reduction in NHS bed provision, nine out of ten privately-run mental health beds are now filled by NHS patients.
While the UK government says it is committed to spending more money on mental health, private investment companies are reportedly queuing up to “seize the opportunities offered up to them by the NHS crisis”. Private providers say they can do more to help avert a mental health emergency exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, yet a dozen of the 80-odd privately-run mental health hospitals in England were rated as “inadequate” in the Care Quality Commission’s latest report, which has warned of possible closures.
deprimente monotonia in tutti conflitti armati che impiegano tecnologie ed eserciti moderni. Le caratteristiche degli armamenti e tecnologie oggigiorno disponibili fanno sì che ogni guerra sia caratterizzata, per sua intrinseca natura, dalla mancanza di limiti spaziali, temporali e giuridici; dalla impossibilità di discriminare tra obiettivi militari e civili (compresi ospedali e strutture sanitarie); dalla costante violazione delle leggi umanitarie internazionali; da effetti indiretti e a lungo periodo, dovuti anche agli enormi danni ambientali, che provocano sofferenze che tipicamente si estendono molto oltre la durata dei combattimenti; e dalla sempre possibile evoluzione in guerra nucleare, anche per errore.