East Lancashire NHS staff will learn to ward off attacks (From Lancashire Telegraph)

• "REHYPOTHICATION
  
  Maybe the rise is due to benefit cuts and the inadequacy of the company left to assess claimants.. If they decide that a person is fit for work and the person is not fit then that said person is left with no help or means to gain a living. That person out of desperation might go to the extreme of either attempting to commit suicide and run the risk of nobody turning up to save them from themselves or assaulting an NHS worker rather than risk being arrested for assaulting a member of the public and going to prison simply to make themselves unemployable. If that is the case then the whole system of the assessments is questionable and its most likely the cause of rising assaults on members of the mental health teams. Or it could be that they are not well enough to have their benefits cut and they shouldn't have been in the community to begin with however there is nowhere else to put them. It was Thatchers government that closed all the mental health units releasing thousands of unstable patients into the community during the eighties and nineties. You can't just shut places like Brockhall and Calderstones without having repercussions a decade or two later in life. If places like Calderstones and Brockhall were running at full capacity as they once did and it was a simple process to send people there who claim to have mental health problems as they once did am 100% sure that we wouldn't have as many people on the sick claiming to suffer with mental health problems as we do. And there would be adequate safe accommodation with the correct care that these patients desperately need instead of treating mental health patients within the community as we have become accustomed to over the past fifteen years or so.
  
  I then find this on the net explaining that its the NHS managers that are putting their staff at risk by not using the funds given to them by the government in the correct manner.
  
  NHS managers in England have been accused of "shocking discrimination" in commissioning mental health services.
  
  The Mental Health Policy Group from the London School of Economics said three-quarters of people with depression or anxiety got no treatment.
  
  The committee of senior academics and medical professionals described this as a "real scandal".
  
  Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said mental health should be treated as seriously as physical health issues.
  
  The committee is headed by economist Professor Lord Richard Layard and includes some of the country's most eminent mental health experts.
  
  Official guidance
  
  It said the NHS in England was guilty of injustice in its treatment of people with mental illness.
  
  The group's report found that among those aged under 65, nearly half of all ill-health was mental illness.
  
  It said six million people had depression or anxiety conditions and yet three-quarters got no treatment.
  
  This was often because NHS managers failed to commission properly the mental health services recommended in official guidance, the experts added.
  
  They said £400m earmarked by the government for psychological therapy was not always used for its intended purpose because there was no obligation on managers to do so.
  
  The committee concluded that mental health services should be expanded, but if anything it was being cut.
  
  'Little cost'
  
  Lord Layard said: "If local NHS commissioners want to improve their budgets, they should all be expanding their provision of psychological therapy.
  
  "It will save them so much on their physical healthcare budgets that the net cost will be little or nothing.
  
  "Mental health is so central to the health of individuals and of society that it needs its own cabinet minister."
  
  Mr Burstow said investment in mental health services was "already delivering remarkable results".
  
  "Mental ill-health costs £105bn per year and I have always been clear that it should be treated as seriously as physical health problems," he said.
  
  "We will shortly publish our plans to make sure the NHS, councils, voluntary organisations and others can play their part in improving the nation's mental health.
  
  "The coalition government is investing £400m to make sure talking therapies are available to people of all ages who need them.""
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