Todays's health news buzz is around research showing that E-Cigarettes are 95% healthier for you than regular cigarettes and experts are wondering if, due to this, they should be prescribed by GPs to paitents trying to quit. Health professionals are naturally cautious about this, preferring to promote the other methods such as nicotine patches, advicelines and behavioural therapy.
What annoyed me, and is the subject of today's blog, is that if you are trying to quit smoking you have all the support in the world thrown at you but if, like me, you are struggling with mental illness you have barely any access to support aside from emergency services (even the provision of these can be incredibly hit and miss!). Let me just say that I have the utmost respect for anyone battling any kind of addiction, be it cigarettes, drugs etc BUT people chose to put these substances into their body. I didn't decide to try being mentally ill one day.
To make sure that my blog was based on facts and not from my assumptions I had a look into Stop Smoking Therapies, you have the choice between group therapy, individual counselling and an advice-line - all for free. When I googled "Free counselling services in Eastbourne" and was first directed to the NHS website which advertised that "Around half the GP surgeries in England provide counselling services and support" . When I went to the NHS choices website to see where the nearest service to me was it turned out that it was at Benenden Hospital in Kent! A 2 hour, 2 train changes and one shuttle bus service away!
People are encouraged to quite smoking to improve their health and well-being, reduce the risk of heart attacks etc. What about people who's quality of life would be vastly improved by the oppourtunity to talk through the issues that are making them ill? Depending on which reports you subscribe to they all seem to show that people who suffering from chronic anxiety or OCD have a double or triple risk of developing heart problems due to the condition being equal to suffering from chronic stress. Surely this too should be given the same attention as smoking's effect on a heart's health?
We all know that mental health has been underfunded over the years, lots of noise was made during the election about upping it's budget but since then it has all gone quiet. People talk about smokers costing the NHS money, hence why the cessation services are needed, I'm pretty sure that nipping say depression or a person's uncontrollable anxiety or extreme mood swings in the bud will also save a similar amount on admissions and sourcing beds in psychiatric units.
The general consensus is that if stop smoking services were charged for then no-one would use them, whilst there is obviously some truth in this, I imagine that if you are despaerate enough to quit then paying a small fee - perhaps only £5/£10 a session wouldn't put you off. The cheapest counselling in the area costs £40 for 45 minutes, there is no way anyone on my salary (which is a large amount of the population) can afford that! So those of use who's lives are ruled by our mental health conditions are yet again left to fend for ourselves.
It just doesn't seem fair for one health need to be prioritised over another, especially when it's a condition that none of us have a choice in.
Love Jen
XxxX
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