“Mental health workers and their clients marched on a jobcentre in south-west London in protest at a scheme they say frames unemployment as a psychological disorder,” reported The Guardian.
Mad in America has previously reported on studies and concerns about expanding requirements in the UK that people who claim social benefits must submit to regular psychological evaluations and treatments.
The march was organized by the Mental Health Resistance Network, in protest of a reported government plan to locate mental health workers right inside a particular work assistance center.
While the British Psychological Society has not taken a position against the practice, the protesters were joined by members of Psychologists Against Austerity and the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, according to Disability News Service. Psychologists Against Austerity includes hundreds of mental health professionals who have been trying to educate the public about how “Austerity policies have damaging psychological costs, both increasing mental distress in the present and storing problems for the future.” The Guardian also reported that the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies stated that it was âagainst any offer of any treatment (including CBT) based on coercion or associated with unfair or disproportionate inducementsâ.
The government told The Guardian that the protesters were mistaken and that no such co-locating was planned to occur. But the void pointed to a press release from one of the non-profit groups involved in the plan which stated that the intention was to place âspecialist mental health services operating alongside Jobcentre Plus Staffâ.
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Protesters to march on jobcentre over mental health therapy links (Disability News Service, June 19, 2015)
Mental health workers protest at move to integrate clinic with jobcentre (The Guardian, June 26, 2015)
Streatham Jobcentre Besieged By Protesters Demanding No Forced Treatment (the void, June 26, 2015)
This is going on in the states, as well, although it’s being done by ‘non-profit organizations.’ I know because my son got an internship working for a so called ‘non-profit’ this summer. And his job is to hook up people in food banks, and other low income situations, with so called needed services like “healthcare.” Which, I have no doubt, includes “mental health care” services. He’s a psychology major, much to my personal dismay.
I find this entire situation quite frightening. Those in charge get so big, that they destroy our competitive economy, then they ship all the jobs to other countries, and then want to medicate people because they can’t find decent jobs? It’s sick.
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And then when abused slave labour in 3rd world countries jumps to their deaths from factory windows they put in nets and call for mental health for the 3rd world. There has to be a revolution…
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I agree with “Someone Else”, above…..
This is pure medical fascism, not good healthcare.
And, notice how the word “psychiatry” seems to be absent from media reports of this latest abomination?
OK, it’s also a way to employ more “mental health workers”, at Gov’t (taxpayer) expense….
Forced medical “treatment” also goes by another name. *TORTURE*….
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Neoliberalism strikes again. Anyone still thinks psychiatry isn’t social control?
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