Author Topic: How to solve the UK's housing and mental health problems?  (Read 1236 times)

gunwharfman

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When I last hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc, it was late July and about four years go, I met a middle aged lady camper on a site who I realised was suffering from a mental health problem. I discovered that in some circumstances a few French local authorities gave some of their clients a tent, etc and encouraged them to go hiking and camping. At the time I thought that for some people this might be a good and therapeutic idea.

I read the following today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-46020530

pleb

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God knows. Never happen. Sorry but it wont. :(
Whinging Moaning Old Fart

harland

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It just shows we are not all the same.  I thought that the council had done quite well after "He'd been arrested for dealing drugs and assaulting his dad and he'd been evicted from supported accommodation - again because of drugs".

alan de enfield

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It just shows we are not all the same.  I thought that the council had done quite well after "He'd been arrested for dealing drugs and assaulting his dad and he'd been evicted from supported accommodation - again because of drugs".



Yes - I read the article t'other day and thought the same as you.
Probably not a popular thought but the authorities can only do so much and they would be better spending the time and money on those who want to be, or are prepared to be, helped.

Jac

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Yes - I read the article t'other day and thought the same as you.
Probably not a popular thought but the authorities can only do so much and they would be better spending the time and money on those who want to be, or are prepared to be, helped.



Perhaps more popular than people are prepared to admit. Following his sojourn in the tent he had to endure some time in, shock horror, a static caravan! and became emaciated  presumably through spending what money he had on things other than food. At least he then did get what he really needed - hospital treatment - but fining the council is reducing what money they have to provide services. 
So many paths yet to walk, so little time left

chriscab

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Everybody is different I guess.

Nature and a tent would help me a lot more than medication and an urban environment.

gunwharfman

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The content, or the 'story' that's told by the journalist, may or may not be true, who would really know? Having worked for the majority of my life with people with all sorts of problems I realised very early on in life that newspaper articles can veer off in all sorts of odd directions. One feature that is very easy to spot these days, thanks to the internet, is that each media outlet, newspaper or otherwise, will write or film it specifically for 'their' readers or viewers and will try to tune in with what their public wants to read, see or hear.


 

Rob Goes Walking

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Well, I'm a paranoid schizophrenic and I find walking therapeutic. I found it hard to do anything at all for quite some time but they changed my medication and now I find that walking the lakes improves my mood. I think it wouldn't solve the UK's mental health problems but could certainly help. There are some people I've lived with though who are too disorganised to be safe out hiking the fells or to be safe out hiking alone.

I've lived in various sorts of supported accommodation in my time and while some of them might benefit from some wild camping I'd feel sorry for camp sites if they put some of the people I've lived with there.

When I first became homeless I'd have been grateful for a tent and a camp site to live on. It's better than living on the streets. As a way to solve housing problems I think we can do better though like these shipping containers converted into homes and prefab modular housing. Can you imagine the outcry if we started putting mothers with children into tents?

Innominate Man

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One chap took matters into his own hands;


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-45964624



Only a hill but all of life to me, up there between the sunset and the sea. 
Geoffrey Winthrop Young

barewirewalker

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When I was on a LAF I remember a talk by an area health officer, this was a detailed lecture on the declining physical and mental health of the national population and how those of us with a position to assist in the provision of access to the countryside, were in the frontline. Often wonder how many others on that forum remember that.


Land is an asset, basic principle in economics or so I seem to remember, but few split off that part of land that is countryside from the actual substance of land. It is countryside, which everyone needs in many different ways, though we all do not need land to feed ourselves nowadays. Not like the times of enclosures or when landowners wished to export corn at the expense of a starving nation.


Is the inability of a class, who occupy large areas of land, to recognise this need a social irresponsibility? Thus the modern equivalent of the Corn Laws.


Gunwharfman's OP example may show the Cornwall council official getting the wrong end of the stick, fairly common occurrence, but there is some logic in the underlying principle. Bit like the topsy turvey principles of the CLA trying to keep people out of the countryside and yet farmers are committing suicide in unprecedented numbers because of their social isolation, according to articles in the agricultural press.
BWW
Their Land is in Our Country.

NeilC

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Re: How to solve the UK's housing and mental health problems?
« Reply #10 on: 12:54:25, 01/11/18 »
Whilst it might well help. I don't think it should be prescribed any more than I think gluten-free bread or gym classes should be prescribed. Suggested maybe but there is a point at which people have to take responsibility and pay their own way.


As for housing problems - whilst we're importing an additional c. 1 million people every 3-4 years (bear in mind that's more people than the populations of Leeds and Bristol combined), there is no solution to the housing problem.

Ronin83

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Re: How to solve the UK's housing and mental health problems?
« Reply #11 on: 11:44:50, 04/11/18 »
Prevention is better than cure. Excuse the cliché, but it's something we still don't do as a society/culture as a whole.


Our problems, including mental health, are systemic.
Hiking/camping can help because you are removed from the system which causes the problems. Simple

 

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