teaching your mother.

[Maxi]

ok,yes,it is just like teaching your mother to suck eggs,but in-truth,it is pretty frightening now to see the extent of carer poverty in the uk.

i know we all know,only too well that this is now a massive,serious problem.its a pretty ghastly scene.

but,the mental health implications i dread most of all.they are terrible indeed.

[Scally]

I was short of respite today, so I stocked up on sarnies and squash, put the boy in the car and took him with me on my series of calls. We were out on the road for six hours. I spent four short periods of half an hour or so each making the calls and thereby earned a good commission. We also found an hour of that free to go swimming in a brilliant leisure pool with flumes and rapids and raft rides. My petrol was paid for by my employer. And we had a really good chat between calls whilst out on the road. And hey, thats the mortgage paid for another week....

It really isn't all doom and gloom you know; there are lots of flexible ways of working around the problem of being a carer. Governments really cannot be expected to spoon feed us all from cradle to grave, and we do have a very good safety net compared with most other countries I have visited. Some carers struggle, others thrive. But you do need to think outside of the box. Chase the dream, and never ever accept being second best. The worst form of poverty is poverty of imagination. And if you think you are badly off, try a few weeks vacation in Haiti or Rwanda.

[Sianie87]

its all very well saying that but some of us have no choice to say with our caree for 24/7 as we do not have the support or the money to hsave a few hours off or to do anything else. everytime i have tried to get a job part time or a few hours something always goes wrong with my caree. so some peple have no choice to be spoon fed from cradle to grave if they are very incapable of work and in turn their carer. i have been a carer since left school unpaid and paid i have had to give up collage to look after my caree so have found it very hsrd to find work.

[Guest]

I think that the original premise, i.e. that poverty equals mental health problems, is wrong, if it were the case the rich would be mentally well and happy and the poor mentally ill and unhappy and there is no evidence to support this, mental health problems effect people across all incomes, the issue is far more complex than a simple matter of income.

[Sprinter]

And if you think you are badly off, try a few weeks vacation in Haiti or Rwanda.

You're quite right. If I could afford a holiday in either of these places, I wouldn't consider myself badly off.

[Maxi]

The fact is,one in four people suffer some form of Mental Health issue,and Mind Figures do show,there is INDEED a very clear link with poverty,lack of social mobility etc.
Id refer you to mind.org for reference.

Often,those so-called:"Rich" people,though the term is so relative,have problems due to the preasure of work etc,or loosing their businesses.Loss of the thing that they get out of bed for.

But,as there are far more lower income families than "Rich" families and so many excluded,having seen first hand my local Mind Association centres service user profile,one mere snapshot of this areas story,i think its too clear whats happening.

[Guest]

I am aware that one in four suffer some form of mental distress at some point in their life but the reality is that mental health problems effect those across the income strata, low, middle and high, and having a low income is not a predictor of mental health problems, if it were vast swathes of the population of the third world, where poverty is actual rather than relative as it is in this and other wealthy countries, would be mentally ill, in fact the incidence of mental ill health is pretty consistent across the world. Whilst poverty can be one of the contributory causes of mental ill health and mental ill health frequently leads to poverty through loss of employment, to suggest that poverty leads to mental ill health is simplistic.

[farmer1961]

'Kinder the enemy who must malign us than the smug friend who will define us'...
- Anna Wickham

[Guest]

Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth. Mary Baker Eddy

[g.herschel]

the "rich" have mental health problems when it is the "in " thing to do ,, you know when they have retired or cant get the usual work, they write a book about being depressed....

i have always had some kind of depression even when working and earning ..
but as the years have gone by working as a carer my problems have indeed got worse ,, i hate to say it but most of it does revolve around the lack of a good income ,, even if the carers allowance had been double what it is , it would have saved me from many a financial crisis over the years.. as we sold the house , the savings vanished - i knew only to well that we as a family were on the slippery slope ... without cutting back over the years we could never ever have survved ,, our standard of living has been halfed at least, because we as a family decided to accept our responsibilities and provide care for ourselves ,,,,