About the campaign 

 

People living with severe mental illness experiencing financial challenges are not new. But because of the cost-of-living crisis, more people are being forced to make impossible decisions about heating or eating and are being pushed into poverty. The cost-of-living crisis is also a mental health crisis: financial stress can cause and exacerbate mental illness and impede recovery. 

At the same time as the cost-of-living crisis, the NHS and social care systems are under huge pressure and struggling to meet demand. Only just over a third of people with a mental health problem can access treatment and support.  

For people severely affected by mental illness, it can feel like wave after wave of bad news. It is all too easy to feel powerless. But the truth is, whilst these problems are big, they are solvable with the right level of commitment and urgency from the government.  

We called for urgent action to turn the tide on mental health and demanded the government:  

• Publish a 10-year plan for mental health and wellbeing that includes necessary action from across all government departments, as promised. Sadly, the government decided to scrap this plan. 
• Commit to support the poorest households with the cost-of-living, including uprating benefits in-line with inflation as a minimum first step. Thanks to campaigning from Rethink Mental Illness, other charities across the sector and campaigners up and down the country, the government agreed to this first step. 
• Fund the NHS and social care to meet increasing need. Whilst commitments have been made to increase funding, services must resourced to meet soaring demand.