Mental health, substance misuse and medical workforce recruitment — despite the benefits of living on the coast, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, has said more needs to be done to address health inequalities coastal communities face.
In his annual report, Professor Whitty calls for a national strategy to address the repeated health problems, saying if nothing was done to tackle them vigorously and systematically ‘there would be a long tail of preventable ill-health which will get worse as current populations age’.
The Isle of Wight Council’s policy and scrutiny committee for health and social care discussed the ‘very interesting and revealing factors’ earlier this week and echoed issues needed to be addressed.
Problems like deprivation, mental health and alcohol and drug abuse were identified to be considerable health challenges on the Island and in other coastal communities.
Other key drivers to improve health and wellbeing were said to be wider than health like housing, education, employment and transport. Professor Whitty said those issues should not be faced, and fixed, by local communities alone and needed a much larger response effort.
Welcoming the report, Cllr Michael Lilley said the issues raised in the report were a reality on the Island and the report should be used to argue for more resources. He said it was not often a national report supports everything they have been saying and campaigning for.
Cllr Lilley said funding streams for coastal communities need to be explored to help address some of the issues. Professor Chris Whitty said coastal communities had been overlooked and as a result, limited data was known about the health and wellbeing of those areas.
He said while the focus over the summer has been directed towards visitors choosing to stay on the coast, it is important to remember it is also home to millions of people whose health and wellbeing has ‘long been neglected and overlooked’.
The Island’s director of public health, Simon Bryant, said he was part of a south-east group to take the recommendations of Professor Whitty’s report forward. Cllr Lilley also suggested asking MP Bob Seely and other important channels to use the report, to highlight issues and help with the solutions.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the wrong sort of visitors who are choosing to stay here. There never used to be this amount of lowlife living on the Island, there was always some, but nothing like the amount that is here today. One only has to hear some of the accents to hear they are not Island born people. Why do so many of them come here? It’s a shame we can’t send them back like they used to do many years ago. We’ve got enough of our own here, it’s a shame they can’t be banished too. To think this Island used to be associated with Royal connections and regal visitors on a regular basis. Now it is just known for druggies and chavs.
main reason is council giving there overspill from mainland dispersing all the benefit scrounging lazy crime causing scum too come live here snd makes then less for them too house greedy council…who dont hsve too live next too these people ,get a nice little hand out too do it! it’s worse than ever here now
Why not move out of the city and go to the coast, more pleasant to doss around boozing and taking drugs.
They can’t afford to live in the city so drop out and end up in run down seasonal resorts. Benefits go further and they have a social circle ready made. The islands not the only place and sorting it out starts at home and school. What would extra funding solve.
In a nutshell many seaside towns have become HMO land. Blackpool is the most deprived place in the country, it has thousands of HMOs, and attracts a massive transient population because of them. A lot of them are crappy places, rented by private landlords. This puts massive pressure on health services and other public services, and has many other knock on impacts. And hence these towns need a lot more money.
Mental Health issues that seems prevalent on the island judging by the number of reports of suicide by young men on island since I moved here 12 years ago, are not that surprising to me. Apart from lack of opportunity to be anything but a chip off the old block and exacerbated by poor education standards, the general attitude on island is one of close minded negativity, if comments section generally is anything to go by. It’s debilitating, even to me who is far from young..
In my experience any decent person whose mental health suffers as a result of having to put up with lowlife around them & all that entails, get no sympathy or support from any of the do gooders who set themselves up to help people, in fact get looked down on & treated with derision & contempt, but the perpetrators get loads of help as they claim drug & alcohol ‘problems’ & if they are aggressive & violent along with it, they are classed as extra ‘vulnerable’ by the do gooders. It seems you have to be that type of person before you are deemed worthy of help from the do good fraternity, no matter how much you’ve suffered in life.
Although I understand what you’re getting at, in my experience, mental health issues are caused often by the pressure to conform to an existence that goes against who people are, and their feeling of hopelessness in escaping the control of those around them, often family, as well as economic circumstances. Both those reasons are particularly prevalent on iow. It comes down to judging and attitude of “you do what I say” and not respecting people’s differences. Anyone that does not adhere to one person’s idea of how they should behave is labelled scum (to use a word bandied about here shockingly often), and although maybe some people are just plain nasty, others may just want to live their life without wagging fingers. Whatever the truth of it I can assure you that iow does not have more than its fair share of miscreants. It does have more than its fair share of sanctimoniousness though. Show respect to get respect; it doesn’t always work, but often it does.
Well said Clive, agree 100%.
Scum this,scum that, throw away the keys, far to many keyboard warrior’s and sheep on this site that’s for sure.
Unfortunately, or fortunately the island is not some sort of utopia for the rich and stuck up snooty masses. There for the grace of God go I.
You think no one else has ever suffered the same? I was never allowed to be myself and any interest I had was disparaged, criticised and condemned as being “rubbish”. I was expected to be interested in and good at things I had no aptitude for and then reviled when I failed at them when what I was good at was dismissed as being of no consequence and useless. Even now have to suppress myself on a daily basis by someone with no interest in my interests. It didn’t make me a druggie or alkie, and no I don’t want a medal for it. Just stating facts. The do good types only care about and validate drunks and druggies. It is hurtful and insulting to those of us who had worse problems but who did not turn out the same.
If people come to live here to doss around, take drugs & get drunk all day, & then have the nerve to complain if they don’t get the fawning sympathy they feel they deserve, let them go back to where they came from. They all seem to have plenty of their own kind to hang around with, always seem to be happy in their little boozy, drug addled groups. If I went to live in someone else’s area just to behave like them, I wouldn’t start complaining if some of the locals didn’t like it. The hostile ones are the worst & how anyone expects people to just shrug & put up with them is beyond belief & then get criticized for daring to complain.
I still wouldn’t live any where else island born and bred but are way of life is slowly but surly being destroyed by these so called experts a spurt is a “drip under pressure”
Wow Chris Whitty, he is doing more to help the island than ol’ sausage Bob, good on ya Chris.
Yeah, well said Chris Whitty. The island in just the last couple of years has declined so much. Drugs and alcoholics all over. Something has got to be done to stop low life coming to live here, got enough already.
The IOW council need to stop importing low life drug and alcohol dependent people from the mainland. Island residents don’t want them here. They cause trouble in the community which increases workload for our Police force. Sandown has many HMOs filled with wasters sitting around drinking and getting drunk or getting high on whatever filth they choose to put into their frail pathetic bodies.
Getting help and support for Mental health is a big problem and always has been, regardless of where you live. Thanks to the pandemic it’s an even bigger problem now. Alcohol and drug abuse has always and will always continue to be a problem too. I moved here from the city 15 years ago so my children would have a better quality of life and to keep them away from the mainland influences of gangs, violence and up to no good, it’s because it’s more commonly publicised now. No matter where in the world you live it’s not perfect and you get a small percentage of people who don’t conform but it’s just how life is now! We don’t have to like it……..
…..but unfortunately we have to live with it. If we want a happy harmonious life then people can’t just rely on the government or local councils, we all have to work together. If someone’s struggling…try and help them. Don’t judge others just because you think you have the right, no one is above anyone else we are all individuals and should treat others how we want to be treated. There are so many reasons why people suffer with mental health, alcoholism, drug abuse etc, it’s not a one size fits all, everyone is different!
Good luck with that, not on this site tho, the people are to blinkerd and above it all. Good post. Live and let live. Hic…..