Nearly 20 healthcare professionals went on strike yesterday to call for improved mental health services – insisting people are dying due to budget cuts in Manchester.
The demonstrators, from the Unison and Unite unions, gathered in the city centre with placards, banners and flags to protest against the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB).
The group, who work for Manchester Early Intervention in Psychosis service (EIPs), blamed budget cuts and excessive expenditure on private contracts for contributing towards deaths in the city at a “disproportionate rate”.
Protesters described the general state of the NHS as “deplorable”.
The group, who demonstrated outside the Greater Manchester Combined Authority offices on Oxford Road, described the region’s mental health services as among the most deprived and underfunded in the country.
A Unite rep claimed: “Manchester suffers twice as many deaths from mental health illnesses than the rest of the country.”
More than 40,000 deaths in England per year can be attributed to preventable mental health illnesses, say protesters.
And NHS reports from 2022, the most recent data available, suggested the number of those experiencing a mental illness in Greater Manchester was disproportionately higher than the general population.
Post-pandemic government data indicates a continuing rise.
Dr John Mulligan, Unite rep and clinical psychologist at Manchester’s EIPs, said: “People are genuinely dying in Manchester as a direct result of the lack of investment in preventive medicine.”
The ICB, which is funded by the GMCA, has been contacted for comment.
Feature image shows healthcare professionals on strike. Picture by: Isobel Forbes
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