Peter Edwards: A misunderstood sickness and the misery our leaders are refusing to talk about

IMAGINE a condition for which about 1.2 million people a year seek help from the NHS in England alone. It's also one that costs the UK economy up to £100bn a year. To say it's a huge problem would be an understatement – yet hardly any politician wants to talk about it.

It doesn't say much about our political class's willingness to make tough choices, does it?

I am talking about mental illness. So are many other people, like charities, doctors and the sick, but our elected representatives in Westminster rarely venture on to such tricky terrain.

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That is despite the statistic, now wearingly familiar, which says that one in four of us will suffer a mental health problem at some point in our lives.

This figure has eased much of the stigma surrounding a broad, ill-defined and often misunderstood sickness about which thousands of books have been filled – but not removed it entirely.

From the "black dog" of depression that hit Winston Churchill, as he drove Britain to triumph over the Nazis, to the acute lows experienced by rock musician Richey Edwards before, apparently, throwing himself off the Severn Bridge, it seems to have countless manifestations.

Another, thankfully rare, is psychosis, of the like that may have caused Derrick Bird to "flip" and harm others in such appalling circumstances in Cumbria earlier this month.

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Yet, despite all these high-profile examples and many more which, equally tragic, don't make the headlines, politicians are not talking enough about what is going wrong – even though the recession has triggered a surge of incidences of stress, anxiety and depression, according to a study by Elizabeth Finn Care and Roehampton University.

Another report, published at the weekend, showed the number of prescriptions for drugs to tackle depression in England doubled between 1999 and 2009, including a rise of nearly nine per cent last year.

It is a tragedy that there still seems something indecent about having a head that doesn't work properly. No-one would be scorned or ridiculed for having a bad hip or a weak heart, yet mental illnesses are often greeted with, at best, incomprehension and, at worst, rank hostility.

It's not all bad news. Much progress has been made in the last decade, with the number of high-profile figures who have confessed to the problem – from the bi-polar actor Stephen Fry to ex-footballer Stan Collymore, who was treated for depression – helping to raise awareness of it, yet still more needs to be done.

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Even MPs' constituency staff are now to get training in how to cope with people suffering from mental illnesses. Yet how many times did you hear a politician talk about mental health issues during the election campaign? My answer is none – despite watching, listening and reading what must have been 100 hours of coverage.

It is much harder to explain why this is the case. Surely it can't be because it's seen as unfashionable, because so many issues that politicians once thought taboo, from gay rights to elderly care, have rightly become part of the mainstream.

It can't be because they don't spend much money on it, because at 11 per cent of NHS spending, PCTs spent more money on adult mental health, 10.4bn in 2008-09, than on any other clinical area.

Could it be because most – but not all – MPs are uninterested in a cause which is about as popular as an EU pamphlet on straight bananas? Or is it simply because politicians don't know very much about it?

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If so, that's a worry. So if Andrew Lansley, the new Health Secretary, wants to talk about mental health issues next time he's in Yorkshire I'd love to ask him a few questions. If the Conservatives are to increase NHS spending in real terms every year, as they pledged in their manifesto, could one of the most ignored parts of the health service please get a great chunk of it?

And what does Mr Lansley plan to do about the mental health crisis among Britain's prison population? Clearly that is not a problem of his making but a few ideas on how to tackle it would be one way of demonstrating that, beyond David Cameron, the Tory Party no longer wants to hang 'em and flog 'em.

According to the Prison Reform Trust, 72 per cent of male and 70 per cent of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders. This is extraordinary. The prison population in England and Wales hit a record high of 85,000 this year. This number rose as Labour cut its early release scheme during the election campaign and, as I can't imagine the reversal of this policy will be a priority for the new Government, it will carry on going up.

All of which means more crowded prisons and the need for more prison doctors and more mental health specialists. As public spending plummets, will this desperately important service get the attention it deserves?

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Fortunately, there are many modern answers to one of the world's oldest questions – how can I stop feeling so miserable? Not just drugs like anti-depressant fluoxetine, known by its counter name of Prozac, but drugs to quell anxiety, block out "bad" thoughts and so much more, as well as counselling and lifestyle changes.

More needs to be done, however. A good start would be for the coalition to appoint a Minister specifically for mental health. This wouldn't

be an eyecatching announcement to match the bold constitutional reforms

we have already seen proposed, but it could make a big difference to the lives of people for whom simply existing has become a misery.

Now that would be something worth talking about.