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Today I interviewed master of spin Alastair Campbell, who was speaking at the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool. A fairly daunting assignment by any standard, especially as it was carried out in front of a video camera at five minutes’ notice. Oh, and I could only ask two questions.
I was intrigued as to how he expected the audience to react to his newly crowned status as mental health champion given he’s primarily known as a bullying spin doctor.
His answer, more or less, was that he didn’t care whether or not people subscribed to that image of him, which had been “passed down” through the media. Funny, I had a feeling the media, rather than his own behaviour, would somehow be to blame.
With more time, I would’ve liked to ask what it was like to work in the upper echelons of government while battling a mental health condition and whether tackling aggressive work environments – found within Westminster and the NHS – would reduce days lost to stress and depression.
As it happens, he addressed some of this in his speech 15 minutes later, expressing genuine anger at the way MPs who are sectioned get “chucked out” of Parliament. “As a signal, that’s just wrong,” he said.
He also said the Commons should be less adversarial. But his thesis on workplace harmony fell flat when Radio 4’s Today presenter Sarah Montague asked him to “say something nice” about Tory leader David Cameron. His effusive response? “Er, well I’ll come to that in a minute…He’s very good at my old job…He’s a very, erm, I’m not very good at this am I?”
More convincing was his argument that the NHS should be a model employer in supporting staff who suffer with mental illnesses. The upcoming Boorman review will assess whether this is the case, but the staff survey doesn’t make for easy reading. Other findings show NHS staff are almost four times as likely to be absent from work with stress as people with other occupations, as reported in our sister title Nursing Times.
Campbell’s call for the NHS to “lead the way” shouldn’t be a big ask given its primary function is to care for people’s physical and mental health, but I suspect it has some way to go - it’d be interesting to hear whether staff and managers agree.
See www.hsj.co.uk/confed for the latest news from the conference
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Readers' comments (3)
Paul Tovey | 12-Jun-2009 2:37 pm
Champion ? -
Let me say this :
The problem has been the way the main mental health health charities including the master architect believed their insights were the way forwards ..They all closely lobbied Govt and SCMH was so close to the action it bought the domain name of NIMHE for the DOH ..
Because of the likes of MIND and Rethink and Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health we ended up with with waste of a bureaucracy in NIMHE as well as a skewed anti-stigma flag waving message often promoted by Mental Health Media in a kind of charity incestuous image playing circle all of which MH Users were supposed to pin their hopes on .
Gone down the drain is "Patient Choice" in mental health . We have prisons full people with MH issues - disappeared asylums which could have been reformed (and were cheaper !) . A lot of imprisoned people with MH issues are Personality Disordered and we have impoverished supplies of decent therapy (the state will not use private supplies) which could help some of these people develop insights and emotional cohesion in their lives .. Yeah we got spin and CBT ....
Champion of what Alister ? Champion of a network circle of self awarding people ... You only have to dig through Mental Health Media's record for all that
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Derek Mowbray | 12-Jun-2009 2:37 pm
Terrific stuff Charlotte. Your report beautifully illustrates the difficulty those with political interests (and, no doubt many others) have with really understanding their own rhetoric. When Sarah asked him to say something nice, and he couldn't, this brought home the reality that there's a lot of chat and little understanding. Where did the bullying culture of the NHS come from? - from the top. The creation of self interest in a national service through the development of markets, targets, and take-overs gives the permission to act in a self interested way - and that often means being aggressive, rather than assertive, and forceful rather than persuasive. So much more can be achieved by a greater understanding of how people respond to attentiveness, interest and encouragement. I have now completed my discussion document on the Code for Ethical Leadership and it's available now for comment.
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Anonymous | 12-Jun-2009 2:47 pm
This is a very important campaign Alastair is involved with. NHS and its attitude to mental health has to change, and now! Having been in the NHS for over a decade I have seen one common theme run through every staff type - NHS STRESS! "NHS Stress" equates, I believe, to layers of bureaucracy being to blame. Nothing is more stressful than being asked to do a task which, outside of the NHS, would be resolved quickly, but, due to the complexity of NHS, events can add unacceptable delays. This comment is not a moan. I have managed to work my way up to the top of the NHS and have noted my mental health deteriorating as I go. With that deterioration comes the fear of what colleagues would think if it were to be known. In the USA mental health is far more widely accepted; in fact if you don't have a "shrink" you are considered abnormal! Sadly, in this country, as Alistair says, I know of at least three friends who (never having suffered from stress prior) have visited their separate GPs only to find that there is no serious mental health network of treatment to help them recover quickly. This lack of treatment needs to be amended, and fast, because life is changing and I personally believe Mental Health is actually the highest priority for the NHS, not the least - quote: "with a sound mind you can cope with anything"... To put it into perspective, I believe we are talking about £billions being lost through mental health inadequacies in the NHS. Alastair, good luck with this!
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