On Your Marks: Startling statistic opened my eyes

In my conversion with Ed Cassidy a senior manager in mental health commissioning for Crawley, Horsham and Mid Sussex CCGs (see last week's column) he told me a startling statistic that approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem in their lifetime.

Being someone who has not suffered or had too much exposure to people with mental health issues, I found this astonishing.

Last week's columnTo kick off this series of columns, I had a health check with my GP and Dr Minesh Patel at the CCG. But Ed told me the CCG want to take this further.

The most common mental health problems are anxiety and depression. I touched last week on the recovery college, who run a number of courses to help people recover and help them to self-manage their conditions. It’s really important to develop coping strategies for what life throws at you, same for everyone really.

“Some people find it hard to cope with two or three things out of the blue.

“Even if it’s something that appears quite small, six people are coming round for dinner tonight - that can stress the most relaxed person out.

“We want to commission intervening at an early stage rather than when people are very unwell as it takes much longer to recover. Life is very stressful and we need to make it less so.”