If we want to improve mental health, first we need to tackle poverty | Dawn Foster

Mental health discourse welcomed an unexpected participant this month. Prince Harry, the fifth in line to the throne, spoke publicly about seeking counselling following his mother’s sudden death in his pre-teen years. Rightly, mental health charities praised his intervention, highlighting as it did that even extreme privilege cannot shelter us from depression, anxiety or any other psychiatric illness. Our bodies are fragile, and our minds equally so: this message is increasingly accepted as people with mental health problems, campaigners and medics alike have fought to end stigma by building a national conversation on mental health.

Removing the stigma around mental health is important but does little alone. Without services, treatment is still inadequate, and feeling less judged for your health issues means little if you’re faced with a lack of access to talking therapies and nonexistent community support. But the conversation on mental health also needs to examine how the structures of society cause and perpetuate poor mental health.

Poverty, poor housing and debt all have a detrimental impact on the mental health of children and adults. Money can’t buy happiness, but poverty can practically secure stress and misery. For children in particular, the impact of poverty early on increases the lifetime risk of long-term mental health problems. The National Child Development Study found children from the lowest-income families are four times more likely to display psychological problems than children from the richest families. Homeless children are four times as likely to experience mental health problems as settled families.

Across the UK, both women and men in the poorest fifth of the population are twice as likely to be at risk of mental health problems as those on average incomes, according to the Mental Health Foundation. Poverty increases the likelihood of developing mental illness, and mental illness increases the risk of poverty: combating only one factor does nothing to end the poverty cycle – the two are inextricably linked. Being as wealthy as the royals doesn’t preclude you from experiencing mental health problems, but it does lower the likelihood, cushion you in certain aspects and allow you access to a better standard of care more quickly.

Refusing to recognise the link between socioeconomic deprivation and mental health creates a preventable drain on the public purse. Advocates for austerity argue that every penny counts, that “we are all in this together”, to borrow a famous phrase from George Osborne, heir to a baronetcy.

This is the ideological reasoning behind cutting the benefit cap to £20,000 outside London, implementing the bedroom tax, removing council tax benefit and forcing women to fill in forms confirming they were raped if they wish to claim child benefit for more than two of their offspring. But it makes no economic sense: these policies make rents unaffordable and increase homelessness, which contributes heavily to the deterioration of millions of people’s mental health. The Institute of Education found that poor mental health in children alone costs the UK £550bn in lost earnings. Children who experience poor mental health in childhood, disproportionately linked to poverty, earn less in their lifetime, requiring more financial support from the state, as well as seeking more medical assistance. It is akin to scrimping on a minor car repair only to crash the vehicle into a wall.

But even if economic arguments do not sway the government, the humanitarian, emotional argument should be recognised. Social policy can actively lower people’s risk of experiencing depression, anxiety and other disorders.

Austerity is an economic choice: it’s a foolish one that saves nothing and harms millions. Any campaign on mental health should champion combating poverty to stop more people experiencing entirely preventable problems.