Equality Commission: Mental illness discrimination high in NI
The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has warned of a high incidence in the number of people facing discrimination due to mental ill health here.
Chief Commissioner, Dr Michael Wardlow was speaking after a woman won a case against the Belfast Trust for not providing adequate access to mental health services.
The Trust acknowledged its failure, apologised to the woman and paid £5,500 for the injury to her feelings, upset and distress she suffered as a result of its service provision.
The parties agreed that there was no intention on the part of the Trust to discriminate against her.
But Dr Wardlow said the case is representative of the wider picture of discrimination across Northern Ireland:
"Every year about three and a half thousand people contact us who believe they've been discriminated against and 40% of those come from what we would call disability classifications, of which mental health of course is one.
"When we end up with those that we strategically support such as this one, that comes down to about 50.
"So our largest number of complaints coming forward are actually linked to disability and mental health features highly in that."
The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust apologised to the woman and paid £5,500 for the injury to her feelings, upset and distress she suffered as a result of its service provision.
The Trust acknowledged that an error was made, that it failed to make reasonable adjustments in the services it was providing to her and that this was a breach of its obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995.
Dr Wardlow called on employers and service providers to ensure policies to protect vulnerable people are implemented:
"When you think about vulnerabilities, mental health is probably among the most sharp end of that if you like because who have got mental ill health, often have other presenting issues as well.
"Think of how many people are on their own, are vulnerable, aren't aware or simply don't have the resilience to be able to do something about it.
"Very often people who suffer from mental ill health, end up as a statistic in suicide.
"And we know about one person takes their own life every day in Northern Ireland over the last three years.
"That is a statistic that is sobering.
"It remains for us a mature society to have laws for people who are on the margins and those voiceless people have to have people who speak for them."
"Mental ill health will continue to be here and what we've got to do is not to set it aside and say it's a particular type of disability, these are people who are differently abled.
"They are people who with reasonable accomodation, can actually stand with you and me and provide very good services.
"The problem is stereotypes prevail and what we've got to do is stand up against it and become those allies."