Mindfulness may get UK Government cash

By Abi Jackson in The Northern Echo

"... I'm in a small room off Westminster Hall in London's Houses of Parliament, along with a few other journalists, mental health charity bods and various MPs - all also sitting, eyes closed, hands on laps and breathing deeply, as Rebecca Crane of Bangor University's Centre for Mindfulness guides us through.

Never in a million years would I have imagined I'd be indulging in a spot of deep breathing in Westminster, with a panel of MPs - and yet here we are. And do you know what? It feels good.

We're here for the launch of the Mindful Nation UK interim report. The Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, co-chaired by Conservative MP Tracey Crouch, Labour MP Chris Ruane and Lib Dem MP Lorely Burt and in collaboration with The Mindfulness Initiative - which brings together a number of leaders in the field and key mindfulness training and research centres; Oxford, Exeter, Bangor and Sussex, as well as the Mental Health Foundation - have spent the last eight months looking at the benefits of mindfulness, evidence backing up these benefits, and how it might be incorporated across a range of UK services and institutions, mainly education, healthcare, work and criminal justice.

The hope, in a nutshell, is for the Government to recognise the importance of wellbeing in society, the role mindfulness could play, how this could follow through into policy, and how those holding the budget-strings could give it some funding..."

"... One of the things we need to think about is how this works long-term, not just short-term, which is what governments tend to think about, and that is pays to focus on prevention rather than cure," he says. "Nearly all these interventions require spending by one department, and will see gains elsewhere, and that's the bit we need to crack."

A pound spent on mental health, he notes, is "at the margin, hugely more productive than a pound spent on physical health", and yet that isn't reflected in the current system..."

"...For example, mindfulness in schools may or may not have a significant immediate impact on exam results - one of the key things currently used to measure success in education - but it could hugely improve harmony in classrooms, behavioural problems, stress among teachers, sickness rates, self-esteem - the list could go on and on. These things will then have a positive snowball effect through years to come, including, ultimately, less strain on the NHS and welfare budgets..."     Read it all