'We should all hang our heads in shame': On the picket line with Manchester psychologists

Medics and patients alike say Manchester’s mental health services are at a crisis point

Dear readers — yesterday, staff from Manchester’s three early intervention in psychosis teams went on strike outside the headquarters of Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, in Prestwich. They were joined by patients of the service, who with them say that it no longer provides adequate care to some of the most vulnerable people in society, unless they are on the verge of crisis or death. Jack joined them on the picket line, and visited a group for people with long-term mental illnesses who say they feel “invalidated” by the service and made to feel they aren’t ill enough to receive mental healthcare, that’s below. 

But first, a round-up of today’s news, including Manchester City Council’s new CEO, the latest on the fight to keep Salford Lads Club open and an interesting thought about greenspace in the city.

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Your Mill briefing

🖋️ Tom Stannard, former chief executive of Salford City Council, has been appointed the new chief executive of Manchester City Council. He will be taking over Eamonn Boylan — currently the interim following Joanne Roney’s move to Birmingham — in the new year. The council says Stannard was chosen following a “rigorous recruitment process”, out of which he emerged the unanimous choice. Stannard said: “While being unapologetically ambitious for the city’s global future, I won’t lose focus on the need to deliver excellent day-to-day services for Manchester people in the here and now.” 

💊 Greater Manchester charities have responded to the trial of a weight loss drug in the city region. The five year trial will see thousands given Tirzepatide then monitored across various metrics, including employment and productivity. "To be honest,” said Adam Green, chief executive of unemployment charity Yes Manchester, “it’s not something that presents as a barrier to employment, unlike mental health, digital exclusion, living in poverty or insecure housing". A spokesperson for the trial said it isn’t about getting people back into work, but about studying the relationship between obesity and a “fall in overall productivity”.

⬛ Shabir Hussain, the founder of the iconic Ackbar’s restaurant — started in Bradford but with a city centre outpost on Liverpool Road — has died aged 56. He is remembered as a pioneer and role model in the industry, all of his restaurants will close for two days out of respect.

💸 Singer-songwriter Graham Nash has donated £10,000 to the fundraiser started to save Salford Lads Club from closure. Nash was a member of the club as a boy. “This is the stage where I first sang”, he told the BBC in 2016. Donate here.

🍃 Finally, an interesting thought popped up on Reddit yesterday: If you were given the power to create a park or green space anywhere in Manchester, where would you put it? Would you turn Princess Parkway into, well, a park? Or let Pomona Island rewild? Let us know in the comments.

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By Jack Dulhanty

When Jeremy Hunt was health secretary back in the coalition years, he gave a speech to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In his opening remarks, he talked about someone he’d met on a recent visit to Manchester, a man who had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness and was at the time volunteering to help people with similar issues.

The man Hunt met was Craig Hamilton. A little over a decade since then, he and I sit in his van with Yogi, a Spanish Podenco with a grey chin and squinted eyes that look out of the rain-mottled windshield. “He said he had met somebody in Manchester with a diagnosis of blah-blah,” Craig says with a wave of his hand, like he’s tired of talking about it. “[Somebody] who said he didn’t want to be another statistic.”