If you go back to the 1946 NHS Act you will see that the aim of the new health service was to improve both the physical and mental health of the country
Nye Bevan, the inspirational founder of the NHS, believed that improved and sustained mental health was key for the nation to thrive.
I have had a long association and appreciation of the NHS for most of its 70 years. I was born at home in Liverpool in 1962 with the help of a midwife and our family’s GP.
And now, more than half a century later, I work at a university business school with NHS staff on leadership programmes and also introduce business undergraduates to healthcare systems including the NHS.
When I left university with a history degree I was determined to become a public servant and got myself a NHS admin job. From 1985 to 1992 I was initially a NHS planner and then almost overnight in 1990 I became a NHS commissioner as purchasers and providers were created across the UK.
It was during the late 1980s and early 1990s that I had most to do with mental health in my career. I played a very small role in the closure and reprovision of mental health and mental handicap services (as they were then called) into the community.
This was in Huddersfield and many of the surrounding districts of South and West Yorkshire, and was at a time when the provision of care saw a wider variety of organisations including mental health charities, housing associations and the private sector.
The closure of the large psychiatric hospitals across the country happened at a seemingly glacial pace from the early 1970s through to the 1990s. In the case of Huddersfield, this represented the closure of Storthes Hall Hospital, which at one point had around 3,000 people living there.