Whole-Person Mental Health: Care, Choice, Community, and Combatting Populism

Decades of Liberal Democrat campaigning have pushed Britain’s mental health services forward and positively shaped how we as a nation think about mental health. Although we have always recognised the scale of the work left to do, we are proud of the real legislative and funding successes we have achieved both within and outside government - including progress towards treating mental health equally with physical health, improving access to talking therapies, increasing school-based support, and curbing unjust detentions.

Until recently, our greatest success was building a cross-party understanding that mental health matters, and that evidence and compassion should guide policy. There is a danger that the dismissive language of the far right has begun to undo the progress we made by reintroducing stigma and shame into conversations about mental health. Worse still, their framing has allowed both Labour and the Conservatives to soften their language and scale back their commitments.

Labour’s recent record is particularly alarming. Once vocal champions of parity between mental and physical health, they have quietly deprioritised the issue in both rhetoric and resource. Promised service expansions have been delayed or diluted, and commitments to prevention have vanished from their agenda. Their decision to scrap mental health targets refl ects a dangerous retreat from treating it as a distinct and urgent policy area. Furthermore, their refusal to commit to a dedicated funding settlement or new statutory rights is a sign that Labour lacks conviction.

Now is not the time to retreat from the challenge of fixing our mental health services. The pandemic has transformed both the scale and visibility of the crisis. It amplified loneliness, anxiety, and grief, pushed NHS, local authority, and school staff harder than ever before. It also left children and young people facing long-term consequences from disrupted education and isolation. Meanwhile, economic insecurity, housing instability, and digital exclusion have deepened the inequalities that drive poor mental health. These eff ects will persist for a generation unless we act decisively. The Liberal Democrats believe that rebuilding after the pandemic means making rebuilding mental health a national priority, rather than an afterthought tacked onto plans for physical health services.

The pandemic also exposed the structural drivers of distress that have been contributing to the nation’s worsening mental health for almost a decade. Stagnating living standards, rising poverty, and the fraying of the social safety net have left millions in Britain living with constant uncertainty about their jobs, homes, and futures. These pressures are not new, but the severity of them is, and the pandemic and its after-effects have widened inequality still further, with those already struggling pushed even closer to crisis.

At the same time, modern pressures are intensifying the strain on people’s mental wellbeing. The 24/7 demands of algorithm-driven social media are exposing people to unrealistic comparisons, manufactured division, and misinformation, which is contributing to increases in anxiety and low self-worth and having a negative knock-on impact on schools. These eff ects are particularly acute for young people, who are growing up in an unprecedentedly online world designed to constantly capture their attention. Yet while the pressures on people have multiplied, and awareness for mental health has increased, the capacity of the system to respond has diminished. Years of underfunding and understaffing across mental health services, compounded by deep cuts to local authorities by the Conservatives, have hollowed out community support and left services overwhelmed.

The Liberal Democrats take a different view. We believe that policy must be grounded in evidence, shaped by those with lived experience of mental health challenges, and measured by its ability to improve people’s lives. That means committing to a fully integrated, community-based mental health system that prioritises prevention and that recognises social determinants of mental health, and that uses every available tool, including clinical, digital, and social, to expand access whilst still giving patients choice. It also requires putting fairness at the centre of every stage: in diagnosis, in treatment, and in reducing the costs borne by people who are already unwell.

Our approach is grounded in evidence and lived experience. We know that mental illness is real, that prevention works, and that modern treatments, whether delivered face-to-face or digitally, can improve lives. New, digital-enabled therapies can be a valuable tool in expanding access, especially in remote areas or for those unable to attend in-person sessions. But technology must empower, not replace, the human relationship at the heart of care. Patients must always retain meaningful choice about how they receive support.

We also know that those who care for or live alongside people with mental illness, such as family members, partners, friends, and unpaid carers, carry enormous emotional and practical burdens. A compassionate mental health system must recognise and support them too, not leave