# The key misconceptions that persist

- **Episode:** [195](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/195.md) (2025-05-08)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** mental-health, misconceptions, stigma
- **Time:** 7:11–11:16 (start 431s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/195?t=431](https://truthliesandwork.com/195?t=431)

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[7:11] Leanne Elliott: What are the, the key misconceptions that, that maybe are a bit too prevalent for your liking, have been around a while? Is there any that spring to mind?
[7:21] Sarah Hughes: So I think that, uh, there are still some I think there are still— there's still a huge lack of understanding about what the experience of serious mental illness is. So for those people who are being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, um, for those people who are in and out of psychiatric hospitals, those people who are experiencing community care, who are in supported housing. And I do often worry that, that the conversation tends to move towards, um, a more, um, sort of mild to moderate discussion around mental health. And I think that actually what I understand from our feedback that we get from the public is that they're now ready to understand the whole spectrum of mental health. And actually the experience that people with more serious mental illness have is often the most difficult in terms of inequality, In terms of poor outcomes and so on. And actually, when we've started talking about that more publicly, people have been astonished and outraged. And, and that's what we need. That's what we need people to be
[8:31] Leanne Elliott: You've spoken before, and Mind is, is also very vocal that the state of mental health and care isn't— or the system isn't good enough in the UK. What is it about the UK's Mental Health Act that you find so disappointing?
[8:44] Sarah Hughes: So there are a number of levels, really. I mean, I think Firstly, quite a lot of the mental illness that we see being experienced by communities across the country are caused by things that we could prevent. So poverty, racism, discrimination, poor education, bullying, domestic violence, bad housing. All of these things could be within our gift to solve. And so from my perspective, it's about saying, well, Well, why aren't we preventing mental illness when we know the things that could help make a difference? We also know that, um, you know, innovate in— well, funding for services isn't at the level that it should be. You know, there is just not— we haven't achieved parity of esteem, which is this notion of equity between physical and mental health. We haven't got there. And we know that things like psychiatric hospitals, they're not in a— the establishment, the environment is not good enough. If you are somebody in mental health crisis and being sectioned under the Mental Health Act and you get taken into an inpatient ward, often those environments are nowhere near conducive enough to good mental health or recovery. So I think that that's where we need to be prioritizing our attention. We need to be preventing the mental illness that we know is caused by social factors. We need to be enabling people to access the support when they need it, and we need them to get the right care at the right time from the right people. And I think all of those things need to happen in concert with each other, because sometimes we get a bit of the system right but not the rest of the system. So I'll give you an example. If you're in a psychiatric ward, And you become, you know, you recover while you're on that psychiatric ward, but you want to be discharged, um, to a, you know, new environment or supported living, and there is not enough accommodation out there. You end up sitting on the ward for a lot longer than you need to. That, that system is basically failing the individual. Um, they would've got good treatment in hospital, but the next bit of the journey. isn't there. Um, and so we really have to look at a person's entire life, not just one bit of it. Mental health can't be broken down into, well, I can just give you a tablet for this and that will equal that. Um, it's just not that clear and simple