Primary healthcare for people with mental health problems or learning disabilities.

The physical health inequalities experienced by people with mental health problems or learning disabilities are well established, though comprehensive data for England and Wales have not previously been available. Nor have the reasons for inequalities been examined in detail. The Disability Rights Commission in Great Britain set out to examine such inequalities in relation to primary healthcare and to establish what remedial actions are needed.

Stigma, discrimination and social exclusion: What's in a word?

There is mounting evidence that British service users face pervasive discrimination in areas of life ranging from work to parenting, insurance to driving licenses. Some studies suggest that certain forms of discrimination have increased during the 1990s, perhaps because of saturation media coverage of the supposed- but not actual- rise in homicides committed by people with mental health problems. One of the key concepts used to investigate the problems that users of mental health services face in their relationships to other people, and to society at large, is 'stigma'.