Labour's long overdue stand

For too long the sector has been seen variously as a cash cow for property developers or an optional extra in health budgets easily cut because the the targets are unlikely to fight back.

It was Margaret Thatcher who, under now discredited mantras of freedom and choice, gave the green light to a firesale of NHS assets which were tailored to cater for those with mental health issues.

Her "care in the community policy" was in fact quite the opposite. Like the big society con, it claimed that people would now be better served and supported within their communities. But the investment in holistic support that this required never materialised. It was never even on the agenda.

It was a cruel irony that Thatcher was able to use the call of campaigners for modern facilities to replace the ageing Victorian asylums, which then made up much of the specialist hospital stock, as an excuse to throw some of Britain's most vulnerable to the wolves.

Replacement facilities were invariably smaller and beds fewer, forcing thousands of families to take on the burden of care themselves.

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Tens of thousands languish in bedsits, alone and isolated.

One of the most notorious examples of the Tories' callous transfer of wealth from mental health patients to the rich was Friern psychiatric hospital in north London, whose sale for a pittance made its private developer tens of millions.

Today it is the playground of C-listers and "reality" TV stars who trade luxury flats carved out of its wards and corridors for millions apiece.

That the Victorian stock needed radical overhaul or replacement is not in doubt.

Neither is the fact that people who have mental ill health need a variety of care, from activities and in-community carers to take the pressure off families, to drop-in centres and short-term facilities for people who need periodic support at the worst times.

And, yes, for those in the most dire of straits who need round-the-clock help the option of residential care.

Increasingly none of these is available.

Drop-in centres are being axed, wards and staff slashed.

Some facilities are now so poorly resourced that they are reserved for only the worst cases, meaning it's deemed safer for more vulnerable patients not to be referred even when they or their families know that they are in need of immediate, specialised care.

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Solving this chaos and disintegration will be no easy task, but Ed Miliband's decision to put the issue front and centre is a welcome first step.

His singling out of smug rich motormouths Jeremy Clarkson and Janet Street-Porter is also well placed.

For while promoting the status of mental health within the NHS will go some way towards easing the situation it will not in itself solve the problem.

There is a clear danger that, despite the fine words on an issue which affects millions of us over our lifetimes, mental health will again be placed on a back burner in the frenzy of economic issues set to dominate politics over coming decades.

But landmark book The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett showed just how closely interlinked economic equality within a country and mental well-being and happiness are.

Miliband should heed its lessons.

Investment in mental health, public understanding of this silent suffering, and economic policies which restore the wider fabric of society and place the interests of the majority, rather than a tiny self-absorbed elite, at their heart are all ultimately key to creating a better life for all.