Mental health - still stigmatised in 2024

It seems for every forward step in de-stigmatising mental health, there will always, predictably, dispiritingly, be yet another one backward...

Interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, Mel Stride, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, stated, "Mental health culture has gone too far. We are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions which then actually serve to hold people back and drive up the benefit bill. If they go to the doctor and say 'I'm feeling rather down and bluesy' ... on 94% of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever."

Speculating about the mental health of some of the most vulnerable of the citizens his government are supposed to support should surely be done with compassion and objectivity. Where he gets this figure of 94%, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst his sweeping generalisations, is unclear. What are irrefutable are figures from the UK Parliament website: "An estimated 1 in 6 adults have experienced a common mental disorder like depression or anxiety in the past week." That's around 11 million people.

Of course, there will be instances of individuals feigning illness. But benefit fraud, like the £16 billion the HMRC estimates is lost annually to tax evasion and avoidance, is a wholly separate subject. In conflating this with complex medical conditions he has no qualifications to offer such emotive opinions on, Stride has merely become the latest public figure to perpetuate the stigma surrounding mental health.

Speaking from personal experience (having been diagnosed bipolar), my mental health suffered its most major dip so far when I was in my 20s. Signed off work for months, my depression led to a complete breakdown and I eventually ended up being taken to an Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit by ambulance. At that time in the late 1980s, mental heath was even more heavily stigmatised. While breakdown implies something instant, like a bone fracture, my mind unravelled over months. Eventually immersed in anxiety and depression, I became so delusional I couldn't even begin to contemplate broaching how awful I felt with anyone, not even closest family, far less my GP.

According to the Office of National Statistics, "Suicide rates are highest for people who had never worked or were unemployed, while self-harm remains the biggest cause of death between the ages of 5 and 34."

As James O'Brien said in a coruscating response to this Tory Minister on his LBC show: "What's gone too far? Caring? Treating? Diagnosing? Recognising? Describing? Accommodating? I'll tell you the problem with mental health in this country, Mel Stride. It hasn't gone anywhere near far enough. Because the effort that is needed to actually improve people's existences, to look after them, to help them get back into the (daily) existence that would make them feel better, is non-existent. And guess who's job it is to fix that stuff? It's literally your job to create a society in which people suffering from anxiety stop suffering from anxiety. You're trying to create a society in which people suffering from anxiety get told to pull their socks up."