Blindness of Mental Health in politics

I've studied three important reports on UK unemployment:

Dynamic Benefits: Towards Welfare to Work
- Centre of Social Justice / Ian Duncan Smith
Realising Potential: A Vision for Personalised Conditionality and Support
- DWP / Paul Gregg
Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity
- DWP / David Freud

There are some merits in these reports, notably the marginal tax changes in Dynamic Benefits and the co-ownership of a route back to work in Realising Potential.

But too much emphesis is placed on anicdotal evidence and not statistical evidence of claimants being capable of work. Dyanmic Benefits rely on focus groups and public polls but these are political devices, not scientific approaches to finding a solution.

None of these reports ask a simple question:

If disability benefits are high, can this be an indicator of poor health?

If the statistics show that health is the factor, which they do, then the next question is:

how do we improve these peoples health?

The presumption that any type of work is a cure for all ills is ludicrous. Four times as many manual workers commit suicide as skilled workers. It is ridiculous that politicians in the top 1% earnings bracket are telling the poorest people how to live. People want to work but claimants with mental health problems need flexible work and very understanding employers. They will probably need occupational therapists. At a time of high unemployment, any private employer is unlikely to be so charitable.

The three reports all:

Presume that high numbers of disability claimants have no disabilities.

Fail to acknowledge the mental health epidemic in the UK (23%).

Fail to address the need to improve mental health in the UK.

Presume all work is good for all people (except a paragraph in Gregg's report).

Fail to recognise not all work is the same.

Talk about “sensitivity” towards mental health claimants but fail to talk about acknowledgement and understanding.

Make no policy recommendations to change working culture to improve mental health.

To illustrate the massive problem of political blindness, we can look to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where a quarter of the population are HIV positive. Clearly people will die and the economy will suffer if people are not given medication to survive. Former President Thabo Mbeki held back progress for years due to his denial, despite the obvious nature of the epidemic.

Similarly, in the UK, where 23% of the population suffer mental health problems, three times higher than Germany, Italy and Spain, politicians expect people with mental-health problems to cope with little or no support. The cheap solutions of anti-depressants and CBT are ineffective for so many.

Only 9% of NHS spending is on mental health. It is time that politicians faced the mental-health epidemic and asked questions about our society. To say that there is not enough money will cost far more in the long-term and blight lives now. And it is not true, since the UK has a GDP of £1.45 trillion and net worth of £7 trillion. We are still a wealth country!

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