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Benefit Cuts
Mar. 19th, 2025 09:27 amRegarding Wes Streeting's TOTAL BULLSHIT WANKERISHNESS on 'overdiagnosis of mental health'.
First of all, I hates him.
Secondly, I want to be clear that recent stats from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (who I have worked with extensively and know to be a really decent organisation) are quite clear - those on the highest benefit for disabled people signed off from work have a physical disability in the vast majority of cases.
The data was obtained from the Department for Work and Pensions under freedom of information. They found that five in every six people receiving the benefit with a mental health condition had at least one physical condition as well and 90% of the forecast spending growth on personal independence payments (Pip) between now and 2030 will be for those who get both components – meaning they are people with significant difficulties with mobility and conducting daily tasks such as washing and cooking.
But finally, and to give him the very teeniest and tiniest bit of credit, he touched on something my CPN and I have chatted about a bit. My CPN is my 'community psychiatric nurse' who I see every couple of weeks to check that I'm sane enough to be allowed out in public.
One of the things she has said (and her predecessor) is that while I may fret that I'm wasting their time, I'm actually the kind of patient that the service is designed for. Which is to say I'm someone with a measurable medical problem that can be treated by medical methods, like pills etc. An increasing number of their patients are...not exactly that. So, in some ways I guess Streeting is right. Except he's also totally wrong.
Jess (my CPN)'s most recent comment was that so many of her patients are really not coping, but that's not because they have shonky brain chemistry. It's because *life* is really hard to cope with. We live in a world where it's really hard to get secure housing, where you might not be able to feed your child, where you are in impossible situations where your partner is abusive, but if you leave, you face rough sleeping. Young LGBTQ+ people are facing increasing levels of social exclusion. There's a huge sense of anxiety about the future. Jobs are more demanding. The cost of living means that the working poor are struggling more and more. The NHS is struggling and people are trying to live with significant levels of pain for extended periods.
And a lot of the people she sees *aren't* coping and she can't really help them because the solutions they need are social solutions, not medical. Still, they end up being pushed into the CMHT because there's no one else really and they do their best. So they might be supporting the single mother who is having a breakdown because she is trying to raise 3 kids in a single room and can't find a permanent flat and is skipping meals so her kids can eat and her boss is yelling at her for being off work when her child is in hospital. But no one can help her with the job or the kids or the housing. So they shove her to the CMHT and ask them to stop her rocking and crying. They call it 'depression' because she is definitely very sad, but the anti depressants won't help.
And maybe she does get signed off sick, because the CMHT are genuinely lovely people who want to do their best. Maybe that's not exactly right in that with the right support she probably could work. But that support isn't there and cutting her benefits won't make it come into place.
And if you want to reduce the number of people being signed off sick with depression and anxiety, Wes, there are things you could do. You could demand that employers maybe do a better job at supporting their staff. You could invest in NHS services in order to address the physical issues - mobility issues/pain issues etc which are leading to mental health issues. You could provide better housing benefit (or the housing element of UC) or cheaper but reliable childcare. You could create more jobs, better public transport, loads of things, which I get you probably can't right now because our economy sucks.
But what you can't do is solve it by making anxious and miserable people even more anxious and miserable.
First of all, I hates him.
Secondly, I want to be clear that recent stats from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (who I have worked with extensively and know to be a really decent organisation) are quite clear - those on the highest benefit for disabled people signed off from work have a physical disability in the vast majority of cases.
The data was obtained from the Department for Work and Pensions under freedom of information. They found that five in every six people receiving the benefit with a mental health condition had at least one physical condition as well and 90% of the forecast spending growth on personal independence payments (Pip) between now and 2030 will be for those who get both components – meaning they are people with significant difficulties with mobility and conducting daily tasks such as washing and cooking.
But finally, and to give him the very teeniest and tiniest bit of credit, he touched on something my CPN and I have chatted about a bit. My CPN is my 'community psychiatric nurse' who I see every couple of weeks to check that I'm sane enough to be allowed out in public.
One of the things she has said (and her predecessor) is that while I may fret that I'm wasting their time, I'm actually the kind of patient that the service is designed for. Which is to say I'm someone with a measurable medical problem that can be treated by medical methods, like pills etc. An increasing number of their patients are...not exactly that. So, in some ways I guess Streeting is right. Except he's also totally wrong.
Jess (my CPN)'s most recent comment was that so many of her patients are really not coping, but that's not because they have shonky brain chemistry. It's because *life* is really hard to cope with. We live in a world where it's really hard to get secure housing, where you might not be able to feed your child, where you are in impossible situations where your partner is abusive, but if you leave, you face rough sleeping. Young LGBTQ+ people are facing increasing levels of social exclusion. There's a huge sense of anxiety about the future. Jobs are more demanding. The cost of living means that the working poor are struggling more and more. The NHS is struggling and people are trying to live with significant levels of pain for extended periods.
And a lot of the people she sees *aren't* coping and she can't really help them because the solutions they need are social solutions, not medical. Still, they end up being pushed into the CMHT because there's no one else really and they do their best. So they might be supporting the single mother who is having a breakdown because she is trying to raise 3 kids in a single room and can't find a permanent flat and is skipping meals so her kids can eat and her boss is yelling at her for being off work when her child is in hospital. But no one can help her with the job or the kids or the housing. So they shove her to the CMHT and ask them to stop her rocking and crying. They call it 'depression' because she is definitely very sad, but the anti depressants won't help.
And maybe she does get signed off sick, because the CMHT are genuinely lovely people who want to do their best. Maybe that's not exactly right in that with the right support she probably could work. But that support isn't there and cutting her benefits won't make it come into place.
And if you want to reduce the number of people being signed off sick with depression and anxiety, Wes, there are things you could do. You could demand that employers maybe do a better job at supporting their staff. You could invest in NHS services in order to address the physical issues - mobility issues/pain issues etc which are leading to mental health issues. You could provide better housing benefit (or the housing element of UC) or cheaper but reliable childcare. You could create more jobs, better public transport, loads of things, which I get you probably can't right now because our economy sucks.
But what you can't do is solve it by making anxious and miserable people even more anxious and miserable.