Mental health culture has gone too far, says Stride

Everyday anxiety is not a medical condition, says minister in crackdown on worklessness

BRITAIN’S approach to mental health is in danger of having “gone too far” with the “normal anxieties of life” being labelled as illnesses, the Work and Pensions Secretary has warned.

Speaking as he unveiled plans to make 150,000 people signed off work with “mild” conditions look for a job, Mel Stride said that the UK’S benefits bill was being pushed up by the problem.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he suggested that an increased public focus on talking about mental health had led to people effectively self-diagnosing.

His intervention comes amid growing alarm over the rising welfare bill, which is forecast to hit £100billion this year, and the impact of worklessness on the economy. The increasing cost is being fuelled by a sharp rise in the number of people, especially the young, who are on long-term sickness payments for mental health conditions.

Mr Stride warned that “as a culture, we seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health” and suggested people were being signed off too easily.

“While I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health, there is a danger that this has gone too far,” the minister said. “There is a real risk now that we are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions which then actually serve to hold people back and, ultimately, drive up the benefit bill.”

Mr Stride said it was positive that those who had previously “suffered in silence” were now “getting the help that they’ve needed”. But, he voiced fears the debate had tipped too far the other way and that some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.

“If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes and then, on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever,” he added.

Mr Stride acknowledged the topic was sensitive but said it must not become a “no-go area” and was “something we need to start having an honest, grown-up debate about”.

The number of Britons classified as economically inactive, meaning they are neither in work nor looking for a job, has risen by 700,000 since the pandemic.

Mental health problems have largely caused the increase, with the number of working-age people on the top level of sickness benefit soaring to 2.4million. They receive an extra £390 a month on top of their basic welfare payouts and are under no requirement to prepare for a return to work.

One in seven people in that bracket was put there after an assessor deemed that working would pose a “substantial risk” to their health. That rate is 14 times higher than ministers anticipated when they introduced the substantial risk category in 2011, with Mr Stride planning to clamp down on its use.

When the rules were brought in, they were intended to cover just 1 per cent of cases, such as where people had expressed suicidal thoughts. Mr Stride intends to rewrite the guidance so that only those with the most severe conditions can be signed off under the substantial risk route.

He is separately introducing a requirement for people who suffer from milder problems, such as social anxiety, to take up jobs where they can work from home.

The reforms are part of a planned overhaul of the Work Capability Assessment, which is not due to come into force until after the next general election.