Every day’s a pity party in UK plc: we’re all paying the price for Generation Feeble

Mel Stride. Cometh the election, cometh the statesman. Here he stands, our only defence against a radical new political movement that looks guaranteed to deliver a disastrous landslide. I say statesman, but let’s be honest; none of us could have reliably identified the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions in a police line-up – until now.

But, after courageously pointing out that feeling a bit down in the dumps doesn’t technically constitute a mental health crisis, I think I can reliably assert the 62-year-old is be-Striding his pusillanimous “it’s not for us to judge” peers like a clear-visioned Colossus.

May I present to you His Majesty’s official opposition to The Pity Party. Because in these days of sick notes and self-diagnosis, where duvet days outnumber economically active ones, and you can barely reach for a Kleenex without someone chirping up that it’s OK to not be OK, those of us who are not droopy and despondent need someone to represent us. A space to gather free of those wretched souls suffering from “that Sunday night feeling”, or sad they’ve finished their boxset; too psychologically fragile to turn up for work and too stressed to apply for a job

Increasingly, every day’s a Pity Party in UK plc and we are all paying the price for Generation Feeble who refuse to believe the science, namely that work is good for mental health, ultra-processed foods lead to depressed mood and sometimes the answer isn’t more self-care, it’s getting off your proverbial and helping those less fortunate.

“While I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health… 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,” Stride told this paper.

Brave man. His proposal is to get 150,000 people with “mild” conditions off benefits and into work as a way of tackling the ballooning welfare bill, set to reach £100billion this year. Analysis shows the rise is fuelled by a sharp increase in the number of people, especially the young, who have been signed off work long-term due to mental health conditions.

There has been much outrage from all the predictable quarters, yet when did work become such a dirty word? A study by the University of Cambridge last December revealed that when people moved from unemployment or stay-at-home parenting into paid work of eight hours or less a week, their risk of mental health problems reduced by an average of 30 per cent. Admittedly, working longer didn’t provide any extra boost, but then most of us don’t just put in the hours – and accordingly pay our taxes – for the sake of our health.

I freely concede I have had my share of mental health issues and I know of an alarming number of teenagers still struggling to cope post-lockdown. I would never cast aspersions at those who are mentally ill. But there is a great deal of difference between a lost 15-year-old who can’t get out of bed or brush his teeth and a high-maintenance millennial who has self-assessed herself as too emotionally unstable to hold down paid employment.

Maybe she needs clinical intervention. But given that exercise very often works better than antidepressants, she definitely needs to make all those bleedin’ obvious lifestyle changes: walking or running in green spaces, a better diet, meaningful activity, mindfulness and the rest.

Perpetuating a victim mentality reinforces feelings of low worth, isolation and hopelessness – by contrast, voluntary work positively impacts self-esteem, wards off depression and reduces loneliness; quite simply, doing good makes people feel good.

I despair for us as a society if successfully getting people into employment is decried as a punishment rather than valued as a prize that pays dividends for the individual and wider community – economy – alike.

To my mind, the only sticking point is how to make work pay, because nobody should be left worse off financially. Any common purpose calls for common sense; come on Mel Stride, you’ve already said the unsayable, now do the maths and make it happen.

Other nations have recovered from Covid and shown far more resilience. They haven’t weepily taken to their beds in droves, feeling sorry for themselves. The moment has now come to call time on the Great British Pity Party.