Tony Blair says we need a national conversation about MH as its costing too much

[B0xes]

Tony Blair said recently on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future Podcast (clip available on youtube) that we need to have a national conversation about mental health. Why are we spending so much on it. Why are people self diagnosing. He believes people are being encouraged to view everyday challenges we all face as mental health issues.

Is he being unreasonable? In one sense, I'm inclined to agree to an extent, in the other, I believe he led the charge for so many of the social changes that have made us less resilient and many of these issues are due to individualism which led to atomisation and loneliness and being encouraged to see the market as the entity that fulfills our needs rather than strong families and robust social networks.

YABU - Blair can do one.

YANBU - He might have a point

I've answered this several times now, but:

Many therapies aren't accessible to people without a diagnosis. Yes, I can access basic CBT but there are other kinds which require an official diagnosis of autism.

There is also support available for neurodivergent people when it comes to things like doing taxes or filling out paperwork. Without a diagnosis, you have to pay for that support (or go without altogether).

As an aside, there is medication available to help with the side-effects of autism. I'm currently taking it as that's all my doctor could do for me without an official diagnosis, which he highly recommended.

This

Maybe Blair could take it up with the BMA

https://thedoctor.bma.org.uk/articles/health-society/society-s-failings-and-the-nhs-s-struggle-to-cope/

And when all the stiff upper lip, in my day, force it out of them crowd die off maybe the young of today will develop a new, more compassionate society that doesn't revolve exclusively around profit as this one sure is broken.

"Has he a diagnosis" as a reply to every bad behaviour is one response that needs to be drowned.
So you do accept that "bad behaviour" must be considered in light of a diagnosis? Exactly.

In Ireland and in the last few years have learned more than I needed to about the lack of resources for teens with mh issues. Maybe in Ireland too we talk about it/ think about it ‘too’ much but the people who need help aren’t getting it so we can’t stop

Tony Blair is a maniacal psychopath so whatever he says it's best to do the exact opposite.

I suspect the main reason we have a MH crisis is that no one has the time or space to deal with their traumas. The traffic is hellish and the countryside is being destroyed by endless house building. Life is too crowded, too noisy and too fast-paced. People are being squeezed to breaking point. There are more than three times as many people in the UK today as there were 100 years ago. Life has always been hard, and it has always been full of trauma, but when your environment is emptier, quieter, slower-moving and less stressful it is easier to recover. No one has the chance to calm down or heal from stuff now. I feel like I'm permanently in fight or flight mode.

Just before the lockdown, I had an experience that perfectly sums up the modern world. A young neighbour died and we followed the hearse to the cemetery. It was awful. First the hearse got stuck in one of those vile new estates where the roads are so narrow you can barely turn round, then we got caught in traffic and had an idiot in a transit van bibbing and trying to overtake. The cemetary used to be a lovely, peaceful place. Now housing estates have been built all around the edge. During the ceremony, we could hear shouting and fighting, and the vicar's voice was drowned out at one point by the screeching and exploding of some boy racer's car. We didn't evolve to live like this.

Actually, forcing your child to do things they don't want to can also lead to mental health issues and not resilience.

Things like school refusal can be an actual phobia of school or a reasonable reaction to a situation in which they are not actually safe, or is really unpleasant. I certainly would not want to attend an average secondary school today and could never keep up with the sheer amount of homework given, quite apart from anything else, and I was very academically able. And the amount of rules and punishments, even though I was naturally conforming and obedient, would leave me a nervous wreck.

This is the elephant in the room of course.

A fundamental cornerstone of a compassionate society is that the strong help the weak. This model only works though when the strong outnumber the weak by a decent margin as it is a huge burden to expect someone to deal with all the hardships and difficulties of their own lives and take a significant chunk of burden from others too. It doesn't take a genius to work out that even the strongest amongst us will crumble under the immense weight of responsibility if they are effectively 'carrying' everybody else's burdens as well as their own.

Unfortunately people are too busy obsessing over the (long departed) super rich and evil tax dodging corporations to realise that fundamentally we need to accept that we are all responsible for ourselves. Nobody else owes us a living and none of us have an unalienable entitlement to support and help from other people. Laws can be changed and systems can be reformed if it is felt that the burden is too great. We have had the welfare state for less than a century but I think it has never been more under threat.

No. I pointed out two conditions that are physical not mental illnesses. 🤷‍♀️

In general I really like Tony Blair, thought he was a good PM, but also sometimes he is tremendously wrong on things.
I think he draws a lot personally on his Catholic religious faith and he probably gets a lot of strength and community from that, which is great but not everyone has that. He’s also lived a very privileged life for years and probably doesn’t understand what a number Tory austerity has done on this country and its mental health since 2010.

I think Blair is also forgetting that he symbolically ushered in an age where mental health has begun been signalled to be important (rightly)- I think it goes back to when he was PM and Lady Diana was sadly killed in a car accident. It went nuclear at that point and suddenly everyone was furious that the royal family, the Queen in particular, didn’t show enough ‘feeling’.

I’ve heard Blair saying in interviews that these days he feels everyone claims to be a victim of some kind. He’s been making these sorts of statements for a while. I don’t think they really work with his statesmanlike image these days because they don’t show very well developed thinking.

Sorry, typed too quickly-that's exactly why LadyGreensleeves' impatience with diagnosis is misplaced, behaviours that seem problematic can't be written off as simply a lack of willpower or resilience.

Are brain tumours and epilepsy now clessed as mental illnesses? We have already had a twonk say Alzheimer's is a mental illness.

Just because a physical illness affects the brain does not make it a mental disorder.

I do hope that you can appreciate the distinction.

The pat response of "has they a diagnosis?" for a man who shakes when he has to attend the office, for a child who screams blue murder when he can't get what he wants, for a woman who doesn't want to speak to anyone outside her little family or for a man who may be upset when his dog dies is unnecessary.

These examples demonstrate in order: a lack of resilience; a lack of discipline; oddness and a case of day to day blues.

If these examples are encouraged to get in line for a mental illness diagnosis then those who do need one will be delayed in getting the help they need.

One may be anxious, badly behaved, blue or a bit odd without needing a diagnosis. It's overcooked and it's overcooked to the detriment of those who do need help.

Most people are not mentally ill.

please tell me you don’t have children 😅

This is 6% of adults? (I think) 1/16

When you consider all the many possible disabilities out there it doesn't seem that a ridiculous figure. Even if people feel the amounts are too large and unaffordable and the system needs reform, I'm not sure the numbers themselves sound wrong?

It's quite interesting seeing the stats on the percentage of succesful claims for different conditions. If all 4 limbs are misding, 90% of claims are succesful,. I can't help wondering how the other 10% messed up thier form.

When you factor in ‘working age’ it’s more 1 in 9 or 10 I believe.

The only person I know who hasn't worked in years citing mental health issues which are mild (sorry to say mild but I know people close to me with paranoid schizophrenia who had to be sectioned so anxiety/depression seems mild to me I get that they are terrible to deal with though)
Is a lady in her fifties, all these young people that get blamed for everything! Almost all the people in their twenties I know are very hard workers but coming on this website and reading comments would have you believe every other 25 year old is long term unemployed and depressed.

This is a complex issue. First and foremost, there is a large and growing number of people with serious mental health issues (which lockdown exacerbated). The care offered to many of these people is not good enough- too often it’s just a case of prescribing anti depressants if they can even get an appointment.

Many of those who are out of work with MH issues can’t get the support they need to move on with their lives. However, the increased openness in society about this issue has led to some people self-diagnosing and saying they have anxiety when in fact they have difficulties in life. This isn’t helpful to them or those with real illnesses.

In saying that, it is not easy to get PIP or other disability benefits and people self-diagnosing will not be getting them. For me, the fundamental issue is lack of access to support and treatment.

Yet another headline, following on from the Dispatches Benefit Scandal TV programme, priming us for more cuts to our welfare system.

It's a propaganda piece.

We don't spend enough on prioritising mental health and wellbeing in the UK. You can't have a society this unequal, working these hours, with crumbling public & community services and expect people not to become casualties.

• The World Happiness Report 2022
• The World Happiness Report 2023
• Sapien Labs, Mental State of the World Report 2022
• William Russell, Countries With The Best Mental Healthcare In The World - Mapped
• WHO, Global Health Observatory data repository
• The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Social Spending Report

Well, no they couldn't, COVID just exacerbated a pre-existing problem of poor work conditions for NHS Staff and poor quality of care for patients. Brexit and austerity measures under the Conservative party worsened health inequality. Ther simply isn't this spare cash sitting around to address this so maybe Blair is voicing a truth, whatever you think of him, the facts are there in black and white!

What medication is there for autism?

Phobia of school!! Ah come on, really?

Yes, but if a child has school phobia which I think is actually quite rare then parents and professionals should work together to find the root cause. Because what happens if a child who has a school phobia doesn't get support and then when older thinks that they can't cope in a work environment.

I remember when I was 13 and my class had to do a school assembly. I was quite shy and nervous and really didn't want to do the speaking part I had been given. My dad said to me that there would always be times in life when we had to do something that we didn't want to, and that he sometimes felt like this at work. Not doing it wasn't an option and I felt so much better for having done it.

Why?

Forcing distressed children into an unsafe environment causes trauma. Some
school environments are physically or psychologically unsafe, for some children more than for others.

Putting someone in an unsafe situation that they cannot escape from, and where they do not have anyone to help, does not automatically equal “resilience”.