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

Absolutely this.

Couldn’t agree more

A lot of time the recommended and evide based approach is to do/act in the opp way a person currently is (avoidance) whether that is sitting with difficult feelings or overcoming anxiety going into work. The latter is treatable yet people think they should have PIP and even in some instances a carer. It’s a gross misuse of NHS provision and tax payers money. People present with depression due to worry about money but then do not engage decline help and continue to state they are depressed. It’s plain wrong and clogs the system for this in genuine need and who are willing to engage and put the work in.

But apparently everyone has choice according to you, regardless of health and circumstance. Except you apparently. How dreadful.

Asking for a friend, how does one procure a carer on the NHS for anxiety?

to add….

my previous post does not include those with lifelong diagnosis of sever conditions that need secondary care. That said many people with Bi Polar can function quite well with periods of stability. As for severe OCD this is treatable it is not comparable to schizophrenia. OCD is a dysfunctional set of beliefs and can vary a lot as there are sub types. This is treatable to the point where it is managed/contained and individuals can function - however if you have PIP and a carer (which o have come across) what motivation would you have to get better, especially if that’s all you have mostly known as a adult? The state provision traps the person as they become dependent - very sad and I often think about that person a lot

I have no idea - I’ve posted further but I have come across it where one person had PIP and a carer for OCD. It’s not helpful it develops a dependency and learned helplessness becomes a barrier to moving forward

Should disabled people just not use disability aids then? You know, because it stops them reaching their full potential and they might become dependant on them?

Another elephant in the room is that people seem to think that medical science has progressed further than it has and so a diagnosis is somehow absolute 'proof' that you have a condition. In some cases this is obviously absolutely true when definitive medical tests can be completed and the results can give a very clear indicator of illness. For the majority of MH conditions, Neurodiversity and quite a few physical conditions no such definitive objective medical tests exist. When diagnosing conditions like autism and ADHD for example, the test is inherently subjective and very reliant on self reporting from the patient. This combined with the fact that our understanding of such conditions is far from perfect and there is a lot of disagreement in the medical world about the nature of the conditions and indeed whether ND has widened so much that there is now no meaningful distinction between NT and ND then you can see how our system can give a weird sense of false certainty. This certainty can be internalised very easily and the 'diagnosis' becomes part of someone's identity and a reason why they can't do things and why others must accommodate them. This is especially true when you're young and generally unsure of yourself.

We know from studies of retired and old people that the less people the quicker their confidence can diminish and their capabilities start to decline too. It really can be a self perpetuating process and something that is not in anyone's interest, especially the young.

Their condition must be extreme to warrant a career. They would not have one if they were not in dire need, of help, for them to function day, to day.

Do you mean they are using thier PIP to pay for a carer? Which seems like an appropriate use of money designed to help with care and mobility.

Or do you mean social service have assessed them and the LA has given an additional personal budget for care?

But yes it's sad if someone isn't accessing appropriate treatment for a treatable condition. I think if the government had any confidence there were enough specialists out there they would make treatment a requirement somehow.

I never mentioned disabled people. Some MH conditions are treatable are not comparable to untreatable disabilities and require different forms of support.

Has your son thought of applying for IT jobs? A lot of ND people work very successfully in the industry

Clearly someone thought so and it’s a gross misuse of the system - a fear of germs for example can be treated but if you have PIP and a carer that feeds you because you can’t touch things then why would you bother trying to touch things to see if your fear of germs is accurate?

I didn’t know the fine details of funding specifics.

I would not like to expand on this, because I do not have the knowledge, or expertise on how OCD can affect a person. I would just say, the fact that there is help available is not necessarily a bad thing. It must not be a good life, being so affected, to such a degree. What would the alternative be, for someone finding everyday life so difficult? There has to be help, and compassion.

Because that person would starve. They would not touch it just to see.

They would not get better with the absence of care.

The discussion itself doesn't matter. You can see graphs showing how many people will be unable to work due to MH conditions by 2030. Even if everyone with those conditions is being 100% honest, there won't be enough workers to support them.

So we need to find ways to get people into work, and off the government teat. That is the end of it

a fear of germs for example can be treated but if you have PIP and a carer that feeds you because you can’t touch things then why would you bother trying to touch things to see if your fear of germs is accurate?

This just shows a complete lack of understanding with regard to mental health conditions.

I mean, do you really believe a mentally and physically healthy adult is going to live their life not even being able to feed themselves because they don't want to work?

But doing that requires investment. Unless you're suggesting just letting people sink or swim and allowing the "sinkers" to just die or be forgotten about in a hospital or bedsit somewhere?

The carer is reinforcing their beliefs that if they touch the fork etc their fear of germs will play out. The carer would need to take a step back and stop doing that for the person to learn their beliefs are inaccurate. They maybe fed but they are not getting better.

I've been formally diagnosed with EUPD and OCD (with diagnoses of depression, anxiety and PTSD along the way). I've trained for three different careers (to graduate levels of distinction in two cases) and had the most agonising and destructive experiences of work and the workplace, where I suffer in particular from persecutory anxiety. My life is ruined, from that point of view, because despite years of (private) psychotherapy I can't recover from certain intrusive thoughts and toxic shame-based feelings. My physical health is dominated these days by severe osteoporosis (3 spontaneous spinal fractures in the last 10 years) and, ironically, each time I've attempted long term medication for my mental health, I've fractured. (There's plenty of research that demonstrates the relevant links between pretty much every antidepressant and bone mineral density levels in osteoporosis.) I've also been diagnosed with several pain disorders over the years, including osteoarthritis in my spine. I'm a wreck 😄 And it gives me no satisfaction to say that, it's just a fact.

But the point of my post (!) is that I've been single most of my life, and don't see that changing now that I'm late fifties (with typical EUPD difficulties managing intimate relationships). I have never been offered DBT or had a CMH nurse assigned to me because I have been judged as able to keep myself relatively safe for years. But I become seriously destabilised whenever I try to take on a job. So although it's clear that work has been helpful in your particular case, I can't say that work has ever genuinely helped me, or made a reliably positive difference to my life. (By which I mean that it has provided me with a level of stability in my life that most working people of my generation have pretty much been able to take for granted.)

I do a bit better than survive, some of the time, when I'm supported to look after myself as best I can. As a result I make a positive difference in my own life and the lives of my loved ones. But Tony Blair's extremely privileged pronouncement is aimed at softening up the public for forthcoming swingeing cuts to sickness and disability benefits, and I will be at risk of going under as a result.

But it isn't necessarily helpful or compassionate to enable people to live in such a way. Sometimes people need tough love and to pushed beyond what they are comfortable with to do their very best to get out of some very dark and serious circumstances. I don't say this glibly as I truly know how hard this can be but the alternative is much more worse in the longer term and ultimately unsustainable. I don't just mean financially but the amount of time, energy and resource needed to keep some people afloat is astronomical. This has a huge impact on families and healthcare services up and down the country. We simply don't have enough resource to channel that much into so many individuals who say they need it and are unwilling to properly engage with treatment.

The carer is reinforcing their beliefs that if they touch the fork etc their fear of germs will play out. The carer would need to take a step back and stop doing that for the person to learn their beliefs are inaccurate. They maybe fed but they are not getting better.

That's just not how it works, though.

People who are so mentally unwell they can't bring themselves to eat for fear of germs won't just get on with it in the absence of care, they will starve themselves to the point of hospitalisation and death.

I can't help thinking that the real overhaul needs to be with the regulating bodies.

Ofsted is responsible for suicides, stress-related illness, heart attacks, and mental health breakdowns. Yet they themselves have been judged inadequate and unfit for purpose on the rare occasions anyone took a look at their practices.

The sooner they replace Ofsted with an organisation that can do its job instead of terrorising the education sector, the happier we will all be.