As with most disabling conditions, there are two, well respected, leading national mental health charities, Mind and Rethink, who campaign and raise awareness of their areas of speciality, and have done so for decades. They know their stuff.
Both have spoken out against the current announcements:
Dr Sarah Hughes, Chief Executive of Mind, said:
"Mental health problems are not a choice - but it is a political choice to make it harder for people to access the support they need to live with dignity and independence. These reforms will only serve to deepen the nation’s mental health crisis.
"While the increased investment in employment support will go some way in helping the many people with mental health problems who can and want to work, this risks being undermined by a short-sighted approach - slashing people’s benefits at the same time.
"Benefits like Personal Independence Payment are a lifeline, helping people with a mental health problem to enter and remain in work. Without this support, people risk being plunged in poverty and seeing a deterioration in their health, which will ultimately lead to more people falling into unemployment.
"We have an opportunity to truly transform people’s experiences of employment. This requires having a benefits system that provides a robust safety net that truly supports people into good, sustainable work, while also supporting those who are simply not well enough to work. Today’s announcement does the opposite and we urge the Government to rethink these plans."
https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/mind-reacts-to-uk-government-green-paper-on-benefit-reform/
Mark Winstanley, Chief Executive of Rethink Mental Illness, said:
“Amid the whirlwind of speculation leading up to this announcement, people experiencing severe mental illness have grown increasingly anxious and despairing. We do agree with the government's assessment that the social security system is broken, because for too long people living with mental illness have come to serious harm and even lost their lives due to the failures and punitive approach of the Department for Work and Pensions, and we are incredibly concerned that these reforms could trigger hardship and suffering for many. Our own research has found that people already face an uphill battle to access benefits such as Personal Independence Payments (PIP), with claims often rejected because assessors do not adequately take account of mental illness. Removing financial support without a clear plan to address the drivers of mental illness and bring down lengthy waiting lists for treatment will not boost the number of people in work, but instead risk deepening the mental health crisis facing the nation.
“We recognise the scale of the challenge for the government as an increasing number of people are not working due to ill-health. There were some welcome measures in today’s announcement, such as providing a guarantee that people will not face a PIP award review or WCA reassessment if attempts to return to work prove unsuccessful, alongside the significant investment of £1 billion in employment support. That there will be a renewed focus on safeguarding within the DWP is also welcome, although we are uncertain how the government squares this with the potentially harmful changes to PIP it plans to introduce. Its promise to protect the most vulnerable rings hollow, especially given that people living with severe mental illness might not factor into the government's definition of this.
“Though we recognise these changes will not be immediate, the people we support face an even more uncertain future which will only compound their distress and make life even harder.”
https://www.rethink.org/news-and-stories/media-centre/2025/03/we-respond-to-the-governments-announcement-on-welfare-reform/