Do you agree with Tony?

[Icanthinkformyselfthanks]

Tony Blair has said this :-
“'I think we have become very, very focused on mental health and with people self-diagnosing.
'We're spending vastly more on mental health now than we did a few years ago. And it's hard to see what the objective reasons for that are.”
A dear friend of my mother’s suffered terribly with mental health issues all her life even resorting to brain shockwave therapy. I have had my own long standing battle with depression as has my younger son. We have both battled with the help of antidepressants to regain control of our mental health (remaining working throughout) and won both now living drug free and largely happily given the ups and downs life deals us all. My husband had an anxiety induced breakdown when he retired and we moved house at the same time. I definitely understand that mental health issues are real but I think Tony has a point. He thinks and I agree that an increasing number of people are a bit too quick to claim their mental health prevents them from working and they are making a huge impact on the cost of benefits alongside not contributing to the economy.
So what do you think? Has there genuinely been a massive increase in those with mental health issues or have perhaps some people become so dependent that they don’t even try to cope with normal life?

There will always be people who have genuine mental health issues which impact on their ability to work. Then there will always be people for who 'mental health' is the new 'bad back'. Between these two extremes you have (IMHO) a lot of people who's ability to cope with life is inversely affected by the sheer amount of information pumped out every second of every day.

Imagine if the internet was available during the second World War. Every bomb, every attack, every casualty, every death being reported in real time 24/7, in full colour and with no escape from the constant bombardment of news. As it was information was limited to daily papers and radio broadcasts and cinema reels so people could take in information at a rate that didn't overwhelm them. Thus they developed resilience and were able to adjust to the changing circumstances.

If that were to happen today, we simply would not be able to cope, because we just don't have the mental capacity to deal with that level of information - Information Technology has evolved at such a rate that our (very slowly evolving) brains can't begin to keep up, so we can get overwhelmed and feel weak, stressed and unable to handle life. Then we look to the internet to find out why we feel the way we do and bingo - we've 'got' depression or anxiety or ADHD or whatever and a percentage of people (no idea what the number is) feel they can now step back from doing what other people and it's completely acceptable; we've got a Mental Health Issue.

Just my tuppence.

TB isn't going to be popular for saying this, but I agree TO A POINT!.

There is a BIG difference between people seeking help / trying to help themselves (whether that be medication, referring for counselling etc) to be able to continue with their lives eg work and those who want a diagnosis either a self diagnosis or a clinical one, but not willing to try to get better themselves !
Unsure why they wouldn't want to improve - it is a bleak place to be (mentally ill )

Does he mean that people are self diagnosing and claiming benefits? Aren't you assessed for benefits and need medical evidence?

I don't like the man but I think he has a point.
I've suffered lifelong social anxiety and my mother was a manic depressive. I also have a severely agoraphobic family member.

There are a lot of people now with what I would term fake anxiety that they seem to be able to switch on and off at will. Thanks to certain media people, MH issues have become "fashionable" and that does the rest of us no favours. Yes, I realise it's a highly controversial thing to say and I know that people can hide severe MH issues and appear "okay" to the rest of the world (myself included) but I still remain convinced that some people who claim MH issues don't actually have a clue what the reality of it is. And I think that, in a round about way, is what he's getting at.

You’ve explained my thought far better than I could
i don’t think humans are equipped to live the life we live now with a lack of connection to nature
working all the time
lack of a village
families spread far n wide
the internet!
Things have evolved faster then humans

i think the real question is how to we deal with he fact we can’t put the internet back in the box ??

@JennyTals I think the first step is for people, starting with children (obvs!) to be taught how to understand and regulate their emotions. Although it's sometimes derided because of patchy delivery, the basic premise of CBT (thoughts, feelings and behaviours are all connected and by changing one you can change them all) should be the basis of education. There's no point in passing exams if you can't control your temper or understand why you're unhappy sometimes.

The only difference now is that you don’t have to keep your mental ill Healy a secret and can be open about it.

thats why it seems more prevalent

Tony is wrong on this one.

We've raised a generation that are never challenged even at school different opinions are hidden behind trigger warnings or couched as "problematic". We tell them that nothings there fault it's always someone or something else that's to blame (just look at the teacher threads).
Basically we have raised a self absorbed entitled generation of narcissists who expect the world to bend to their will and this words are literal violence™️. When they inevitably face the real world it's a massive shock and they fall back on self IDing mental health "issues" because we haven't equipped them for life in the real world where you have to suck crappie things up

I’d be genuinely surprised if there was any significant increase in the number of people who would meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental illness, what there certainly is is a massive increase in labelling what would historically have been described as feeling a bit sad or having some anxiety around a given situation,as mental illness. There does seem to be an inability to cope or perhaps an unwillingness to accept what are really normal life situations, without saying I’m mentally unwell because of it. While it’s great that mental illness is no longer a taboo subject that shouldn’t be discussed or admitted to, it does seem to have gone to the extreme

I must admit that I’m a bit peeved after a lifetime of fighting my MH issues and finally going on PIP that the government is having to crack down on benefit claimants due to the large number of mainly young people who now have “anxiety” and are unable to work.

I agree with @JennyTals that society has developed into a situation incompatible with good mental health.

We are still just the bald apes we always were, we haven’t evolved to live like this.

All the mental health advice tells us to do what our distant ancestors did - follow circadian rhythms, nature and the seasons, do physical work that is good for our bodies and brains, eat only just enough food, and that food to be all unprocessed and natural with little sugar. Have frequent interactions with our family and neighbours, and have friends across generational divides. Grow things, make things with our hands, connect to the physical world rather than living in a mental one.

The internet brought some great things but it also accelerated society into ever greater unhealthy habits.

Just following to come back to later; I think there’s some really valid points being made. I hope it doesn’t descend into bun fighting.

@Eyesopenwideawake , interesting; thanks.
I see the logic of that but actually people cope remarkably well with the most horrendous level of stress all the time. A very dear friend of ours has just been diagnosed with a terrible form of cancer, of course we’ve all looked up the prognosis and it’s basically hopeless. My husband spoke to him this morning and he and his new wife (they only married last year) are remaining calm and doing what they have to do.
As a species we’ve evolved to cope with stress, for hunter gatherers finding food is stressful, avoiding being eaten by predators is stressful. Our bodies are physiologically adapted to deal with stress.
I agree with Tony. Sadly some people will always be looking for a way to game the system.

I work in mental health and there is some validity to it.
I think that there needs to be some real honest conversations about mental health and more crucially (for my role!) what help is available

I feel like I often meet people who are asking for medical solutions to a non medical problem. I don't mean it harshly or without empathy, the distress is real but often it's pushed into a health problem rather than a social one.

For example people living in unsecure accommodation, being evicted etc. Or for example people who are facing denied asylum claims etc. People in bad relationships etc

Naturally they are anxious and low in mood, not sleeping etc However it feels like that is often pushed into trying to find treatment. The reality is while antidepressants may help a little, most treatments we have available won't help while you are living in reach of the flames of what is burning you. It's like trying to treat a knee pain while the person is still running marathons

They then are frustrated by their lack of progress and still being unwell which then makes them even more stuck

I think there has been so much emphasis (rightly so) on seeking help, or "time to talk", but without the thought of what that looks like, and what helps and when. Obviously with that encouragement of people to consider therapies for example there hasnt been adequate expansion of therapies to go with it.

Possibly or perhaps people with what could be easily sorted minor mental health difficulties, have to wait years for any sort of helpful treatment and things for them get worse and more hopeless that they end up stuck.
i have severe ocd and only after I completely lost my shit did I get any proper intense treatment that has actually made it so day to day life is manageable. If I didn't have a full on mental breakdown and end up getting help as a result of that I'd still be in the same position now. Before that was 15 solid years id not being able to manage life at all with no proper help.

First response nailed it imo, and I say that as a huge sufferer of anxiety and depression for decades. I’m talking actively suicidal, under psychiatric care and on tranquillisers at times.
I apparently don’t qualify for any kind of disability or benefits, yet some people who bleat constantly about ‘oh I have anxiety’ seem to get everything. It’s baffling. I’ve spent my life hiding my diagnosis for fear of being judged and I find those that drop it into every conversation are some of the least anxious people I’ve ever met!

I do however think that society has got a bit lost and confused between mental health (which we all have) and mental illness. Having good and bad periods of mental health is normal.
something can be bad for your mental health, you could be mentally struggling due to circumstances etc but that doesn't necessarily mean you have a mental illness.

I will say in a long career, ive rarelt met anyone who i felt was jumping on a band wagon(excluding one job in a specific circumstance where there was a clear reason to be motivated for it)

I also subscribe to the idea that we have threat systems as a species that don't work in the modern world.

If a deer sees a threat, it panics with floods of adrenaline but once that threat is out of sight, the panic pretty much goes. It makes sense that it then evolves that you start to remember panic eg that it remembers that it felt scared in a place with frequent predator, so it learns to avoid that place. A deer also has a reward system, that means despite the risk of a predator it has to go and seek food, migrate etc

However as humans, our threat system struggles to adequately prioritise. In the absence of predators, we alert to lots of things. Often those things flood us with stress hormones but don't necessarily let up, eg stressful jobs etc or even follow us around 24/7 eg social media.

Take someone who becomes anxious outside the house. You go to a shop and your threat system alerts to a non threat, you have a panic attack. The next time, you remember that awful feeling so you start feeling panicky before you get in that shop, then it grows until its the idea of leaving the house. You can then get all you dopamine, and reward without leaving. Your shopping is delivered, your friends virtual etc so you never have that push to have non anxious experiences.

We are too wired, without the natural off switch that we used to have so it feels like we need to be more deliberately building things like resilience

I think we have to some extent done our young a disservice with the over focus on mental health and I think it has lead some children and their parents thinking that they should never have a bad day and should be happy all the time or something is wrong! Rather than build on skills like resilience which seems to be lacking in the young and old.

Getting stressed before exams, driving test, job interview etc is all normal and a normal body reaction. They don't need their own terms, medicated etc.

We all have a mental health like we have physical health - and like our physical health it can be good or bad at times- like when we have a cold etc. Some people have long term mental health issues - like people have long term physical health issues. But most of us don't have mental health problems, we have blips - which unfortunately is called life!

You hit the nail on the head. I had a co-worker take a week off work then when she came back, she announced she took the week off because of MH problems. She said it was caused by her partner being in the ICU. As someone with life long depression, I wanted tell her she didn't have MH problems, she had a normal human reaction to her partner being in the ICU.

Yeah and there's nothing wrong with having a strong reaction to that.

My example would be the current wild fires where people are having their whole lives go up in smoke

There will be people who are genuinely traumatised who 100% need formal mental health support

There will be people that need a little bit of support, eg a few days of sleeping pills, some immediate help to calm down, or some simple talking therapies to talk about how awful it is

There will also be a big chunk of people who just need to feel it and work through the fact something has happened to them which is unquestionably awful. If they are then deemed as being "unwell" because they are distressed by it, then there's a likelihood they will be given medications that don't help, encouraged to reduce activities that keep them well to take some time out and then feel utterly broken when none of it appears to work. The best thing for those people isn't antidepressants, waiting lists, be classed as faulty and to made to wait for help that isn't suitable.

They need practical help, support and love of a community, places to go, routine and things that make them feel themselves again. That rarely comes via psychiatric services

It's always hard to express without sounding like you are minimising people's very real distress and symptoms

I also worry about the encouragement of isolation. Often gps are very quick to suggest time off work. For some people work provides a vital structure that keeps days clocking over. I know my mh plummets with long periods off work. I lose my sleep pattern, I stop eating well, I stop leaving the house and my anxiety creeps up. I (and lots of others) need that external guide to keep me on track.

We have large groups of people stuck at home with no real routine, nothing to keep them on track, nothing they feel is rewarding, limited social interactions which is a breeding ground for mental health issues. There are absolutely times when you need rest, time and less demands but sometimes that tips over and keeps people stuck

This.

I moved to a city with ex and hated every second. The noise, pollution, traffic, and lack of anywhere green to walk. It was never quiet. I was never alone. If I'd stayed I would either be drunk or have harmed myself. It was horrendous.

I left with DS after I was prescribed ADs, and now we live in a house that is big enough, in a tiny village with woods to the front and pasture behind. Quiet, space, birdsong. Endless places to walk, run, cycle safely. No crowds, no stress. Clean air. I wake up relaxed. No ADs.

I cook from scratch, get on with my neighbours, my commute is 10 minutes, ds goes to a lovely small school. No drugs, no knives. He doesn't bother with social media. DS is happy, well balanced, cheerful despite being 16.

In the last five years I have coped with redundancy and diagnosis & treatment for cancer without needing help.

Humans aren't designed to live crammed in to horrid little chicken coops in noisy cities, and work all hours.

@Meadowfinch I think you're right, but short of going back to pre-Industrial Revolution days (and the corresponding fraction of the present day world population), it's not going to happen.

Article in the Times - seems pertinent to this thread