radiofree.asia

Category: Mental Health

  • In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves

    It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. 

    But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. 

    “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

    This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

    This episode originally aired in January 2025.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Social Media as Evidence: Documenting Human Rights Abuses in Post-Assad Syria

    By Julie T, Julie DL, Isabelle, Celia, and Dewi Available in Arabic here. (Trigger Warning/Content Warning: graphic descriptions of violent acts, humiliation and mention of death) How can social media help to identify human rights abuses in Syria? Following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Syria has faced continued turmoil, with widespread […]

  • Advocates Warn Funding and Staffing Cuts Imperil Mental Health Crisis Hotlines

    Overcome by worries, Lynette Isbell dialed a mental health hotline in April 2022. She wanted to talk to someone about her midlife troubles: divorce, an empty nest, and the demands of caring for aging parents with dementia. “I did not want to keep burdening my family and friends with my problems,” Isbell said. But she didn’t find the sympathetic ear she was hoping for on the other end.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Labour’s hostile environment policies are destroying asylum seekers’ mental health

    A new report has issued a damning assessment of the effect the UK Labour Party government’s hostile environment policies is having on refugees and asylum seekers’ mental health.

    In its latest edition, the Mental Health Foundation has spelled out in no uncertain terms how the UK’s gruelling system is destroying the mental health of people.

    Crucially, off the back of the new report, the non-profit is calling for the government to end its senseless rule denying asylum seekers the right to work. This is because the nonsense policy is a central factor driving their deteriorating wellbeing.

    Report reveals dire mental health for asylum seekers in the UK

    The Mental Health Foundation supports asylum seekers and refugees with their mental health through various programmes across the UK.

    In February 2024, the non-profit previously issued a scathing report. This was on the state of asylum seekers’ and refugees mental health in the UK. Notably, it underscored how:

    The social and economic conditions in which they live post-migration can have an equally powerful influence on their mental health. Experiences of poverty, financial insecurity, unemployment, lack of adequate housing, social isolation, loneliness, prejudice, stigma, and discrimination all carry a higher risk of poor mental health [10],​ and asylum seekers and refugees are at higher risk of experiencing all these inequalities. Asylum seekers will also often be dealing with stress about the status of their claim and challenges in accessing healthcare.

    Moreover, it called for:

    a trauma-informed and person-centred approach to asylum claim processes, housing, education, health and care provision experienced by asylum seekers and refugees.

    Now, the foundation has followed this up – and found the situation for refugees and asylum seekers is no less dire. Crucially, its latest report now covers the new UK Labour government’s actions since the 2024 General Election.

    Give asylum seekers the right to work

    In particular, the report paints a damning picture of the detrimental impacts on asylum seekers of not allowing them to work. This includes a loss of self-esteem, loneliness, and an increased risk of depression. This results in a greater likelihood of people having to use already oversubscribed NHS mental health services in the future.

    So, the foundation is urging the Labour Party government to redress this. Specifically, it is demanding the right to work for asylum seekers waiting longer than six months for the government to process their claim.

    Currently, the government only grants asylum seekers the right to work after 12 months in specific circumstances. And, even then, it limits this to jobs on the Immigration Salary List. In reality, this rarely gives them the ability to work.

    Given the appalling state of people’s mental health, the foundation highlights this as an unconscionable situation to maintain. Moreover, it put the context of this in terms the fiscally conservative Labour government would understand. Notably, it laid out how this would be a no-brainer for the chancellor’s budget savings agenda.

    Changing these rules to allow working after six months, with no restriction on the type of jobs, would bring £4.4bn in government savings. It would generate this by reducing the number of asylum seekers who rely on the state. In addition, this would deliver an estimated £1bn in growth to GDP, and raise £880m in new tax revenue.

    Destroying physical and mental health

    Ishmail Yambasu is a refugee who was a social worker in Sierra Leone before he had to flee the country. He told the Mental Health Foundation about his experiences of the UK’s system. In particular, the UK Home Office denied him permission to work while he was an asylum seeker. Ishmail said:

    I came here with over 10 years’ experience as a social worker. When I arrived, I wanted to work and to contribute, I wanted to help and give back. But instead, I was forced to rely on just £49.18 a week. My hands were tied because I wasn’t allowed to work.

    I struggled for food when I wasn’t working, I had to rely on charities and food banks. I wasn’t able to eat healthily – the doctors told me I wasn’t eating well enough, and my anxiety was getting worse.

    The right to work is not just the right to work. It’s the right to freedom for asylum seekers. It builds community – a social network – and allows asylum seekers to give back to society, so we can contribute to taxes and give back to the country. Everyone in my community wants to contribute.

    While I was an asylum seeker, my dream was to give back to the community as a social worker. Now I’ve been given refugee status, I’m doing my masters in Social Work and Welfare at Strathclyde University, and hope to get involved in the UK social work system in the future.

    A no-brainer to remove the ‘harmful and expensive’ restriction

    Alongside the right to work, the charity is also calling for asylum seekers who are not in work to be given free access to bus travel.

    This is essential to allow them to build and maintain better connections with their communities.  On top of this, it will increase the chance they will be able to find employment. Asylum seekers and refugees also must be supported with improved English language lessons. Doing so will facilitate them to better integrate into society, achieve work, and help them support their wellbeing.

    Chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation Mark Rowland said:

    There is a clear-cut moral, economic, and public health case for giving asylum seekers the right to work after six months on the waiting list. As our latest report into the mental health of asylum seekers and refugees lays out, such a move would bring billions of pounds of economic benefits to the UK, reduce the strain on asylum seekers’ mental health, and build connections between asylum seekers and their new communities. Many of the arguments given in opposition to this change are based on myths and misunderstandings, most notably a non-existent ‘pull-factor’, while the benefits seem to be under appreciated.

    Giving asylum seekers the right to work is a no-brainer. Everyone – from asylum seekers, to businesses, to the government, to the NHS, to our communities – benefits when asylum seekers are given the ability to support themselves. The current system, which is both harmful and expensive, cannot continue as it is.

    Give asylum seekers ‘roots’ in their communities and they will flourish

    Refugees & Asylum Seeker Programme development officer at the Mental Health Foundation Mahdi Saki experienced the system himself after fleeing Iran. He said:

    As someone who waited four years for my asylum claim to be processed without permission to work, I now work alongside incredible asylum seekers and refugees who volunteer their time and effort in civic forums to make Scotland a better place.

    Every day I see the value asylum seekers want to add to our country, and the benefits that their work brings us all. It gives asylum seekers roots in the community and positively impacts their mental health. I’m also keenly aware of how damaging it can be for asylum seekers’ mental health when they’re denied the opportunity to contribute, and how their difficult financial situations can impact them. Giving asylum seekers the right to work after six months would be revolutionary.

    The latest edition of The mental health of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK also contains further recommendations. It set out a roadmap of reforms to the system for the betterment of everyone, including changes to avoid re-traumatisation of people, improving accommodation arrangements, and creating a more inclusive environment.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Wes Streeting has been referencing someone who thinks Long Covid is ‘all in people’s heads’

    On 16 March, as Wes Streeting was being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg, the neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan was mentioned with her view that too many people are over-diagnosed in terms of mental health and learning disabilities. Streeting generally agreed, saying “too many people were being written off”. The dropping of O’Sullivan’s name was no accident, as her book on the subject of ‘overdiagnosis’ was published two days later. In The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, health and why medicine has gone too far, O’Sullivan argues that a lot of the cases she encounters or has examined were psychosomatic – including long Covid.

    She suggests that we should be aware and wary of ‘diagnosis creep’: the gradual expansion of diagnostic criteria.

    Suzanne O’Sullivan: selling the overdiagnosis myth to lay the groundwork for benefit cuts

    For this book, long Covid is just one of the conditions O’Sullivan decided to examine. Other topics include Autism, ADHD, cancer, Huntington’s Disease, depression, mental health, and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS).

    As a neurologist, it’s clear she’s rummaging into other specialities, something ‘Darcie’ – a patient – pointed out to her, saying:

    You’re not an EDS doctor and you’re not a PoTS doctor, so you have no right to look into these.

    But O’Sullivan did feel she had the right to examine these topics for the book.

    This ‘psychosomatic’ mantra and talk of ‘overdiagnosis’ is a divisive issue. For certain politicians and sections of the media it can also be highly seductive.

    This was a concern expressed by readers. One said:

    It was clear this (book) isn’t about following the evidence, its ideological.

    For the government, it could give justification for its harsh cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP). These are cuts directed at learning disabled people and those living with mental health issues.

    It could also have an impact on NHS services for these groups with Baroness Claire Fox calling for a review of the ‘problems’ of overdiagnosis. She said this review should look at the impact on NHS resources of overdiagnosis of those with mental health problems, ADHD, and those on the Autistic spectrum.

    A controversial medical circle of ‘overdiagnosis’ clinicians – notably over long Covid

    In medical circles, O’Sullivan is not alone in making such ‘overdiagnosis’ claims, but she’s not in the majority with her belief that so many of the conditions she covered in her book are potentially because of overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, or over-screening.

    But being somewhat of an ‘outsider’ doesn’t deter her, because along with others in her bubble of ‘free-speech, non-believers’, they promote and quote each other.

    So, in the chapter ‘The Age of Diagnosis’ on ADHD, Depression, and Neurodiversity O’Sullivan used the ‘trauma not illness’ arguments made by psychologist Lucy Johnstone.

    Likewise, in the chapter I am looking at here on long Covid, she used the comments of the highly controversial doctor Paul Garner, who has claimed he recovered from Covid through graded exercise activity.

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Covid-19 can lead to serious long-term effects, known as post Covid-19 condition (PCC). This is referred to by the patient-preferred term, long Covid.

    Long Covid is characterised by a range of symptoms which usually start within three months of the initial Covid-19 infection. It can affect a person’s ability to do day-to-day activities and hinder their ability to participate in society.

    With so many people affected by long Covid, there has been a controversial debate from some commentators like O’Sullivan, who in The Age of Diagnosis said:

    Long Covid behaves just as psychosomatic illnesses do.

    This claim has been rejected by those with long Covid. Exasperated, one person said:

    Has the author not read any of the thousands of research papers that identify microclots, lung damage, immune system malfunction? The psychosomatic take is beyond offensive.

    Long Covid: O’Sullivan’s dangerous misdiagnosis beliefs

    O’Sullivan is not new to being controversial. A previous book from 2015 entitled: It’s all in Your Head: stories from the frontline of psychosomatic illness caused much ire amongst those living with ME/CFS, another condition she believes is psychosomatic.

    With ME/CFS having many of the features of long Covid, it’s hardly a surprise she’s also repeating the message here for most patients.

    Why not all patients? That’s because O’Sullivan concedes some people do have persistent symptoms. She separates all long Covid patients into four groups.

    The first group are those who were hospitalised with Covid. She thinks this group could indeed have persistent symptoms following hospital treatment.

    The second group are those who have these symptoms after being infected with Covid. Some of these patients she believes could have some sort of post-viral infection.

    The third group, rather than long Covid, she believes their symptoms may be a misdiagnosis, not helped by the lack of face-to-face GP appointments.

    But it’s the fourth group, where she thinks the majority of long Covid patients are with long Covid having a psychosomatic cause.

    O’Sullivan’s reasons for this include it being a patient who first discovered the link between her symptoms and Covid. Also, she points to the number of symptoms now attributed to long Covid.

    But her main two arguments involve the demographic and mental health.

    O’Sullivan’s book is ideological opinion, not evidenced fact

    In terms of the demographic O’Sullivan suggests those with long Covid are different than those who were ventilated and/or died from Covid, who were more likely to be older, and men.

    In response, there are studies showing younger adults and adolescents suffer more neurological long Covid symptoms that adults over 65. So, the demographic is different, because long Covid is different, hitting a younger demographic.

    Her second argument is that studies showing factors like anxiety, depression, and even loneliness may play a role, and as such, O’Sullivan thinks this may make long Covid psychosomatic.

    But the question is: does living with a chronic condition such as long Covid cause the secondary problems with mental health or vice versa?

    Professor Carolyn Chew-Graham, who was the first in the UK to publish on long Covid said:

    I don’t think the authors opinions follow from the research. NICE is very clear that anxiety and depression are more likely to be consequences of long Covid than causes.

    And psychiatrist Dr Linda Gask says:

    When you have pre-existing anxiety or depression you always feel worse in your mood when you are physically unwell, especially with a viral illness. Post-viral depression is common. People who have long Covid may be more likely to be lonely, that doesn’t mean loneliness is the cause of it.

    With suggestions of overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, and even a tendency to over-screen for conditions, this book not only undermines those who are suffering from long-term chronic illnesses, but could be used as justification to cut funding and benefits. It should be taken as how it reads, ideological rather than anything else.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ruth Hunt

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Churn

    Adam Aurand spent nearly a decade of his life stuck in a loop: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, jails, prison, and the streets in and around Seattle. 

    During that time, he picked up diagnoses of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. He also used opioids and methamphetamine.

    Aurand’s life is an example of what happens to many people who experience psychosis in the US: a perpetual shuffle from one place to the next for visits lasting hours or days or weeks, none of them leading to longer-lasting support.

    This week on Reveal, reporters who made the podcast Lost Patients, by KUOW and the Seattle Times, try to answer a question: Why do America’s systems for treating serious mental illness break down in this way? 

    The answer took them from the present-day streets of Seattle to decades into America’s past.

    You can find Lost Patients wherever you get your podcasts:

    NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510377/lost-patients

    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-patients/id1733735613 

    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1avleoc5U4DA7U37GFPzIH 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2024. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • DWP PIP cuts will lead to a rise in hate crime – as one man’s story shows

    The Labour Party’s cuts to DWP Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and health-related benefits will lead to a rise in hate crimes – and Jason Alcock’s story proves this.

    When Jason Alcock shared his story of grief, living as a disabled person with several complex conditions, and the tragic loss of his beloved wife, he never imagined it would make him a target for online hate and abuse.

    But after his story was published in major newspapers, cruel and abusive trolls from the dark corners of the internet sent him vile messages, which then turned into a serious case of harassment on his front doorstep.

    This led to him fearing for his safety, and even his life.

    Jason Alcock: bereavement and health battles all at once

    In 2018 Jason’s beloved wife Paola sadly passed away from a lengthy ordeal with cancer. This turned Jason’s life upside down overnight, as he lost the love of his life, who he described as his “anchor”.

    Together for 20 years, Paola’s traumatic death left Jason heartbroken, he had lost his soul mate, and his “world”. Then just seven days after her passing, Jason was diagnosed with bowel cancer and had to have:

    40% of my upper intestines removed, and the medication they gave me after the surgery caused me to start hallucinating and seeing myself as my wife and going through her death.

    At this point, Jason was suffering from severe PTSD, associated with his wife’s death, and felt like giving up:

    I wanted to end it all, I had a plan, I was going to end it all because there was nothing to keep me in the world.

    Family and friends encouraged Jason to go out the house, to help him with his severe bereavement. But every time he tried to step out of the house, his hands would:

    just go to the place where I pushed the powerless wheelchair around for almost 20 years, and everything triggered me.

    The coping strategies that Jason had developed over the years as an Autistic person to:

    cope with everything from masking to other strategies was completely torn away from me when she passed away.

    Doctors were therefore lost on how best to support Jason during this truly challenging period in his life.

    DWP PIP benefit cuts: threatening financial support vital to Jason’s independence

    However, a mental health specialist who was treating Jason at the time, discovered that technology could help and support Jason:

    they started using technology, using virtual reality, using computer games and connecting to my special interest.

    From this moment, Jason finally started to feel like his life had begun to “turn around”, despite the fact that he was and still is reeling from the loss of his beloved Paola.

    Due to the fact that Jason has several complex conditions, including Autism, ADHD and bipolar type two, he receives several benefits to provide him with financial assistance including Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and PIP.

    These benefits enable Jason to have a level of independence and help him to be able to pay his bills.
    His mobility scooter, which Jason relies upon due to his sensory and physical needs, gives him a:

    safe space, where I can go to the local Tesco, or I can go to the local park.

    However, Jason worries about what the recent cuts to disability benefits may mean for him and believes that he will have to “cut back on things”.

    A wave of vile abuse after sharing his story

    During the cost of living crisis, Jason was hit hard and was forced to wash himself with a “wet cloth” and had to sell some of his possessions, with some of them being treasured items that had belonged to Paola.

    Therefore, Jason felt inclined to tell his story to the press, including PA media, which was then syndicated to the BBC and other publications.

    But he could never have anticipated what came next, including the vile comments from trolls.

    Discussing the media attention and the hatred that came after it, Jason told the Canary that at the time he was:

    naïve, and as an Autistic person I don’t understand the concept of deception.

    Within the articles he chose to use a picture of himself with his “computer and VR headset” to display his special interests and coping strategies as a disabled person. The articles discussed his struggles during the cost of living crisis.

    After being in the public eye and receiving thousands of comments which dubbed him as “lazy” and a “scrounger”, he said that “some of the trolls started to come onto my stream”, which took place on Twitch and YouTube.

    From there, Jason’s once therapeutic environment became a living hell, as he was consistently berated and bombarded with atrocious abuse.

    From online threats to real-world hate crimes

    At one moment, when he was streaming and playing a videogame, Jason froze. A troll had told him that they knew “where I lived”. He told the Canary how:

    At this point, I froze, I couldn’t run away.

    The troll followed this by saying that they would:

    break the solar panel in the backyard, and climb in my back window, they even said things like, we’re gonna take your wife’s ashes and put them in a pot noodle and make you eat them.

    They even cruelly alleged that Jason had “killed” his wife.

    He then contacted the police, as he was severely worried about his personal safety, but the police were unable to help as the trolls had used “VPNS”. Jason explained that:

    If you ban someone on Twitch or you ban someone on YouTube, they can get a new name in seconds and be back in and it’s all anonymous.

    From here, things only began to get much worse for Jason, as a troll emerged from the dark corners of the internet in February 2024 and turned up at “my front door”.

    Jason said the troll had:

    pushed a pack of skittles through my letter box.

    But as he was wearing a face mask, and he was not able to be identified by the police:

    DWP PIP cuts hate crime

    The troll also mentioned Paola, Jason’s late wife, and said that Paola “would have loved them”, (meaning the skittles).

    Taunted and abused, Jason also received a fraudulent and false letter from “the council” that the trolls were responsible for making. They then posted it through his door, and claimed that he shouldn’t be on benefits, and said:

    we’re going to investigate you, your benefits will be frozen.

    The abuse didn’t stop there however, as the thuggish criminals said that they would:

    report me to child safety, saying that I was a paedophile and all these things.

    Fearing for his safety thanks to negative media narratives

    After each instance of receiving this vile abuse, Jason reported them to the police and the ongoing cybercrimes investigation.

    Jason explained that unfortunately:

    they found that these people had completely anonymised their data and everything so they couldn’t find them.

    To this day, Jason doesn’t know how they:

    got my address because we looked, and we couldn’t find my address anywhere.

    For a while after the hate crimes committed against him, Jason feared for his safety and life so much that he began to put a heatproof mat under his letter box in case the trolls tried to do something much worse to him.

    Asked about whether he believes hate crimes against disabled people will rise after Rachel Reeve’s cuts to benefits like DWP PIP, he said he worries that other disabled and Autistic people will be attacked and abused because of the media’s attention on PIP claimants.

    The media often portrays disabled people in a particularly negative light. Jason feels that this then leads people who are also struggling with the cost of living problem to:

    latch onto an ‘enemy’, to latch onto someone to attack.

    Speaking on behalf of the disabled community he believes that they have been “scapegoated for everything” by the government and certain media networks which fuel an ableist hatred of disabled individuals.

    He also believes that instead of targeting “the most vulnerable people in society” we should be:

    taxing the rich and stopping all the tax loopholes.

    The Labour Party: an ‘evil mastermind’ punching down on disabled people via DWP PIP cuts

    In the 2024 election, Jason had voted for the Labour Party on the premise that:

    there would be a change.

    But instead, he believes that:

    we got an evil mastermind, the way they want to bring in an assisted dying bill, and cutting benefits, it’s like where are you going with this? Yeah, it just feels a bit weird.

    At the current moment, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that a whopping 70,000 disability hate crimes occur every year, with the work concluding that:

    people with learning disabilities and/or autism are four times more likely to be a victim.

    The abuse of disabled individuals, both online and offline, must be stopped to prevent more victims like Jason from enduring such horrific acts.

    Moreover, the government must take a firmer stance to ensure trolls are not given free rein to target vulnerable people and continuously get away with it.

    The government itself should also be wary that its particularly negative attitude towards DWP PIP claimants at the current moment could lead to a rise in cybercrimes and the harassment of vulnerable disabled people.

    Featured image and additional images supplied

    By Megan Miley

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Shocking new research shows DWP cuts could make people’s addictions even worse

    A new study conducted in Norway has brought to light alarming findings regarding individuals receiving disability benefits and their significantly heightened risk of developing gambling disorders. Of course, the study should have implications for the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) too – just as it’s about to make severe cuts to chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits. However, it’s unlikely it and the Labour Party government will take heed.

    Gambling: plaguing chronically ill and disabled people – and now DWP cuts, too?

    This extensive research, which spanned 11 years and involved national registry data from over 65,000 individuals, concluded that those reliant on disability support are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with gambling disorders compared to the general population.

    The findings have been published in the Journal of Gambling Studies.

    This study’s revelations raise pressing questions regarding the support systems in place not just in Norway but also in the UK, where many depend on DWP benefits such as Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

    Among the shocking statistics, it was noted that nearly one in five individuals diagnosed with a gambling disorder had previously received disability benefits. The disparity was even more pronounced for women, who were nearly four times more likely to develop gambling disorders compared to their non-benefit-receiving counterparts.

    The researchers speculated on several potential reasons for these troubling findings.

    The reasons

    While the study did not establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship, it suggested that the very conditions leading to the award of disability benefits—such as mental health issues and chronic pain—may simultaneously heighten the risk of developing gambling behaviours. With DWP cuts coming in the UK, these problems are only going to worsen.

    Another factor that researchers pointed out is the poverty and isolation often experienced by those on DWP-style benefits in Norway – therefore, here too.

    With limited financial means, some individuals may resort to gambling as either a form of escapism or a misguided attempt to improve their financial situation. The increased accessibility of online gambling platforms only exacerbates this issue, particularly for those with restricted mobility or social isolation.

    The data was drawn from the Norwegian Patient Registry alongside the country’s social welfare database, enabling insights into the potential prospective relationship between receiving DWP disability benefits and developing gambling disorders in the UK.

    DWP cuts: making people’s circumstances even worse

    Such population-level insights provide a compelling case for examining these issues in other nations, particularly in the UK, where gambling has become a rapidly growing concern alongside an increasingly precarious social safety net. There have been studies which have produced similar results in the UK – but they did not focus specifically on chronically ill and disabled people.

    As the DWP continues its push for welfare cuts under the guise of reform, these findings raise crucial concerns about the wellbeing of chronically ill and disabled people.

    A failure to acknowledge the unique vulnerabilities faced by DWP benefit claimants could result in inadequate protective measures. Experts advocate for the necessity of considering disability benefit recipients as a high-risk group for gambling-related harm and suggest implementing targeted screening and intervention programmes tailored for this demographic.

    This Norwegian study’s implications should not be ignored. The gambling landscape has become more complex, and for those receiving DWP disability benefits, it may present an insidious threat amidst the challenges they already face.

    The government should be taking a long, hard look at the intertwined issues of disability, mental health, and gambling disorders to ensure that adequate support systems are in place for the most vulnerable members of society.

    Instead, the DWP are just going to cut their already limited support.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The ‘Welfare Not Warfare’ demo was amazing – but it had its problems, too

    If you somehow missed it, on Wednesday 26 March, the Canary stood in solidarity with chronically ill and disabled activists in person and online mobilising against the Labour Party government’s dangerous and brutal cuts to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability and health-related benefit entitlements.

    Four of us joined activists and protesters in London for the major demonstration at Downing Street and outside Parliament.

    We were there as journalists to document, bear witness, and amplify our chronically ill and disabled communities’ voices. Though, as we understand it, the crowd on the ground didn’t necessarily need much of our help on that last one – with our collective calls for “Welfare Not Warfare” reportedly carrying all the way inside Parliament. The chants for our rights were undoubtedly heard by this latest crony cabinet iteration as the chancellor spouted her interminably bullshit budget.

    However, that obviously doesn’t mean that the sleazy corporate sell-out lot of them are actually going to listen. And that’s why we were also there too. We can’t in good conscience stand by as the Labour Party DWP cuts kill more chronically ill and disabled people, particularly targeting neurodivergent folks, and people living with mental health conditions. So we were there for a lot more: to take action alongside everyone as well.

    DWP Welfare Not Warfare protest: the online community came out in force

    On a personal level, I felt buoyed, inspired, and proud even more to turn up due to a sentiment the Canary put out ahead of the protests. This was that we’re a team of activists first, journalists second, and that:

    everything we do is in support of, and solidarity with, those that the system marginalises.

    I live with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and for many years, I have agonised over not being able to regularly take action alongside the marginalised people and communities I am part of or care deeply for. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wanted to be at demos, and to feel part of the community – because the system punching down on so many of us divides, silos, and isolates us away from each other, when it’s mutual aid and solidarity we need most of all. When we come together to resist as part of intersectional movements, this is an antidote to that. However, it’s hard to connect and contribute when you’re supine in bed with any number of debilitating symptoms.

    As many of us at the Canary are disabled and live with chronic illnesses, we all know how vital it is that these DWP-centred demonstrations include chronically ill housebound and bed-bound folks online. So that was our main goal. Through two separate livestreams, regular video posts on Instagram, and running commentary of both the protests and the chancellor’s speech on X, four of us on the ground and two supporting from home, and the rest of the team covering us too, did exactly that.

    We feel strongly that this is something that all social justice movements should do, because historically, chronically ill people have been excluded from many big demonstrations. This time would have been no exception had the Canary not stepped up to ensure there was online access.

    But more importantly, it was YOU folks at home that got the hashtag trending to number six on X and persistently high throughout the day above all the bluster of the budget itself.

    Ultimately, we simply facilitated, and you did the important bit. It’s the ceaseless efforts of the chronically ill and disabled communities online boldly speaking up together with a united voice that has always made the impact. In short, it was every single person at home who made that happen. Your voices deserve to be heard – and you damn well made sure they were on Wednesday. Thank you for being there and amplifying each-other.

    Kicking off the fight back: a fierce and fantastic start

    So let’s start with some highlights of the on the ground protest – and there are many to choose from.

    For one, there was the turnout. This was among the biggest demonstrations for chronically ill and disabled people’s rights that activists have mobilised in nearly a decade. Of course, it needed to be to respond to the scale of the Labour Party’s assault on the DWP benefit entitlements vital to our daily lives. Moreover, the show of solidarity from grassroots groups of a multitude of social justice movements was unmissable. Anti-war activists, pro-Palestine groups, housing justice, women’s, sex workers’, and LGBTQIA+ rights, all came together to stand in solidarity against the cuts.

    Wheelchair users led the march with ferocious chants on the megaphone from longtime fearless and brilliant DPAC activist Jamie McCormack, to loud echoes trailing back along the crowd filling the road a long way behind to Whitehall. This had an almost electric energy. Activists shouted out loud above the Westminster clamour. “Whose streets? Our streets! Whose rights? Our rights!” rang out to drum beats and marchers abuzz with unified strength and ablaze with fury at Labour’s plans. It was something to behold, something bigger to be part of.

    People also said “balls to the Spring Statement” with more than their words. Protesters threw plastic balls quite literally at Downing Street, because the prime minister thinks that having the “balls” to cut DWP benefits is something to boast about, but we sure as hell don’t. Making a political football out of chronically ill and disabled people’s lives is nothing to be proud of. So, those outside his (likely to-be short-lived) residence made sure to show him that in no uncertain action.

    Where’s the direct action?

    However, this also all highlighted a significant shortfall as well. Despite the size of the protest and the palpable anger feeding into a fierce, fiery, and vociferous collective voice, those raw calls for our rights didn’t translate into anything like the direct action needed.

    There seems to be some aversion to this – and certainly there wasn’t any broadscale planning or agreement on a direct action ahead of the protest. Apart from a handful of seasoned activists at the front of the march – including the Canary’s own indomitable Nicola Jeffery who began to block the road at one point, there seemed little appetite or agitation towards it.

    In 2016, DPAC activists took Westminster Bridge for several hours to say unequivocally “no more deaths from benefit cuts”. Of course the Canary’s ever-brave and unwavering Steve Topple and Nicola Jeffery were there as activists then too – because they’ve always stood right alongside the communities the system is sidelining before anything else.

    Then, the Tories’ callous DWP welfare ‘reforms’ were set to kill chronically ill and disabled people. Now, Labour’s callous welfare ‘reforms’ are about to kill more chronically ill and disabled people. So, there’s a question to be deliberated over: why then, but not today? The stakes are just as high, what has changed?

    To start with, the fact it’s no longer the Tories we’re fighting – but the Labour Party – appears to be playing a part in this. There seems to be this sense that lobbying Labour MPs is the way to go to turn this all around. It rests on this notion that the Labour Party have promised to include disabled people in DWP-related decision-making, so we should work with them, not against them.

    However, at best, this is naive given that, quite frankly, the government has shown itself serially incapable of doing that. This Green Paper is a case and point – at no stage in its formulation has the Labour-led DWP sought the input of chronically ill and disabled communities. Now it isn’t planning to consult on many of the most dangerous and devastating changes either. What makes anyone think they’re going to actually respond to our fears going forward?

    Labour listening? Not bloody likely

    In all likelihood, anything they do row back on will be fig leaf tinkers at the edges, just so they can say they’ve listened. Then, they’ll just redirect the attack and shift the impact on chronically ill and disabled people in a different way. See: scrapping the DWP PIP freeze in some disingenuous parade of ‘listening’ to chronically ill and disabled people’s concerns. See also: that, followed by Kendall freezing the LCWRA component of Universal Credit right after because Labour fucked up its figures.

    At worst then, it’s getting into bed with the very party now marginalising us. The Canary has consistently called out the Labour right faction now leading the party. Long before they came to power, it was clear that they wouldn’t be working for our communities when they eventually did.

    And let’s be real: when push comes to shove, will the Labour Together-funded new crop of Starmerite neoliberals really rail against the whip? They didn’t for the two child cap on DWP benefits. They didn’t for the winter fuel payment. How many will actually have the integrity to stand up to their government on this?

    So, instead of begging Labour MPs to oppose their own party in government, we need to galvanise change the way mass movements have historically won civil rights: uncompromising civil disobedience through direct action.

    Lack of inclusivity and accessibility

    Aside from the lack of direct action, there were other problems in the organisation of the protest itself.

    As the Canary underscored already, if we hadn’t raised it, and offered to fill in, there also would have been no real attention to accessibility and inclusivity of people who couldn’t be there. However, this issue extended to the protest itself as well.

    Overall, the speeches were too long. Many chronically ill people wouldn’t be able to listen for that length of time. I say that from experience – I personally couldn’t maintain the Facebook livestream for the second batch of speeches at Old Palace Yard, no matter how much I wanted to for people online. This second round of speeches at Old Palace Yard was also inaccessible for deaf protesters – as given the crowds, it was impossible to view the BSL interpreter at a distance.

    At Downing Street, there was nowhere to sit and listen to the speeches except for on monuments. That’s a basic accessibility feature for chronically ill people who can’t be on their feet for long periods.

    The same was true of the march. As the Canary highlighted at a recent Million Women Rising protest – who incidentally, were there in solidarity too – organisers arranged for a bus for those who couldn’t participate in the march, to get from one location to the next safely.

    Met making protesters less safe – the usual

    And speaking of safety, nor were there any safe, less overstimulating spaces for overwhelmed protesters. In that way, it wasn’t hugely accessible for chronically ill, neurodivergent people, or those with mental health conditions either.

    The road severing the speakers from the protesters chanting outside Downing Street was impractical and at times, potentially unsafe too. It also divided the protest – and the split gave the police an opportunity to fill the space – deploying horses at one point along the road.

    Of course, the cops compounded all this. They manhandled one of our journalists and tried to stop us and many other protesters filming. The way they siphoned off protesters at the end of the march into Old Palace Yard and at other points along the march was aggressive and unsafe as well. And it goes without saying that bringing police horses to a disabled-led peaceful protest was a needless display of force. But then, the heavy-handed Met swinging its dicks around is hardly anything new.

    Who gets to speak?

    The Canary also already pointed out how problematic it was to platform the Public and Commercial Servants (PCS) union. On Wednesday, organisers of the demo again gave PCS national president Martin Cavanagh the stage.

    However, we wrote previously how Cavanagh’s words on working class solidarity rung hollow and how his speech:

    should be seen for what it is: a shallow effort to rehabilitate a department rife in ableism, classism, and rampant negligence.

    In short, Cavanagh and his union are the very epitome of tokenised class solidarity.

    The same, class-reductionist drivel applied on Wednesday.

    At the end of the day, Cavanagh and his union represent the very DWP staff who have been vilifying claimants with the department’s cruel and punitive policies. He can make superficial platitudes of solidarity at big demos. However, the PCS union has never gone on strike against these policies or successive government welfare reforms. And, it has a history of throwing disabled benefit claimants under the bus to boot.

    More to the point, there were many groups on the ground who could have had the platform instead. There were plenty of disabled and intersecting communities that didn’t get to speak. Rather than listening to the PCS union president sanitise DWP staff’s complicity, we would have liked to hear from them.

    When these cuts compound so many social injustices for disabled people, it’s important to give as many groups as possible living those realities a platform at protests like these. Some notable issues in the line-up for instance was lack of representation for learning disabled people (with only one speaker from the Inclusion London offshoot Free Our People), and various chronically ill groups that these cuts will massively impact.

    Moreover, there was barely any representation for Black and brown people in the speeches. In fact, the whole protest felt very white-led.

    Ahead of the protests, the Canary also obtained statements from former independent MP Chris Williamson, and former Green Party councillor, health spokesperson, and academic Larry Sanders (brother to US senator Bernie Sanders). Unfortunately, these were unable to be included in the line-up due to various constraints. However, you can read those at the end of the article.

    This is only the start, it has to be up from here until we win

    Broadly, the demonstration on Wednesday was a bold and powerful start to the fight back against Labour’s cruel benefit cuts. What it did well was to make it abundantly clear to the government that chronically ill and disabled people are not going to take it, and will not back down until it scraps its callous plans. Of course, this is only the beginning – because there’ll undoubtedly be more protests where this came from.

    However, there’s work to do moving forward to make sure that these demonstrations are genuinely inclusive.

    We can’t win this without our chronically ill and disabled housebound/bed-bound siblings, Black and brown people, and others.

    And nor should we do this without them.

    Because if we’re committed to the belief that it’s “nothing about us, without us” – and are calling out the government for violating that very pledge – then that means we must live up to that too in everything we do.

    And by now, it must be blatantly obvious we’re not going to win by working with the very people punching down on our communities. It’s time to take action, before we lose any more chronically ill and disabled people to the violent state and system that has taken too many lives already.

    Statements

    Statement from Chris Williamson:

    This Labour govt’s proving itself to be just as cruel and heartless as the previous Tory administration, if not more so.

    Liz Kendall’s announcement last week is just the latest example of the government’s inhumanity. There is literally no economic, let alone moral, justification to inflict this conscious cruelty on some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

    And no matter how many times the prime minister tries to hoodwink the public into believing that there is a moral justification, the facts speak for themselves.

    Britain is an incredibly wealthy nation. We’re the sixth biggest economy in the world. And the govt owns the Bank of England, which issues the nation’s currency. So, the govt has all the economic levers at its disposal to create a good society.

    They should be introducing measures to eradicate poverty and provide world class public services. But they’re exacerbating poverty and extending the privatisation of public services instead.

    The Labour MPs who say they’re opposed to these cuts to disability benefits should threaten to resign the Labour whip unless the prime minister changes course. They’ve got leverage over the govt if they choose to use it. So, if Starmer still refuses to budge, they should attempt to bring down his govt and force a general election.

    There is no other way.

    The soul of our nation is at stake.

    Chris Williamson

    Statement from Larry Sanders:

    I am very happy to make a statement about the government’s attack on people with disabilities and chronic illness. Much of my working life has been in direct help and advocacy to such people.

    I have been carer to badly disabled and dying relatives. At my age I spend much of my time with friends with such needs and I have moved into that category myself.

    No amount of money can undo the pain and sadness of our human frailty. But the help and support of others makes life bearable and often a delight. The absence of care means terror and humiliation. Disability benefits, the NHS, Social Care and support in employment and voluntary activity are the public ways in which our society organises itself to provide that support.

    In 1948 the people of this country promised each other that they would provide the health care of every person on the basis of their need, not their wealth. The NHS is always under attack but still survives. These 4 legs of public support are not a burden or something that can be driven by the whims and ideologies of holders of power. They are central to the maintenance of a decent society.

    We are going through a period of enormous danger to democracy and well being all over the world. The Trump menace has grown over 40 years of transfer of wealth from the bulk of the people to the richest.

    The direction has been similar in the UK. Mrs. Thatcher was wrong. There is such a thing as society. But society means real connection between people. A government that ignores and debases large chunks of its people strains that society, increase fear, resentment and distrust. There are always consequences.

    The proposed cuts to PIP and the health element of Universal Credit will have devastating effects on those directly affected, their carers, families and communities. They will also have great and unpredictable consequences for our ability to retain democracy.

    The campaign you are waging all over the country to resist these wicked proposals are entries in a political struggle. They are also part of the mobilisation of all of us who believe in that we can defeat those whose unlimited greed is so destructive.

    Healthcare is a human right; so is social care; so are benefits. As my brother Bernie Sanders is fond of repeating:

    we fight for government of the people, by the people, for the people- not government of, by and for the billionaires.

    We are indeed met on a battlefield of that war.

    Larry Sanders

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Changes to Opioid Addiction Treatment in Federal Prisons Threaten Peoples’ Lives

    Treatment for those struggling with opioid addiction in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is about to get a lot worse, warn a former BOP case manager and a medical professional who recently left the agency. The BOP directed staff about a month ago to require all participants in medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs to switch from monthly injections (primarily of buprenorphine…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘The wheels came off’: pandemic causes ‘surge’ of over 50s in addiction treatment

    Content warning: discussions of addiction and suicide 

    The pandemic took the lives of many battling drug and alcohol addiction to new lows. However, for some, it was the trigger that finally forced them to confront their demons.

    The number of over 50s seeking treatment for alcohol and drug addiction in England has increased by 50% since 2020, NHS data reveals. In the previous five years, the increase was only 15%.

    Between 2008 and 2012, the rates of people seeking treatment for addiction rose in every age group. After that, rates only continued rising for over 45s – albeit slowly. However, from 2020, the number of over 50s entering treatment skyrocketed – which coincided with the start of the pandemic.
    As the graph demonstrates, the leap was most pronounced in the 60–64 age group which jumped nearly 64%. Numbers also increased among 18-24 and 40-49 year-olds, whilst the figures for 25-39 year-olds decreased. The total increase for people over 50 was 50%.

    ‘Far more over 50s’

    Andrew E. (who does not wish to be fully identified), used to spend every day in one room, drinking and using crack cocaine. Now, his life has changed beyond measure thanks to a treatment centre and a 12-step programme. 

    From London, Andrew is one of over 300,000 people in England who entered treatment for addictions in the year up to 31 March 2024. He is now 58 and has been clean and sober for almost a year. 

    Before treatment, he saw three people each day: his 81 year-old-stepdad who he lives with, “the guy” who served him in the off-licence at 6am, and his drug dealer. He would wake up in “alcoholic withdrawal”, drink half a bottle of vodka, then spend the day “smoking crack and drinking in one room”.

    A man looking out of a window. Picture: Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

    Like a growing number of over 50s, one of Andrew’s addictions was crack cocaine. Over the last five years, the number of people aged 50 and over entering treatment centres because of the drug have risen by 140%. Most notably, among the 60-64 age group, the increase was 207%. 

    ‘Please get help’

    Andrew had been drinking and using drugs since the age of 15. The pandemic meant that he found himself drinking and using earlier and earlier each day, until eventually “the wheels really came off”. He could no longer see a way out. He said:

    I’d lost that delusion that things would ever get better.

    This culminated in him attempting to take his own life. Thankfully, he wasn’t successful – but it wasn’t enough for him to get help. He said:

    Immediately I got out, I went to the off-licence and went to my drug dealer.

    Soon after, he unintentionally overdosed. Then, after another accident a few weeks later he found himself back in A&E. After waiting hours to be seen, he started going into alcohol withdrawal. Eventually, he had to get honest about how ill he was. 

    Luckily for Andrew, a kind doctor took him into a side room and stitched him up. He apologised for being a “nuisance”. She put her arm around him and said: 

    Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever say you’re a nuisance. But will you please get help?

    At that point, he reached out for help and was given “an amazing key worker” who “fought really hard” to get him a place in rehab. He said:

    I think those events were like the universe telling me, Andrew, you’re done with this now.

    Andrew stayed at Ark House in Scarborough. It’s a 12-step-based rehab which helps people with all types of addictions. 

    Now Andrew is living a life filled with purpose and meaning – which is a far cry from his life in active addiction.

    Image shows five different sobriety coins from a 12-step programme. Sobriety coins are given out to mark various sobriety milestones and used as a token of celebration. The ones pictured are for 24 hours, one year, three years, four years and five years. Picture: HG.

    ‘The brakes came off’

    Since 2019, the number of people in treatment for alcohol addiction has risen by 42.7%. The biggest increase was among 60–64 year-olds, which saw a 57% increase.

    Research suggests that higher levels of stress correlate with higher levels of alcohol consumption. The pandemic created extra stress and exacerbated both existing mental health issues and negative harmful mechanisms, from spending too much time scrolling social media to substance use:

    Every aspect of daily life was affected. Routines, jobs, education, social life, many people’s livelihood, and even their health. All this as well as the fear of the unknown, and it was the perfect environment for addictive behaviours to progress.

    Paul, 56, (who does not wish to be fully identified), has worked as a counsellor at Ark House for three years. He noticed that until the pandemic, there were many people that — although alcoholic — were still “functioning”. They had jobs, mortgages, wives, families, and “seemed to be doing alright”. Paul said:

    When COVID came, it kind of took the brakes off for them.

    The jobs and the family were the brakes, and all of a sudden that routine was taken off them. I think it was the routine that allowed them to function, and once that had gone out, I believe that that was the breakdown.

    Photo: Ark House
    Image shows Ark House Rehab in Scarborough, from the street. Picture: Ark House.

    Andrew Dettman, 70, is also a counsellor at Ark House. He got sober in 1995 through a 12-step programme in Hull. He said:

    The pandemic really did accelerate levels of anxiety and depression, which people who end up in a 12-step programme are well aware of.

    Research points towards the mental health and well-being of over 50s being far worse than other age groups during the pandemic. This is thought to be due to the increased social isolation, with many older people not having access to the internet or technology such as video calling.

    Often, people turn to substances to deal with difficult emotions — like anxiety, depression, or loneliness. Whilst this may help temporarily, it can very quickly become an addictive cycle.

    Robin Pollard, head of policy at WithYou — a drug, alcohol, and mental health support charity, said:

    … with an ageing population, we’ve also seen more older people in treatment for alcohol, fuelled by isolation during the Covid pandemic, and life changes such as bereavement, retirement and a lack of purpose.

    The pandemic made many people’s lives more complicated. Whilst for some, it may have slowed things down — for those in active addiction, the brakes completely came off. Luckily for Andrew E. and many others, places like Ark House were there to help, and he was given a second chance. In his own words:

    I’m leading the best life I’ve ever had.

    If you are concerned about your drinking or drug use, please visit wearewithyou.org.uk.

    Featured images via Unsplash, HG, Ark House

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A groundbreaking production company has just announced another groundbreaking arts project

    Maya Productions has announced a brand new show that was developed through a participatory creative project with residents at South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) Schemes living in severe mental distress and who are supported through the NHS Care Programme Approach.

    Dynamic Flights

    Directed by Maya Productions’ Artistic Director Suzanne Gorman, Dynamic Flights is an uplifting, funny, and heartwarming story about friendship and self-discovery that reminds us that no matter who we are, we all need kindness, understanding and access to nature.

    Maya Productions is a global majority led company that for 30 years has been making diverse theatre to create change. It brings together organisations and individuals who passionately want their work to enable social  change and racial justice. Maya Productions create opportunities for people of all ages, abilities, cultures, and classes to experience theatre.

    It makes work led by South Asian, African, Latin American Diaspora, and other Global Majority Background artists, involve young people and underrepresented communities in creative activities and promote workforce inclusion across the arts. 

    The first phases of the Dynamic Flights project were funded by the Baring Foundation. Their research, Creatively Minded, highlighted “few diverse-led organisations were specifically devoted to arts and health work and that ethnically diverse people were not well represented, either as service users or within the workforce of the arts and health organisations”.

    A key aim of this project for Maya Productions is to develop the skills and career progression of Black, South Asian, East Asian, and global majority arts practitioners, to work in the arts and mental health sector.

    Representing the Global Majority

    90% of the entire Dynamic Fights team is from a Global Majority background including Rotherham writer Tair Rafiq who shared:

    Working on the Dynamic Flights project has been a tremendous boost to my confidence as a working class Global Majority artist. After years of hard work and struggle, at last I feel seen and heard, and a door has been opened for me.

    Over two years, Maya Productions worked with residents at SYHA managed homes, The Lister Project and The Beaufort Project. Artists delivered over 60 creative sessions for residents involving a range of different artforms, with the eventual goal of working towards the new piece of theatre. During sessions, participants and creatives discussed and created themes, characters, locations, set design ideas, script readings and music for the show.

    Dynamic Flights will be performed in March and April at several South Yorkshire Housing Association managed homes for residents and at a Sheffield Hallam Performance Lab for university students.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Want to support chronically ill and disabled people into work? Why not try listening to them.

    Peter had been an HGV driver for over 20 years. One day, Peter had a seizure. And – bang – just like that, Peter was medically unfit to drive a lorry. Imagine the shock.

    Like most people, Peter had financial commitments. There was no work he could get that paid anything like the same wages. The fact he’d paid his tax and paid his National Insurance all that time counted for nothing. He was skint.

    His debts built up. The stress of money worries, the health worries – he still really didn’t understand why he’d had a seizure – all overwhelmed him. Peter went into a desperate spiral of mental ill health. He started drinking heavily. His relationship broke up.

    Peter was referred to a mentoring course I funded as North of Tyne Mayor. He got one-to-one support from a counsellor. The first think they did was listen to him. Not fill in forms. Not assess him for ‘work capability’. Not tell him to buck his ideas up. Just listened to him, not as another client to be benignly steered to some work course, but as Peter. His worries. His regrets. How he saw his future. It gave him the head space to get his life back under control. We were patient. There was no deadline.

    ‘Disabled’ is not a one-size-fits-all category

    I met him a year later, and I’ve changed his name for this article. His confidence was rebuilt. He retrained in logistics. He’s got a new job and is back on his feet. He’s in a new relationship, and has a little baby. There was nothing about the person I sat and had a cup of coffee with that made me think he was different from anyone else. He was warm, thoughtful, and a good communicator. When life dealt him a blow, he stumbled. When he was offered a hand, he got back on his feet.

    I wonder if I hadn’t funded that course, whether Peter would now be another increment on the suicide statistics.

    We must see people as people. There’s nothing ideological about saying we should not leave people behind.

    By investing in Peter, he’s healthier, happier, in work, and paying taxes. It’s common sense to say that treating people with dignity produces better outcomes.

    We did it by listening to people. I’ve always believed that if you want good education policy, you should listen to teachers. If you want good health policy, listen to doctors. If you want to know how to speed up buses, listen to bus drivers.

    I did the same thing with our equalities assemblies. My remit was economic – how to grow the economy. I wasn’t in charge of running any public services. Still, we convened people from disabled groups, and listened to their actual problems. The real barriers they faced day-to-day. We improved the understanding of me and my team, that “disabled” is not a one-size-fits-all category.

    Labour now: no logic, nor morality

    All the talk of “savings” and “iron clad fiscal rules” is not just cruel, it’s illiterate. Seeing people as nothing more than economic work units assaults our common humanity and blinds us to common sense.

    The Film I, Daniel Blake sums it up perfectly. A skilled worker, with much to contribute, is crunched by the system and driven to an early grave. It’s set in Newcastle, and Dave Johns who played Daniel Blake was kind enough to do a fundraising gig for my election campaign.

    When that film came out, Labour MPs queued up to be seen with Ken Loach. When the Labour Party expelled him, they ran for cover.

    These people are now preparing to decimate the little remaining support that chronically ill and disabled people have. I was famously blocked from re-standing for Labour after talking to Ken Loach about his films at a cultural event about films. Neither logic nor morality seems to influence Labour policy any more.

    Treat people with dignity

    Hannah is a young woman I met. We worked directly with the charities and campaigning groups to co-design the courses I funded.

    The first thing Hannah told me was that she’s an autistic person. She did have a job, some years ago, but her line manager changed. Her new manager wasn’t sympathetic. In fact, she’d snapped at Hannah:

    Why can’t you be more like everybody else?

    Hannah lost her job there, and felt she would never be employed by anyone. Her confidence was rock bottom.

    Most work courses tell people how to put together a CV, and then make people apply for jobs for 35 hours a week. As someone who has employed a lot of people, I can tell you it just wastes everyone’s time.

    Employers don’t want to have to sift through applications where people are clearly not qualified. People looking for work can do without the constant rejection. Why make people jump through hoops just so angry people with no understanding of the subject can feel good that “lazy” people are getting punished. It’s straight out of a Dickens novel.

    Instead, Hannah got one-to-one support. Her coach found out what she liked and what she was good at. He got to see Hannah as a person. They worked together, and thought about what would be Hannah’s ideal job. It turned out that Hannah has an aptitude for images. So they actively approached companies that manage automatic number plate recognition systems, and got Hannah a job. When the computer can’t recognise the image, she corrects it.

    But it doesn’t end there. Her mentor still checks in on her. He got her employer to adjust the way they decide employee of the month so her work could be included. Hannah now has a permanent job, she’s earning decent money, paying tax, and feeling good about herself. I saw her again a few months later, and she’d won employee of the month.

    Treating people with dignity is economic common sense.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A ‘Labour’ government creating more barriers to work for disabled people

    Those with a disability want to work, and do work, if they can. But mounting disability-related costs, such as care-costs, as well as hostile environments for those who do get jobs, mean there are lots of barriers to entering the workplace and remaining in work. A Labour government making it harder to apply for PIP or renew claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will be another barrier for those who are trying to access the workplace.

    Labour DWP cuts: hitting disability-related costs

    With the reports of disabled people languishing at home and not wanting to work, it’s important to get two points clear from the start. Nobody wants a disability, and nobody wants to be stuck at home all day.

    When I sustained my spinal cord injuries at the age of 18, I was keen to study and get to work. It was only decades later when my leg was amputated and I’d been diagnosed with the secondary conditions connected with my disability – osteoporosis, kyphosis and serious pressure sores that forced me out of paid work. I did work as a non-executive board member in a voluntary capacity until my physical condition deteriorated further.

    My story is like most disabled people in that we do want to get out there and work for as long as we can. We’re not ‘reluctant’ or as some right-wing reporters say ‘feckless’.

    What helped me take that step into work and remain in work for so long was the benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and formerly Disability Living Allowance (DLA). This is paid whether someone is working or not, as it’s to help for the additional disability-related costs.

    But since my day, these costs have been rising exponentially. This is a huge barrier to employment, as it’s often difficult to find work that pays enough to cover them.

    The ‘disability price-tag’

    The charity, Scope, who campaign to transform attitudes to disability, tackle injustice and inspire action, call these costs the ‘disability price-tag’ and in their 2024 report found that:

    • On average, disabled households need an addition £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.
    • On average the extra cost of disability is equivalent to 67% of household income, after housing costs

    Scope says:

    The financial struggle with extra costs is ongoing. And has a detrimental impact on the health and wellbeing of disabled people. At the very worst, this can be life-threatening.

    Such figures are familiar for Sarah, who works with disabled children and young people. Sarah is Autistic, and also lives with serious and long-term health conditions.

    Sarah told me:

    My monthly take-home pay is home pay is £1050. But I have to pay £1030 just the on the care-costs to help me with tasks around the home.

    With these disability-related costs rising each year, making PIP harder to claim could be catastrophic.

    Sarah said:

    Without PIP or my amount of PIP decreased, I wouldn’t be able to work. I’m at breaking-point at the moment. I would in effect be paying to go to work as I can’t stop paying for the help at home.

    Losing PIP means losing independence

    Catherine works at a university. She has neurodevelopmental and learning disabilities as well as other long-term conditions.

    I asked her what impact changes to her PIP entitlement could have. She said:

    It would lead to the loss of assistive software helping me to do my studying/job as well as the medications that enable me to focus and deal with pain.

    My transport costs would increase, and I would lose the subscriptions to services which enable me to work and the analytics software the university doesn’t provide.

    Then it’s the loss of things that keep me sane from time to time, losing any kind of small social life, things that keep me going.

    Changes to PIP such as making it harder to get or reapply for it could mean difficult decisions for Sarah and Catherine as to whether they can afford to go to work. But there’s a further risk, as this might mean they’re no longer able to remain independent at home.

    This is the case for Frank, who worked as a school caretaker, and has a mental health and learning disability. He explained to me how he had to give-up work last year due to a serious accident. He’s now facing mounting care-costs.

    Frank said:

    A keyword in the title of PIP is ‘independence’. If I lost my PIP, I might have to go into a care home. I’ve been fighting for years to stay independent and for this not to happen.

    The cost of accessible housing in comparison to homes for those who are able-bodied can contribute to this battle to remain independent.

    Making more barriers to employment for disabled people

    Simone, who’s currently not working due to mental illness said to me:

    I don’t think many people realise that PIP ends up being swallowed-up by such high rents. I often have to ask my friend to help me pay for the healthcare costs that aren’t covered by my prescription. If my PIP award changed and I lost any money, then I don’t know what would happen in relation to my housing.

    Such high disability-related costs can be a huge barrier to employment. Making PIP even harder to obtain, could mean disabled people don’t get this crucial benefit. This might mean the difference in taking up a post or remaining in employment.

    Of course, it’s not just cost barriers that disabled people face regarding the workplace. Getting the equipment required using ‘Access to Work’ can be problematic. In an article last year, I wrote about Glyn Hayes who has a spinal cord injury and needed a wheelchair adaptation for work.

    Instead of the expected 12 weeks, delays and delays pushed this to 12 months. Hayes was lucky in that his employer was ‘disability friendly’. But many employers are not so patient.

    Disability discrimination in the workplace

    Daisy’s main area of work is data input and data analysis. She is Autistic and is physically disabled. She told me:

    Despite legislation banning such discrimination, I’ve often been called for an interview after submitting my CV and application but as soon as they see my wheelchair that’s it, I don’t get the post.

    This is something Catherine has also witnessed. She said:

    Barriers for disabled individuals can start early and seem insurmountable, such as when an employer chooses not to interview a candidate who discloses their disability in a cover letter, or who rejects them when they discover the truth during the hiring process.

    Daisy has also mentioned just how hostile workplaces can be if employees manage to get a job. She said:

    Most jobs I have faced constructive dismissal from. I’ve been fired from two jobs, one for being stalked by a colleague, another after I was physically attacked by a contractor, who did not get a job he wanted after he arrived late to work. I was the one deemed a problem. In another case, I was fired by withholding hours after a new manager came in and decided that I was an ‘insurance risk’.

    Catherine also knows how stressful, and tense workplaces can be for disabled people. She said:

    The perceptions of co-workers can translate into behaviour towards that disabled person which can negatively impact a disabled person’s work.

    Stereotypes (or uncomfortable realities) about disability can lead to marginalisation within the workplace, influencing everything from job performance to professional relationships”

    Labour-led DWP’s demonisation filters down

    The demonisation of disabled people by government filters down, creating what already is an uncomfortable environment even worse.

    Catherine said:

    Every ‘disability benefits scrounger’ story is another potential reason for someone to put a target on our backs.

    If you’re lucky, you might end up as “One of the good ones who deserve help”, but if your co-workers see you to be “Playing the system”, then you’re not just in danger of people creating a hostile environment towards you, but disability hate-crimes and workplace discrimination, too.

    For disabled people, Labour have not just broken our trust, they’ve also managed to re-create the fear of the Cameron/Osbourne period, with actions that appear incomprehensible and cruel.

    That’s because if the intention is to encourage more disabled people into work, then Labour should be looking at the barriers disabled people face, when trying to access the workplace, such as the housing and care costs, plus the disability mark-up on essential products.

    And, as a matter of urgency, Labour should be addressing the hostile workplaces and discrimination disabled people still face at work, and when applying for jobs.

    Making PIP even harder to obtain or reapply for – will simply create another barrier. If Labour wants to change the culture around disability and work, then a more ‘sustainable’ way will be by removing such obstacles.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ruth Hunt

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Two people who know f*ck all about medicine are now doctors when it comes to the DWP

    The Canary has reported on disability and mental health since its founding – particularly in relation to how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) handles these issues. As such, we can confidently state that there is no real difference in how the previous Tory governments viewed disabled people and how the current Labour Party government does. This means that conditions are still worsening for society’s most vulnerable people, with Labour continuing the squeeze on their living conditions.

    All this was achingly apparent when health secretary Wes Streeting appeared on this week’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg:

    Continuity Tory at the DWP

    Speaking to Streeting, Kuenssberg said:

    One of the areas where you are, we understand, gonna try and claw back money, [is people who’ve] been signed off because of mental health problems. Now in the last few days, it’s interesting, the prominent neurologist, Suzanne O’Sullivan, has said there’s overdiagnosis of mental health problems.

    Firstly, let’s point out the language used here – particularly the ‘clawed back’ part. This is the way you speak about someone who has stolen money and are refusing to give it up; not people with mental health problems who are simply trying to exist in the bleak reality of modern Britain.

    The other thing to note is that O’Sullivan has indeed published a book in which she makes a case that we are over-diagnosing health conditions. As the Week reported, other medical professionals have other opinions, but Kuenssberg doesn’t make that clear.

    The book from O’Sullivan is new, so we’ll have to wait to see how it holds up to criticism, but as of right now it’s worth understanding that the broader media has happily accepted her central argument, because it’s very much in line with pre-existing health narratives:

    It’s no secret why the establishment hate the idea of workers being ‘on the sick’ in the hellish late-stage capitalist world we live in – a system which requires low-paid disposable workers to function (it’s also no surprise that poor mental health has increased alongside income inequality and job insecurity). And believe us when we say that books and studies which go against mainstream narratives rarely receive the same attention.

    Leading questions

    Kuenssberg finished her DWP-related question to Streeting as follows:

    Your colleague, Liz Kendall, when she was here, talked about the problems of self diagnosis when people feel that they might have a condition. Do you believe, as a health secretary, that too many people are being treated as sick and incapable of work for essentially struggling with what are quite normal feelings.

    This technique – in which you present an answer and ask if the guest wishes to accept it – is what’s known as a ‘leading question’, and it betrays Kuenssberg’s own thoughts on the matter. These people aren’t mentally unwell; they’re simply having normal feelings – the sort of ‘normal feelings’ people must have when their horrible lives become increasingly precarious – but that’s just progress, I’m afraid.

    Streeting also betrayed his feelings by accepting Kuenssberg’s answer entirely:

    Well, I want to follow the evidence, and I I agree with that point about overdiagnosis.

    But, here’s the other thing. I mean, mental, well-being, illness, it’s a spectrum. Right? And…

    Kuenssberg interjected at this point to reaffirm that he believed that there was “overdiagnosis”, even though he’d literally just done that. She isn’t simply a attack dog for continuity Conservatism; she’s an XL Bully on bathsalts.

    Callous and cruel

    Streeting continued:

    I think there’s definitely there’s an overdiagnosis, but also there are too many people being written off.

    And to your point about treatment, there’s too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need. So if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or to get back to work, and that’s why we’re recruiting eight and a half thousand more mental health staff to make sure we can get the waiting list down, and also starting early. So making sure we’ve got mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country so we can give people that those that resilience and those coping skills.

    Labour wanting to recruit more mental health staff is a good thing. From direct experience, the Canary and its writers can confirm that the mental health support offered currently is basically non-existent, and that even that which does exist is often more about ticking boxes than providing support.

    As such, it’s not unrealistic to think that increasing actual mental health support could genuinely help people and reduce the number of people who require long-term support.

    The doctor knows best

    But there are two problems still:

    1. As far as we can tell, Labour’s plans to reduce the number of people claiming DWP PIP aren’t reliant on this mental health support actually working. Their plan seems to be to change the eligibility requirements to drop people out of PIP, which almost certainly isn’t going to help people with mental health problems – especially as we’re probably years away from this team of mental health support staff being in place.
    2. Labour is talking out of both sides of its mouth on this issue. On the one hand, they’re claiming they think people are suffering mental health issues, but the issue is that these issues are being prolonged by a lack of access to health. They’re also claiming that DWP claimants are “taking the mickey” – i.e. they’re pretending to be unwell to claim the pitiful entitlements that exist in this country. The first point they’re making is to try and appease sick and disabled people (and rebel MPs); the second point is the one they’re pitching to the media, as is made clear by Kuenssberg’s next intervention:

    But you do believe there’s a problem with overdiagnosis. What then would your message then be to medical professionals watching this?

    Yes, what message should medical professionals take from Wes Streeting and Laura Kuenssberg – two people who know fuck all about medicine?

    We’d say this would be like doctors advising Streeting and Kuenssberg on how to do their jobs, but let’s be honest – it would be hard to provide advice which made them worse.

    The new nasty party hits the DWP again

    As you’d expect, the Streeting interview is going down poorly:

    One X user made a point that agrees with the need for more mental health professionals:

    Again, though, it’s worth pointing out that if increasing the number of mental health workers will reduce the people who need DWP PIP, why make it harder to qualify for PIP? We’re also eager to find out how many of Streeting’s “mental health staff” will be qualified medical professionals and not just social security hatchet men who complete an eight-week course on counselling.

    It’s also worth noting that not everyone in the media is as callous as Kuenssberg (although Susanna Reid does seem to implicitly accept that some cuts are necessary):

    The Green Party, meanwhile, suggested that Streeting is just another bought-and-paid-for shill:

    Work will set you free

    In another interview, Streeting argued that work is actually the cure to people’s problems:

    This may be true for a rewarding career with great benefits, but for many in 2025 ‘work’ means stagnating wages, increased job insecurity, and an overriding sense that things are only going to get worse.

    Too bad Labour is also going back on some of its measures to boost workers’ rights.

    Featured image via the BBC

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A basic income can be a strong investment in mental health

    By Tracy Smith-Carrier & Elaine Power

    See original post here.

    Over half of Canadians feel “financially paralyzed” by the cost-of-living crisis, according to a recent poll. As life becomes more unaffordable for more people, we need governments to create policies that will improve public health and well-being.

    One such policy is a basic income guarantee: an unconditional cash transfer from government to ensure people can meet their basic needs and live with dignity.

    A basic income guarantee differs from the universal basic income (UBI) model often discussed. While a UBI is set at the same amount and made available to everyone, a basic income guarantee is targeted to those need it, through a benefit that rises as income declines.

    Our recently published research looks into one basic income program, the Ontario Basic Income Pilot that was launched in 2017 but abruptly ended the following year. We conducted a study to understand how Ontario’s pilot impacted the lives of those who participated in it.

    We interviewed 46 participants across four cities included in the pilot. We asked about their experiences before the pilot, during their participation in it and after its abrupt end.

    Ontario’s basic income pilot

    In 2017, the Ontario government, under then-premier Kathleen Wynne, launched the Ontario Basic Income Pilot to test the efficacy of an unconditional cash transfer. A total of 4,000 people were enrolled, and the pilot was slated to run in Hamilton, Lindsay, Brantford and Thunder Bay over a three-year period.

    Set at 75 per cent of the low-income measure (one of Statistics Canada’s three poverty lines), the pilot provided $1,415 monthly for single people and an additional $500 for people with disabilities (up to $1,915 monthly), with every dollar earned subject to a 50 per cent claw-back.

    Despite a campaign promise to complete the pilot, incoming premier Doug Ford abandoned it in 2018. Participants weren’t forewarned but learned of its cancellation like everyone else — on the news or through social media.

    The government claimed the pilot did not help people become “independent contributors to the economy.” The lack of evidence to justify this claim, along with other government statements, suggests the pilot’s premature cancellation was an ideological decision.

    Impact on participants’ mental health

    The pilot’s guiding principles, written by the late-Senator Hugh Segal, affirmed that “no individual will be made worse off during or after the pilot, as a result of participation in the pilot.” Our study, however, indicates that the mental health of many participants was demonstrably worsened in the pilot’s demise.

    With a three-year promise of stable income, participants told us of being able to plan better for their futures. Some pursued higher education, others found better paying and more stable jobs or started their own businesses. Some moved into better housing, leaving behind mold-infested or poorly maintained dwellings, only to plead with their landlords to break their new leases after the pilot was cancelled.

    We found that increased income security improved participants’ mental health, reduced their stress and allowed them to improve diets with healthier food options. Some spoke of no longer having to rely on food charity as they could go the grocery store like everyone else.

    Interviewees described what life is like in poverty: not being able to go out for a cup of coffee with friends or buy gifts for your children on their birthdays, not being able to entertain family over the holidays or go out and socialize.

    Some had not disclosed their financial situation to family or friends because their sense of shame was so profound. Yet, feeling unable to discuss their situation essentially cut them off from valuable sources of social support.

    Structural violence

    Ontario’s premature cancellation of the pilot was an act of structural violence — a policy decision that caused needless and avoidable harm and suffering. Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes explains that structural violence refers to “the invisible social machinery of inequality that reproduces social relations of exclusion and marginalization.”

    Structural violence upholds the poverty, racism, sexism and other social inequities that lead to higher rates of illness, suffering and premature death. It is often invisible and can result from policy omissions, but the termination of the pilot was a public, deliberate decision.

    By throwing participants’ lives and carefully laid plans into chaos, and thrusting them back into poverty, our research shows the Ontario government’s policy decision caused significant harm.

    Our research is consistent with a larger body of evidence demonstrating that unconditional cash transfer programs, like basic income, can improve mental well-being. As young people are more vulnerable to the mental stress resulting from financial insecurity, these programs provide the necessary protection to mitigate the lifelong damaging impacts of childhood poverty.

    We also know that welfare systems are associated with poor health outcomes and increase recipients’ psychological distress. These haven’t been subject to the rigorous experimentation that a basic income has, yet they persist, despite the voluminous research documenting their harms.

    The cost of mental illness in Canada already amounts to over $50 billion annually (in direct health-care costs and lost productivity) but without intervention could increase to $291 billion by 2041.

    Research shows how poor mental health is a direct consequence of poverty. Money not only helps meet people’s material needs but also alleviates their worries. Reducing poverty translates into significant savings for the economy and the public purse. Canada could save $4 to $10 for every dollar spent on mental health supports.

    Eradicating poverty

    Poverty is not caused by personal failings. It is the social environment people live in that has the greatest impact on life trajectories.

    To eradicate poverty, we need policies that address the root of financial hardship. A basic income does just that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer of Canada recently released estimates that show a basic income, using parameters similar to the Ontario pilot’s, could cut poverty by up to 40 per cent. This is an affordable option with the potential for broad positive effects.

    We already have the Canada Child Benefit for families and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for older adults that provide forms of a basic income guarantee, although these benefits must be enlarged to be truly adequate. What we need now is a program that provides a robust income floor beneath which no one can fall.

    As citizens, we have few ways to hold leaders accountable for acts of structural violence, like cancelling the pilot. A class-action lawsuit lodged against the Ontario government for breach of contract is ongoing; it remains to be seen whether this will prove successful.

    Whatever their ideological leanings, politicians have a duty to advance policies that bolster public health and well-being. Improving mental health through a basic income is a wise investment, one that will prevent the needless suffering of generations to come.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Mental health crisis? The world is literally on fire – of course you’re anxious

    For four days in January, I sat – glued to my computer – as I watched the homes and neighbourhoods of the people I love burning to the ground in Los Angeles. I collated their addresses and I tracked the progress of the fires. I needed to know they were safe – and couldn’t look away. Even though the constant stream of images and videos were deeply upsetting. I was terrified for my friends.

    I cover natural disasters all the time – it’s literally my job to report on the climate crisis. But this time? It hit differently. For the first time, danger was heading directly for the people I love. 

    I was a mess – emotionally, psychologically, and physically. And if you were to ask a mental health professional? They would probably have told you I was in the midst of some sort of mental health crisis and given me a psychiatric diagnosis. The reality though? I was reacting in a pretty understandable way to an ongoing catastrophe. 

    We are only one month into 2025, but we have already seen wildfires destroy over 12,000 homes and kill 29 people in Los Angeles. We’ve also seen Storm Eowyn – a record-breaking cyclone – batter many parts of the UK, an earthquake in Tibet, and floods and landslides in Pekalongan, Indonesia. 

    Research shows that both adults and young people feel like their mental wellbeing is getting worse. In 2024, 15.5% of UK adults reported their mental health as either “bad” or “the worst it’s ever been”. In England alone, over 500 children are referred to mental health services every day for anxiety. Is it any wonder, when the world is literally burning? How could you watch the news and not be filled with anxiety for what is to come?

    Mental Health Bill

    The Mental Health Bill [2025] is making its way through the House of Lords. It is an update to the Mental Health Act [1983]. This is the legal framework for assessing and treating those with severe mental health difficulties. The updated bill aims to give individuals better rights, improve mental health outcomes, and reduce inequalities. The main focus of both pieces of legislation is people who need involuntary hospital admissions.

    Obviously, there is a place for this if someone is an immediate danger to themselves or others. However, the government is spending so much time, money, and energy on dealing with the very end result of poor policies. They are quick to institutionalise. However, they are far less ready to give someone the support and care they might need to recover and thrive. Additionally, cutting someone off from their own community is completely counterintuitive in the long run.

    There is not a single piece of scientific evidence that supports the chemical imbalance theory of mental health problems. Yet still, the crux of government policy on mental health is to wait until people reach crisis point, detain them under the Mental Health Act, and medicate them. They have the ability and the political power to prevent many people from even getting to that point. They choose not to. 

    Instead, Labour could be focusing on the circumstances and conditions that we are all forced to exist in, which are creating and exacerbating mental health problems. 

    Similarly, Calum Miller, MP for Bicester, recently called on the Prime Minister to address the delays children and young people face when trying to access mental health support. He drew attention to the waiting times for Children and Adolescent Mental Health services (CAMHS) in Oxfordshire, and the rest of the country. 

    Again, instead of focusing on reducing waiting times for mental health treatment, why are they not turning their attention to improving the toxic conditions that lead so many young people to struggle with their mental health? 

    A deeply traumatic experience

    The climate crisis is a prime example of this. Thanks to TikTok and other social media platforms, we now have the ability to watch all of these disasters as they unfold. The wildfires in the Pacific Palisades, just like the flooding in Valencia last year, were practically live streamed. How do we expect anyone to watch videos of people running from danger while their houses burn down, and then get a good night’s sleep?        

    Being alive, and paying attention to the world around us has become a deeply traumatic experience. Yet, ask any mental health charity or politician and they will tell you we are in the midst of a mental health crisis. Why are we surprised that people are struggling with their mental health? All you have to do is turn on the TV or social media and a torrent of terrifying – and very real news is there to greet you. 

    James Barnes, Psychotherapist and teaching faculty at Iron Mill College, Exeter told the Canary:

    Barnes suggested that a non medical approach to looking at suffering moves away from biomedical dysfunction, towards an intelligible response – however disabling – to social, political and interpersonal circumstances.

    As the Canary previously reported, this means changing the dominant question. From ‘what’s wrong with you’, to ‘what happened to you’ or, ‘what is happening to you’.

    Barnes Continued:

    There are concrete steps that Keir Starmer’s government could be taking to improve the nation’s mental health. A great place to start would be curbing anxiety around the climate crisis. This means rather than handing out antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, they should be protecting our planet.

    The point of no return

    Climate scientists identified that 2025 was the deadline limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Passing this threshold means an even greater risk of disastrous floods, droughts, and heatwaves. At the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement. This means they agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030. The sticking point however, is that they must have peaked before 2025 – which is here. 

    From reducing the burning of fossil fuels and switching to green energy to reducing the emissions from the financial sector, there are many things the UK government could be doing to tackle the climate crisis at the source.

    Instead, it’s tinkering around at the edges of the problem with false climate solutions like carbon capture and storage (CCS) while green-lighting more environmentally-destructive projects like Heathrow’s third runway and the Stansted airport expansion. 

    The climate crisis is also inextricably linked to the cost of living crisis. There is no doubt this is also driving poor mental health. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that rates of depression were higher among people who were struggling to afford housing costs and energy bills.

    Surely it’s common sense that struggling to pay their bills would make someone sad, or numb, or anxious – or suicidal. Climate disasters such as flooding and extreme temperatures directly impact energy and food costs, making the cost of living crisis worse. 

    Brainwashing

    The government also pushes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This aims to get people to change their thoughts and behaviours. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But what happens when your thoughts are based upon facts?

    For example, being anxious about your future is completely understandable. After all, we just watched the Pacific Palisades burn down as a direct result of the climate crisis. Humans are hardwired to survive.

    In the UK, waiting lists for mental health treatment are estimated to now be over one million. So professionals are going to tell one million people that their thinking is the problem. Rather than the capitalist system that’s sidelining their wellbeing and destroying the world around them.

    Similarly, asking people to change their thoughts means they believe themselves and their thoughts are the problem, rather than the conditions they are living in. This means they are far less likely to question the status quo. Obviously, the government does not want people questioning their policies – because that creates a problem. 

    What is clear to me is that the world is becoming a harder and harder place to exist in. There is a new climate disaster every week. It is only a matter of time before the nation’s mental health plummets to even greater lows.

    Unless the government starts to think about the causes, instead of putting a plaster on a gaping wound they are adding fuel to an already raging fire – and there’s only one way it can end. 

    Feature image via Tricia Nelson

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The UK Government Admits Failure in the Handling of the Separation of Children from Families in Poverty

    Dr Koldo Casla 19 February 2025 In the second session of the constructive dialogue with the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) this morning in Geneva, the UK Government acknowledged that the child protection services in England are not fit for purpose. CESCR member Julieta Rossi raise the concern that the child protection system is overtly focused […]

    This post was originally published on Human Rights Centre Blog.

  • As Trump Bars Asylum Claims, Migrants Struggle in Mexico City

    On a recent morning, Maria Del Carmen Cortes, 42, roamed through a concrete path near a bus station in northern Mexico City lined with makeshift homes made of wood and plastic tarps. She stopped in front of an improvised food stall where Mari Ruiz, 42, was firing up a pan of Venezuelan arepas, a thick flatbread made of cornmeal dough. “You see a lot of things along the way,” Cortes said…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Abortion Laws Are Eroding Trust Between Mental Health Providers and Clients

    She’d been out of the psychiatric hospital only four months when she learned she was pregnant. Just 21 years old and struggling with bipolar disorder, her mental health had collapsed after losing her job as a waiter. She wanted to keep the baby, but realized she would need to stop her psychiatric medication — putting herself at risk of dangerous mood swings — and couldn’t financially support…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Critics of psychiatry are adding fuel to the fire of the DWP’s benefit cuts agenda

    The day I could no longer get out of bed to go to work as a psychiatrist was one of the worst days of my life. For several months I hadn’t been sleeping, couldn’t think clearly, had lost weight, felt exhausted and physically ill, but I’d pushed myself to continue until I finally broke down. My world was caving in on me and thoughts of suicide had seeped into my mind. Everything was hopeless. Like millions of others every single day, I was suffering from depression. I knew that because I’d treated many, many others with the same illness.

    Depression is not a ‘normal response’

    Nearly one in six people in Britain will experience depression in their lifetime, and it’s twice as common in women as men.

    It also kills.

    People suffering from it have 30-times the normal risk of suicide. Depression isn’t just ‘unhappiness’ it is an illness that takes over your daily life and prevents you from functioning. It comes in many forms – from the awful, anxious agitation that I experience through to frank psychosis and from milder despair to severe, dark, horrible, speechless melancholia.

    However, currently there is a vociferous movement made up of critics of psychiatry, including a very small number from within the profession, who take a different view.

    They deny depression is an ‘illness’ and see it as simply a ‘normal response’ to a difficult life. Not surprisingly that’s a very attractive message both for the right-wing bandwagon that wants to cut public spending on mental health, and a government seeking to reduce the cost of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) sickness benefits.

    Fuelling DWP agendas

    Last spring, the then-work and pensions secretary Mel Stride said that ‘people with depression or anxiety could lose access to sickness benefits’. By January this year, the headline from the Telegraph said:

    More than half a million claiming disability benefits for anxiety and depression: government faces growing pressure to solve worklessness crisis as welfare claims soar since lockdown.

    This coincided with the report Change the Prescription from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), founded by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. The report informed us (without guidance from epidemiological experts) that “the line in psychiatry for when distress becomes mental ill health is subjective” and “misunderstood mental ill-health is the leaky bucket draining the nation” – whilst further citing the wisdom of prominent critics of psychiatry.

    Add in Tony Blair telling us all not to “self-diagnose depression” (how can you not when you can’t see a doctor?) and psychiatry critic professor Joanna Moncrieff, in a recent interview in the Times, widening her critique of antidepressants to include the apparent inadequate willpower of those of us who suffer from depression too (“making changes in your life is difficult and scary, so of course it’s easier at some level to be told to take a pill”) and you have the perfect storm.

    DWP benefits for those who are unfit to work because of anxiety and depression, and other mental health problems too, are under greater threat than ever before.

    We all must work instead.

    Really?

    Systemic misogyny

    Given women are twice as likely to suffer it’s hardly surprising that the rise in claiming DWP benefits for depression and anxiety is higher in women. Younger women in their thirties, who’ve struggled through the pandemic as they tried to hold together work, family, and homeschooling, and older women in their fifties, with multiple physical problems too which worsen mental health.

    But Liz Kendall thinks too many are ‘taking the mickey.’

    Primary care used to help many of these women, but now it’s hard to be seen and continuity of care has disappeared. Waiting lists are interminable. Many will have been unwell for a long time, without the kind of complex care that will help them to recover.

    The peak suicide rate for women is age 50-54, and the mean age for the menopause, which can seriously affect our mood is 51. It’s not ‘unhappiness’, it’s illness. We need proper therapy and psychiatric care not workfare and ‘support’.

    We’ve been here before

    Some remember how, in the 1980s, the antipsychiatry brigade – forerunners of the present naysayers and led by people like American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz who called mental ill health a ‘myth’ – attacked spending on mental health.

    His major achievement is what you witness every time you walk through an American city. Severely mentally ill people living on the streets. Forcing people with mental ill health to work is inhumane too. Selecting out those with anxiety and depression to do so will re-stigmatise problems we have been trying so hard to get people to talk openly about.

    In the foreword to Change the Prescription, three privileged, older, white, male members of the establishment tell us that:

    All of us are subject to variations in our mood. Good days and bad days are a fact of life.

    Inequality is a fact of life too where depression is concerned.

    As someone who suffers from recurrent depressive illness, I find their and others’ desire to focus on ‘de-medicalising’ mental health all too conveniently supported by those who seem to want to deny its existence altogether. It could result in real harm and suffering, and even more deaths of people struggling with the DWP.

    Left to the mercy of the DWP

    I returned to work after several months off sick.

    I was lucky, I survived, because I had access to good care and treatment and had supportive employers.  If I had been left to the mercy of the DWP then I think it would’ve been difficult for me to get through this time and the recurrent periods of depression throughout my life.

    Linda Gask’s latest book is Out of Her mind: How we are failing women’s mental health and what must change. It is available from Cambridge University Press here. 

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Linda Gask

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Mentally Ill or Criminal? Jails Have Become Mental Health Facilities Say Experts


    To many, it is an unseen problem. People denied mental health services who end up homeless or incarcerated as criminals. A few year ago, the Kennedy Forum at Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton,  addressed this and other aspects of the lack of a functional community mental health system in the United States.

    The Kennedy Forum was founded to enlist business leaders and government agencies in fully implementing the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which was amended by the Affordable Care Act, to guarantee equal access to medical care and help patients understand their rights.

    According to former US Representative Patrick Kennedy and others who spoke at the event (called “The Cost of Doing Nothing”) untreated people with mental illness may be the most salient public health problem there is. “I have been out to Cook County Jail myself,” Rep. Kennedy told me in a one-on-one, exclusive interview. “It is the largest mental health facility in the nation.”

    Chicago’s notorious Cook County 10,000-person Jail may be the largest in the nation, but “every jail in America” is a de facto mental health facility Rep. Kennedy told me because community mental health support in the US, outlined 50 years ago with President Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act of 1963, “never got implemented.”

    Patrick Kennedy is the youngest son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and served 16 years as Rhode Island’s Democratic representative in Congress. “If the nation wanted a good answer to Sandy Hook and Aurora” it would make a commitment to providing mental health care to any American who “suffers a psychotic break,” he said. We are not doing “what we know works.”

    There is overwhelming evidence that mental health affects overall health, said Rep. Kennedy and US medicine needs to start doing a “check up from the neck up.” Currently, we have “a two-tier system”—one for health care and one for mental health care, he said, and the latter is “poorly reimbursed and poorly respected within the medical community.”

    Others at the conference agreed. We have “under-funded and eliminated” community mental health services and people with mental illness are, not surprisingly, ending up in jail and prison said then Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart who participated on a panel called Models for Change: Addressing Mental Illness and Addiction in the Justice System.

    The number of women with mental health issues is “exploding” in the judicial system said Sheriff Dart with as many as “18 out of 20 women [who are arrested] acutely psychotic.”

    No one is sure why. Mentally ill people, like the growing wave of disturbed women, have usually been arrested for “misdemeanors” said the sheriff which means they are not dangerous criminals and probably require mental health services which are currently almost absent as opposed to incarceration.

    Another problem with the underfunded system are patients who tell the sheriff they don’t want to leave jail because it is the “best treatment they have ever had,” said the sheriff. People who are in jail and do not have mental illness usually want to talk about their case and the fact that they are innocent, he said. Conversely, people who have mental illness often beg for help when they are released such as in housing. They are literally “craving a place to live,” said Sheriff Dart.

    “Insurance companies have regularly and routinely denied benefits for people with mental illness” whether severe disorders or people who have alcoholism, addictions, eating disorders, panic attacks and more Rep. Kennedy told me in our interview. Addiction diseases may be diseases of denial in which a person will try everything before they seek help but acquainting them with resources, like anonymous, Twelve Step programs increases their chance of getting better and is a strong example of early intervention, Rep. Kennedy said.

    This is an excerpt from the recently published book Food, Clothes, Men, Gas, and Other Problems.

    The post Mentally Ill or Criminal? Jails Have Become Mental Health Facilities Say Experts first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NHS admits to Canary it doesn’t know how many disabled people it detains under Mental Health Act

    The NHS is still spectacularly failing to end its shameful institutionalisation of learning disabled and autistic people via the 1983 Mental Health Act (MHA). That is, nearly ten years on from its initial promises to vastly scale back the practice and shift to a model of supported living in the community, it’s still detaining learning disabled and autistic people at an appalling rate.

    To make matters worse, learning disabled and autistic people aren’t the only demographic the NHS is detaining at an alarming scale in its inpatient settings. Data obtained by the Canary reveals that, as a group more broadly, the NHS holds disabled people in detention at a significantly higher rate than non-disabled people.

    However, there’s another glaring problem too. The data the NHS holds on this is enormously limited. As a result, the figures the Canary obtained are only part of the story. This is because, as it turns out, the NHS actually has no official record of the number of disabled people it holds detained under the MHA.

    The latest NHS statistics on detentions continue to evidence the dire persisting institutionalisation of learning disabled and autistic people. But, in 2025, the NHS publishes absolutely no data at all on the number of disabled people it holds sectioned within its estate. In other words, to this day, there’s no way to monitor the use of MHA detentions on disabled people – and that should be a scandal.

    Detentions of learning disabled and autistic patients: failing targets abysmally

    In 2011, an investigation at Winterbourne View hospital blew wide open the horrifying abuse of learning disabled people in the NHS’s care. An undercover Panorama exposed their shocking treatment at the hands of care workers – of whom 11 went on to be convicted. As the BBC reported at the time, patients were:

    being slapped and restrained under chairs, having their hair pulled and being held down as medication was forced into their mouths.

    The victims, who had severe learning disabilities, were visibly upset and were shown screaming and shaking.

    One victim was showered while fully clothed and had mouthwash poured into her eyes.

    Undercover recordings showed one senior care worker at Winterbourne View asking a patient whether they wanted him to get a “cheese grater and grate your face off?”.

    The abuse was so bad that one patient, who had tried to jump out of a second floor window, was then mocked by staff members.

    A subsequent review of NHS services found that Winterbourne was hardly an exceptional case either. It was these appalling revelations that galvanised the NHS to start work on ending the institutionalisation of learning disabled and autistic people. Notably, in February 2015:

    NHS England publicly committed to a programme of closing inappropriate and outmoded inpatient facilities and establishing stronger support in the community

    And crucially, an important part of making sure it was accountable to this goal involved establishing a regular data collection. This was in order for the public, the NHS, and government to measure its progress. So, in tandem with its pledge, the NHS began officially publishing this data from February 2015. It uses March 2015 statistics as the reference point for comparison.

    The plan? To reduce:

    usage of inpatient provision by approximately 50% over the coming three years.

    In the years since, successive governments and the NHS have reaffirmed their commitment to meeting this target as well. Notably, more recent pledges to it have included NHS England’s 2019 goal to reduce the number of learning disabled and autistic people detained on its inpatient care estate. Again, it promised to halve the number relative to 2015 levels. The target date was March 2024. What’s more, the government reaffirmed this commitment in 2022 as part of its ‘Building the right support action plan’.

    The results? In March 2015 the NHS had 2,395 learning disabled and autistic people in its inpatient settings. By December 2024 – the latest month for which data is currently available – the statistics showed there were 2,050. Nearly a decade on, the NHS has made a less than 15% reduction. In short, it has utterly, abysmally failed to meet this target.

    Systemic abuse in the NHS hasn’t stopped

    Of course, in that time, the systemic abuse of learning disabled and autistic patients in these facilities has only continued. In 2019, another Panorama exposed the appalling psychological abuse rife at Whorlton Hall in County Durham. Following the revelations, in 2023, Teesside Crown Court convicted four members of staff the BBC caught on camera for “ill-treating” patients at the 17-bed inpatient unit.

    So, here we have two exposés – eight years apart. Both reveal the unconscionable abuse of learning disabled and autistic people. But they’re hardly the only ones. Behind every one of those 2,050 is a person, who could – and likely does – have more stories of gross misuse of the MHA, and abuse under detention.

    Canary journalist Nicola Jeffery’s vital reporting gave a voice to three such patients in 2024. Crucially, each were definitive accounts of just such continuing systemic abuse and overreach of the MHA. In particular, Jeffery shone a light on the detentions of three autistic women – Megan, Holly, and Saffron – all living with avoidant restrictive food-intake disorder (ARFID), alongside other conditions.

    In 18 year-old Megan’s case, Jeffery described how staff at the William Fraser Clinic at Royal Edinburgh Hospital had drugged her and:

    allegedly forcibly manhandled and physically assaulted her, and even called her a “spoiled brat”.

    Her mum Shona recounted one especially violent incident where staff had laid on the back of her knees, crushing them. Megan has hypermobility, and had a knee injury at the time. Pictures showed her knees red and bruised after staff carried out the disgusting assault.

    Technically, since Megan lives in Scotland, she wouldn’t be among the above England figures. The point is though, her story is illustrative that the endemic culture of abuse remains widespread across the NHS. Moreover, taken together, their experiences underscore how in too many cases still, NHS clinicians are weaponising the MHA against patients. Patients who simply need compassionate care and for healthcare professionals to listen to them.

    Now, yet another BBC investigation at a children’s psychiatric hospital in Glasgow has once again exposed more appalling abuse. Patients between the ages of 12 to 18 described being treated “like animals” at Skye House psychiatric unit, while detained under the MHA. The report details how staff disgustingly mistreated patients, overusing physical and chemical ‘restraint’. Multiple young patients alleged staff had mocked, over-medicated, and even assaulted them. It’s more proof of the egregious endemic abuse of patients detained in NHS facilities.

    Disabled patients in detentions: where’s the data?

    And theirs aren’t the only stories like this the Canary has highlighted in the last year either.

    The Canary’s Steve Topple has repeatedly raised the alarm over NHS hospitals holding two young women – Millie and Carla – living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) against their will.

    Clinicians have psychologised their symptoms, in spite of the chronic systemic neuroimmune disease they both live with. As a result of this, they sectioned them under the MHA at different stages of their involuntary hospitalisations.

    After Carla’s family lost the appeal against her sectioning in November, they told the Canary how doctors at West Middlesex Hospital ramped up the abuse against her. Her family had recorded evidence of “the forcefulness of staff”. A photo showed scratches from one of the nurses on Carla’s hand. Topple wrote about a video showing:

    hospital staff attempting to force Carla to have her feed – despite it being too early in terms of time between feeds, as well as medication; something West Middlesex Hospital know causes Carla huge pain. At the end, one nurse forcibly removes Carla’s eye mask – something which is essential for her ME; acknowledged by NICE guidelines.

    This is clearly abuse – that supposed healthcare professionals were meting out against Carla while detained under the MHA.

    However, here’s the thing: nowhere in the NHS’s mental health detention records will it note the fact that Millie or Carla are disabled, let alone the specific condition they live with. They’ll be in the dataset, but nothing about their chronic health condition will show up in the NHS’s transparency releases.

    This is because the NHS simply doesn’t mandate providers record this. As such, for people in disabled demographics more generally, the information is entirely non-existent. Notably, the Canary queried NHS England if this was information it holds, and if so, why it doesn’t publish this alongside the rest of its monthly statistics.

    We were told that it doesn’t publish statistics “broken down by disability” and that this is because of:

    data quality issues around recording of disability in the Mental Health Services Dataset which mean any data wouldn’t provide a full picture.

    Higher rates of disabled patients in detention

    Of course, this response also seemed to indicate that it did indeed hold some information on this, albeit incomplete. The Canary therefore made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the data.

    This revealed that the NHS had 9,001 patients with a “record of disability” detained under the Mental Health Act. This was between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024. By comparison, there were 9,289 patients without a “record of disability”.

    Additionally, demonstrating the inconsistency of data collection on this, the NHS’s data recorded this as ‘unknown’ for 32,147 patients.

    Lack of complete data notwithstanding, the statistics give a general impression of the rates that services detain disabled people under the MHA.

    For one, it shows that the NHS disproportionately holds disabled people through MHA detentions. Specifically, looking at the crude rate, we can see that the NHS detains disabled people more than four and half times the rate it does non-disabled people. This was around 20 non-disabled people per 100,000 non-disabled population, to 92 disabled people per 100,000 of the disabled population.

    NHS services were also more likely to detain disabled people for slightly longer, though the disparity wasn’t especially significant. In particular, the data showed that for disabled patients, the upper quartile was 62 days in detention. It means that the NHS held around 25% of disabled patients for longer than two months. For non-disabled people, the upper quartile was 56 days – just a little short of a week less.

    Obviously, the data’s incompleteness also likely makes all this a notable underestimate. It’s highly probable there are many more disabled people among the ‘unknown’ figure. However, the data we could obtain highlights two important things nonetheless.

    The first is that public authorities are considerably more likely to wield the MHA against disabled people. The second is how the government and NHS doesn’t even require inpatient facilities to consistently record this. That second one is a failure of transparency – and makes it harder to hold health services to account for the first.

    NHS detentions in areas with a significant disabled population

    Since complete data doesn’t exist, the Canary decided to interrogate the broader Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS). Obviously, we couldn’t establish a more accurate rate of disabled people’s detentions under the MHA with this. However, there was still significant information we could derive from it nonetheless if we compared some data-points with other available datasets.

    The following were the ‘top’ ten sub-ICBs with the highest rates of detention proportional to their populations:

    • Greater Manchester 14L – 935 detentions (164.3 per 100,000 people)
    • North Central London – 2,245 (158.5)
    • Lancashire & South Cumbria – 215 (151.9)
    • South East London – 2,540 (141.4)
    • North West London – 2,920 (138)
    • North East London – 2,705 (133.4)
    • Birmingham & Solihull – 1,730 (125.8)
    • Cheshire & Merseyside – 610 (122.8)
    • Lancashire & South Cumbria 009 – 190 (122)
    • Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent – 260 (122)

    So, the Canary explored these locations in the context of the 2021 census’s data on disability.

    The sub-ICB locations didn’t always match up completely with the census data. This is because the census uses a different area unit – Local Authority Districts (LADs). It meant that some sub-ICBs actually included a number of LADs. Therefore, the Canary tallied these up to be able to compare the data.

    While most boundaries did align once we’d done this, a couple covered a slightly different area. For the most part however, these were only marginally different, so we felt they would still give us a decent approximation nonetheless.

    We identified that six of the ten sub-ICBs with the highest rates of detention fell into the top two quintiles (top 20%). This means that there are proportionally more disabled people living in these ICB areas. You can see the data below for these ten sub-ICBs. The darker the shade of the cell, denotes the higher the quintile. The Canary has based these quintiles on age-standardised disabled census data for England across 309 LADs.

    Worse than this outside London

    However, as the table above demonstrates, London sub-ICBs appeared to skew the results. Notably, the London sub-ICBs each covered an area with a significantly larger population than the majority of other locations. This ranged from a little over 1.4 million people in the North Central London sub-ICB, to just over two million in the North West London Sub-ICB. With the exception of Birmingham & Solihull sub-ICB, at 1.3 million people, the rest in the top ten for MHA detentions had populations an order of magnitude smaller – all well below a million.

    On this basis, the Canary also looked at the data excluding those sub-ICBs. In this instance, the sub-ICBs with the highest rates outside London all fell within the top two quintiles for the percentage of their population disabled. Similarly, all but one of these sat in the top quintile for the percentage of the population that reported they were “disabled a lot” in the 2021 census. Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent ICBs was the sole exception. However, it still came within the second highest quintile.

    Of course, from the limited data we have on MHA detentions with regards to disability status, there’s no way of knowing completely if the NHS is more likely to detain disabled people under the MHA. However, this data comparison does show us that sub-ICBs where there’s a higher population of disabled people, and more severely disabled people more specifically, have high rates of detentions.

    We obviously can’t definitively draw a causal link from this. Even so, the correlation raises questions over the potential for one. It therefore underscores a vital reason why the NHS should record and publish data on disability demographics in its statistical releases.

    Intersectional injustices probable – but we have no data to properly show it

    The lack of data also means the NHS doesn’t publish disability status alongside the rest of its regular output. And this brings up other problematic limitations. Significantly, we can’t cross-tabulate this with any other demographic.

    In other words, it means we can’t explore whether public health authorities detain disabled people who are multiply-marginalised more frequently either. Of course, it is more than likely the case that they do.

    What we do know is the following. For April 2023 to March 2024:

    • Black people were the most overrepresented in MHA detentions data. The NHS held Black people in detention with a crude rate of 239. By contrast, white people turned up in the data at a crude rate of just 69.5. Essentially, the NHS detained Black people more than three times the rate it did white people.
    • Similarly, authorities detained other racially minoritised demographics more frequently as well.
    • The same could be said for the most deprived patients – cropping up at a crude rate of 151. This compared to just 43 for the least deprived. Again then, this meant that the most deprived citizens were overrepresented in the data, at more than three times the rate of the least deprived. Overall, the more deprived a person was under the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), the more likely they’d be detained under the MHA.
    • Age was another notable factor. People between the ages of 18 to 34 were the most likely to be detained. This was at a rate of 136 per 100,000 of that age group’s population.

    In short, the NHS detained young, Black, and poor people disproportionately more than other demographic groups. It’s highly plausible that disabled people from these demographics are more likely to face the threat of detentions as well.

    We can glean an insight into this in the detention data of learning disabled and autistic people. In the latest data from November 2024, the NHS was detaining Black learning disabled and autistic people at more than twice the rate of white learning disabled and autistic folks.

    Given that we know there are huge health inequalities and outcomes for poor, racially minoritised, and disabled communities, and how these often intersect, this is information the public should have access to in the context of MHA detentions.

    Ableist abuse baked in in the NHS

    Ultimately, if disabled people are overrepresented in mental health detentions as the data we do have suggests, it’s highly plausible there are more cases like Carla and Millie. That is, authorities and public health services weaponising the MHA to psychologise chronically ill and disabled patients.

    Judging by what we know about the rife psychologisation of ME patients, and systemic ableism across the healthcare system, this wouldn’t be an improbable scenario. Moreover, the continued overuse and abuse of detention for learning disabled and autistic people like Megan, Holly, and Saffron, also corroborates this as a significant possibility.

    To treat Carla, Millie, Megan, Holly, and Saffron’s stories as isolated incidents would be to miss the point. This is that a system and medical professionals quick to psychologise neurodivergence, physiological diseases, and conditions they do not understand, is making people in crisis the problem, rather than recognising it’s this ableist system itself which is the problem, and obtuse medical arrogance in the face of this, the crisis.

    As I previously highlighted, the NHS has actually ramped up its use of so-called ‘restrictive interventions’ in inpatient units. Notably, in November 2024, staff used physical, mechanical, and chemical restraints, seclusion and segregation, against 720 learning disabled and autistic patients. This was across 7,615 separate incidences while in mental health detention.

    Technically, the NHS doesn’t treat these ‘restrictive interventions’ as abuse. However, it’s hard to see how drugging someone involuntarily, using force to restrain them, handcuffing, or placing them in solitary confinement could be seen as anything other than the inhumane, abusive response to a person in extreme distress that it is.

    In other words, abuse is baked into the model of detentions under the MHA. And that model interacts with the institutional ableism, classism, and racism within the healthcare system. In short, it systematically devalues disabled, poor, Black and brown lives.

    No transparency, no accountability, but no one cares

    Ultimately, the fact the NHS doesn’t actually publish information on any on disabled people in detention is hugely problematic. It’s leaving disabled patients like Carla and Millie at the mercy of gross misapplications of the MHA. And it’s likely there are many more stories like theirs going ignored and unheard.

    Crucially, without regular data, it inhibits the opportunity for broader scrutiny of this use and abuse of the MHA against disabled patients. But it seems, no one in power – be it the NHS, or government – appears to be asking vital questions about the rate of disabled people in detention. And that should really be seen for the serious scandal it is too.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disability Rights UK and Eat Breath Thrive give crucial evidence to Assisted Dying Committee

    Disabled witnesses and people with lived experience of mental health conditions giving evidence to the Assisted Dying Bill committee have spelled out to members how the bill moving to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill patients has “fundamental flaws”. In particular, a witness speaking to issues around coercion and eating disorders posed an imperative and soul-searching question to the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • 1 in 3 people are now experiencing mental health issues due to money

    According to the 2024 Pepper Money Specialist Lending Study one in three people say financial stress has had an impact on their mental health. The connection between managing debt and mental health has become more apparent, especially as people navigate the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Further research found that over 8.38 million people have encountered issues like missed payments or County Court Judgements over the past three years.

    This issue comes into even sharper focus around Blue Monday, often dubbed the most depressing day of the year, which falls on 20 January, a time when financial pressures from Christmas spending collide with the reality of winter bills. For many, this day epitomises the struggles of managing debt and mental health, showing the need for proactive support during this challenging period.

    Pepper Money’s 2024 Specialist Lending Study shines a light on the growing connection between money worries and mental health challenges. The research highlights how financial pressures, like dealing with debt, are adding pressure on many people, underscoring the need for support and solutions to ease the stress and find financial stability.

    The cost of living crisis and its impact on UK finances

    With energy bills and food prices continuing to rise, 57% of people in the UK are finding their disposable income shrinking. As a result, many are relying on credit cards to cover basic essentials. This increased reliance on credit is leading to a growing number of households struggling to keep up with their day-to-day expenses. 20% of people have already fallen behind on at least one household bill, highlighting the financial strain many are under.

    Alongside the challenges of managing household bills, securing a mortgage or staying on top of repayments has become a growing concern for many. 78% of people are worried about how the current economy could impact their mortgage options.

    The challenge to save money is a big challenge for many Brits, with Pepper Money’s study showing that 41% of people are either saving less or not saving at all. Without a financial cushion, even a small, unexpected expense – like a car repair or a medical bill – can throw someone into a tricky situation. Relying on credit to cover these costs only adds to the debt cycle, and as financial stress builds, so does the strain on mental health. Financial worries and mental well-being are closely linked. Research from the Health Foundation showed that 63% of people who had no debt experienced low or no anxiety.

    Generational differences in financial stress are significant, with younger generations facing distinct challenges compared to the older generation. The 2024 Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey reveals that both Gen Z and Millennials report high levels of financial insecurity, with around 60% living paycheck to paycheck.

    What can be done about finance and mental health?

    One practical solution for managing debt is consolidation. For those with multiple high-interest debts, consolidating them into a single, more manageable payment can reduce monthly outgoings, helping to ease the financial pressure a little.

    This can be achieved in different ways, including second-charge mortgages, which allow homeowners to borrow against their property’s equity without affecting their existing mortgage. By lowering monthly repayments, individuals can free up more disposable income, making it easier to cover essentials and work towards building savings.

    Focusing on debt reduction, budgeting, and savings, can help people regain confidence in their financial future, reducing the load of debt in a responsible way.

    The need for financial solutions that address both immediate pressures and long-term goals will continue to grow. Promoting smart management of debts can help individuals weather the financial challenges ahead with more peace of mind.

    Mental health charities like Mind offer valuable resources to help people manage the emotional side of money worries. Speaking to a mental health professional can provide strategies for coping with anxiety and stress caused by financial challenges. Additionally, seeking advice from a financial advisor or a broker can help individuals take control of their financial situation, offering practical steps to manage debt and highlighting the options open to them that could ease the pressure.

    Empowering yourself

    Ryan McGrath, director of secured loans at Pepper Money, said:

    Financial stress can have a significant impact on people’s lives, making it essential to approach money management proactively. By enhancing financial literacy and understanding how to budget, save, and manage debt, individuals can not only improve their financial stability but also reduce the anxiety that often comes with financial uncertainty. When people feel equipped to make sound financial decisions, it empowers them to face challenges with greater confidence and resilience.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

  • In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves

    It’s been 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. 

    But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. 

    “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

    This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • REVEALED: MSM disproportionately targets mental health-related DWP claimants in attack articles

    Disabled people living with mental health conditions came on the receiving end of an exponential surge in corporate media attacks against benefit claimants in 2024.

    Across the year, the right-wing press cranked up its concerted campaign to vilify chronically ill and disabled claimants more than eleven-fold. But significantly, over half of this coverage featured references to mental health as a leading factor in the recent post-pandemic-height rise in claims.

    Of course, the substantial uptick in attention on claimants with mental health conditions could have devastating ramifications in the real world. The Canary’s analysis comes amidst “senior government” sources tipping off the Telegraph that Labour Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers plan to proceed with some iteration of the former Conservative government’s brutal Personal Independence Payment (PIP) reforms.

    Already then, this media-manufactured outrage is serving as a convenient pretext for the Labour government to unleash an ideological swathe of new austerity assaults to the welfare system.

    It’s all a crucial reminder of how the right-wing manoeuvres to single out disabled demographics as undeserving of social security support.

    Corporate media sizing up scapegoats

    The Canary unveiled that in 2024, the corporate media enormously ramped up its scapegoating of disability benefit claimants.

    Specifically, coverage of disability benefits in the Telegraph, the Times, and the Daily Mail together sky-rocketed more than 1130% from 2023’s output.

    But notably, the Canary’s research also found that the three outlets had certain marginalised demographics in their sights in particular.

    The outlets honed in on mental health within the context of disability benefits and unemployment specifically in at least 23 articles (7.7%). In total, the three outlets put out 147 articles either focusing on mental health and disability benefits, or mentioning the two. Notably, the Canary only included articles that did so in a way that made a connection between the two, or at minimum implied it.

    It meant that nearly half the articles in the Canary’s data drew attention to mental health in the context of disability benefit claims and unemployment. They published the majority of these – 135 – in 2024 alone.

    What’s more, they weren’t the only marginalised group the mainstream hate-merchants put in the firing line for benefit clampdowns either. Neurodivergent stigma featured heavily across the corporate outlets’ output too – again showing a marked increase in 2024.

    Articles attributed the rise in disability benefit claims to the increase in claims from autistic people, and people with ADHD. There were 19 pieces (6.4%) that specifically focused on these in the three outlets’ coverage. All but one of these they wrote in 2024.

    Neurodivergence and the connection to disability benefits cropped up across 39 articles within our analysis time-frame all told (13.1%). The Telegraph published just two of these in 2023, while neither the Times nor the Daily Mail linked these in articles before 2024.

    The results offer more proof – if we needed it – that the right-wing press and government have a blatant joined-up agenda to strip disabled people of their benefits wherever they can whip up politically-motivated moral panic.

    Preying on the mental health pandemic fallout

    Where mental health was concerned, a clear narrative emerged. Specifically, the outlets visibly capitalised on the Covid pandemic’s psychological fallout. In particular, they visibly did so to prey on claimants with mental health conditions.

    Articles frequently posited pandemic lockdowns and school closures as a key factor in the surge of mental health problems among young people. Naturally, the right-wing press has been quick to condemn Covid protection measures that helped to shield more clinically vulnerable populations at the height of the pandemic. A Times article in January 2024 proclaimed that:

    The effect of lockdown and school closures on the mental health of young people has also meant more need help with everyday life, officials believe

    By contrast, as for the trauma of living through a global deadly and disabling pandemic, it was tumbleweed from the trio. So between them, outlets simultaneously blamed protections that were vital for keeping chronically ill and disabled people safe, while at the same time managing to punch down on people psychologically disabled by the pandemic. Of course, leave it to the right-wing foghorns to deal a double-blow of ableism in one.

    However, more than this, it’s patently clear that the aim was to invalidate new cases of mental health diagnoses.

    Merry-go-round of media-political ableism

    The Canary’s data uncovered a chicken-and-egg style dance between the corporate media and halls of power.

    We identified how conversations on mental health and disability benefits first appeared noticeably in January 2023.

    Then, in September 2023, then DWP boss Mel Stride announced proposals for a dangerous tightening of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Notably, this included honing in on mental health claimants.

    Significantly, the Tories’ response to the consultation stated how the government would:

    specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA [limited capability for work-related activity] Substantial Risk should apply.

    In other words, the DWP will decide who this descriptor will apply to going forward. Or, in short, it will obviously move the goalposts to exclude many people living with mental health conditions.

    Up to that point in September, we had found at least seven articles that disparaged the rise in mental health-related claims.

    Of course, we can’t say for certain that these shaped the government’s thinking. However, it seems no coincidence that right-wing talking heads had been harping on about it not long before it took root in the establishment echo-chambers of Westminster.

    Arguably, timing is everything where the corporate press treads. So, it was also no mistake that it started stepping up its vitriol against claimants with mental health conditions in 2024 either.

    In other words, the Telegraph, Times, and Daily Mail planted the seed in the public consciousness. Policy-makers took up this convenient narrative and scapegoat. And on the merry-go-round of client media revolving door politics continued.

    A timeline of tyrannising mental health disabled claimants

    It’s easy to see how the corporate media fear-mongering then paved the way for politicians making a political football out of disabled people with mental health conditions. In fact, the Canary’s data helped plot a notable timeline of this very development as well.

    Between January and the end of March 2024, the three posted a flurry of articles that directly honed in on this connection:

    • 7 January – Times: ‘Millions more will claim disability benefits as mental illness soars’
    • 8 January – Daily Mail: ‘Disability benefits for anxiety and depression have risen 200-FOLD in a decade’
    • 20 January – Telegraph: ‘Are we talking ourselves into a mental health crisis?’
    • 14 March – Times: ‘Benefits data reveals extent of claims over mental health’

    Cue, a disgusting diatribe from Stride. On 20 March, he opined to the Telegraph on all things stereotyping and stigmatising mental health. He made classic bogus contention of work as a health outcome, claiming that:

    we seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health

    If that weren’t bad enough, Stride took to the dismissive and downright despicable diminishing of people’s mental health. He derided it as the “normal ups and downs of human life” and a case of people “feeling rather down and bluesy”.

    The corporate media had been banging on about all this so vehemently, that it gave Stride the perfect ready-made justification for his atrocious claims. And that of course was the entire point.

    Welfare reforms incoming…

    It should therefore come as little surprise that the Tory government followed this up with a raft of ludicrous welfare reform proposals too. Less surprising still: that people with mental health conditions were a particular target.

    In April 2024, the Tories launched their toxic proposals for changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP). As with the WCA changes, this would also legislate to shut people with mental health conditions out from the disability benefits system.

    Naturally though, it wasn’t the end of it when Labour took to the helm either. Unsurprisingly, Labour’s DWP chief hate-hawker Liz Kendall has certainly been living up to her arch-right-wing ideology. While she made a big song and dance that she wasn’t jumping on her predecessor’s “bluesy” bandwagon – she basically did anyway.

    In November, she suggested that “self-diagnosed” mental health had contributed to the rise in people unable to work. So, that would be: people unable to access underfunded mental health diagnosis services then? What’s more, it was all wrapped up in a grandstanding over sanction threats, naturally.

    However, more than her disgraceful diatribes, she has gone pedal to the metal on policy-making as well. For instance, job coaches in more mental health settings is one example of Labour amping up this hostile offensive.

    Moreover, lo and behold, Labour appears to now be mulling some of these PIP reforms too. And if it seems a little too on the nose that anonymous “senior government” sources were spilling the tea to the Telegraph, it really shouldn’t. This is what the client media do best.

    The DWP is scratching the Telegraph’s back with an insider tip off. Conversely, the dutiful mouthpiece is doing the government’s dirty work, in preemptively announcing it. A shameless PR-type move to lessen the reputational blow this Spring? It seems highly plausible.

    No different for neurodivergent claimants

    The dataset also reinforced the fact that it has been a similar story for neurodivergent claimants.

    The first piece the Canary found goading the link was a Telegraph article in August 2023 titled:

    Number of children on disability benefit jumps after surge in ADHD and autism cases

    Of course, many of the articles revolved around this bogus notion the right-wing scapegoat-mongers have been spouting. Specifically, this is that healthcare professionals are over-diagnosing people with ADHD and autism.

    Naturally, the implication in the coverage seems to be that autistic people, and people with ADHD shouldn’t be claiming disability benefits either. Broadly, the articles are also suggesting that many have been wrongly diagnosed, and ergo again, should not be eligible to claim disability-based social support.

    The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has been documenting this. In August, she debunked one of these shameful tirades. And notably, the article was emblematic of the broader discourse at play across the Canary’s dataset. For one, it had all the hallmarks of the most classic ableist tropes around neurodivergence.

    Overdiagnosis made its cameo appearance, as did a sweep of antiquated terms which Charlton-Dailey incisively pointed out the outlet had used to “delegitimise the conditions”.

    Significantly though, it was the Telegraph’s deployment of misleading statistics to underpin its nonsense claims that was most characteristic of the articles in our dataset.

    In its case, it made a number of deliberate categorical conflations to misrepresent the figures. Charlton-Dailey explained that:

    Despite linking the two and putting the main total of 730,000 kids with DLA – much, much further down, the article itself explains that less than half of claims (337,000) were for “neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and Asperger’s syndrome”. They then pulled out that 72,500 kids claimed benefits for “hyperkinetic syndrome – also known as ADHD”, despite making it sound like a separate figure this will have actually gone in with the 337k.

    Separately, Fullfact also eviscerated the statistical claims of the piece. The article (still) claims that:

    The number of parents claiming disability benefits for children with conditions such as ADHD and autism has surged by 200,000 since lockdown, new figures reveal.

    However, this simply isn’t true. As Fullfact detailed, that increase instead:

    refers to the total increase in DLA claims for under-18s, rather than only those related to ADHD and autism.

    Naturally, there were other problematic parts of the article too. But the bottom line was that it was using inaccurate, manipulated figures to make neurodivergent claimants a target of public acrimony.

    More mental-health related bile from policy-makers

    In reality, neurodivergent claimants actually made up a small fraction of the overall increases. Not that it should matter anyway. Regardless, it hasn’t stopped outlet’s spewing a slew of headlines all making the same bogus over-egged connection.

    Other shitty takes on neurodivergent disability claims? What the Times outlandishly branded “a new industry” of “disability influencers”. It tracks that the ableist bigot soapbox would frame a community of disabled people helping other disabled people with the notoriously inaccessible disability benefits process, in this egregiously derogatory way. The bullshit insinuation is of course that neurodivergent people are gaming the system – go figure.

    And like with the media fanfare over mental health claims, politicians haven’t passed up the opportunity to pounce on all this either. Amidst his vile comments on mental health in April, Stride also questioned whether people with ADHD and learning disabled people should be entitled to disability benefits.

    A warning signal for more harm

    Predictably, the right-wing outlets have continued with all this in 2025. Less than two weeks in, and establishment shill the Telegraph was platforming former New Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s odious warnings to the government on mental health. He revived the ghost of DWP Tory past, parroting Stride’s facetious “ups and downs” of life drivel. In tandem, Kendall’s self-diagnosis claims made a cameo appearance. Once again, it perfectly illustrated how indistinguishable Labour’s welfare rhetoric is from the Tories.

    Ultimately, disabled people know all too well where corporate media scapegoating leads. This latest maligning of mental health and neurodivergence is invariably a warning signal for the next round of callous cuts and reforms.

    Of course, they won’t be the only demographics in line for this. The Canary has documented how it’s part of a broader-scale attack on disabled claimants en masse.

    We don’t know the details of what Labour has in store yet this Spring. However, all chatter from the government so far points in the direction of some form of the dangerous WCA and PIP reforms. What is clear is that if it takes its cue from the corporate media’s crackdown circus, it will spell more misery and harm for neurodivergent folks and disabled people with mental health conditions alike.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • If you rightly have anxiety over Trump’s presidency – here’s what you can do to help yourself

    With the last of any celebrations over, what is left is for some people a sickly feeling as they face the coming year. That might be because of what’s going on in the world, with wars, acts of terror and the uncertainty of a second term with a more vindictive Donald Trump on the horizon. Or it could be due to issues much closer to home, such as managing financially or dealing with difficult relationships. We all have worries and uncertainty that can often cause symptoms we might describe as ‘anxiety.’

    But anxiety is only one part of three ways of feeling that often get lumped together. It’s important to disentangle these because the treatment options for them can be different.

    So, what is anxiety, hyperarousal and agitation, and how are they different from each other? 

    What is anxiety?

    If you can imagine a pyramid that has three levels, anxiety is at the bottom and underpins the other two. 

    You can have anxiety or feel anxious when you are worried, tense or afraid. For example, you might feel anxious during big events like job interviews, waiting for results regarding your health, or trying to find something important that you’ve lost. It can produce symptoms like:

    • A racing heartbeat
    • Mild sweating
    • Mild problems with sleep
    • A churning stomach

    But with anxiety you can, to a certain extent, ‘switch off’ by distracting yourself from your worries and preoccupations through, for example, work or listening to music or producing some art.

    Being able to distract herself is something Souris, who has suffered from long-term mental health problems, can do sometimes when she is anxious. She said: “I try to redirect myself towards some ‘purposeful’ physical activity like cleaning my home, such as washing the floor.”

    If you can’t distract or ‘redirect’ anxious feelings or find ways to switch-off and control these worries and preoccupations, then it might be you move up the pyramid to the next level that is ‘hyperarousal’.

    Spiralling

    This is the situation Souris has been in. She said:

    Sometimes my inability to switch-off is just because I’m interested in a topic. But I wish I could shut-it out and go to sleep but instead I’m up for hours and hours arguing with myself.

    When it spirals, I wish I could put my head in a container. Somewhere impenetrable where nothing gets in or out. It makes me feel like I want some sort of anaesthetic or respite.

    This ‘spiralling’ can be a significant worsening of the anxiety symptoms and one area that’s particularly noticeable is in sleep. This is what Souris pointed to when she said she wanted some type of ‘anaesthetic’. Problems with sleep can include:

    • Nightmares,
    • Night sweats
    • A feeling that you didn’t sleep enough for the next day.

    Along with that you may feel hypervigilant – a feeling that you can’t relax even at calm moments, and you may experience physical symptoms such as muscle pains, tension headaches and migraines.

    A panic attack is when there is a period of sudden and intense anxiety with both psychological and physical symptoms such as

    • A racing heartbeat
    • Feeling faint, light-headed or dizzy, and that you are going to pass out.
    • Sweating, trembling fingers, shaking
    • Feeling like you’re losing control
    • Feeling sick
    • Shortness of breath.

    Such panic-attacks can be very distressing and it’s important to try and find out the triggers for what is causing them as well as get the appropriate therapy and treatment. Contact your GP or 111 to get further help and and look at the support from MIND on panic attacks:

    https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/anxiety-and-panic-attacks/panic-attacks/

    Or the support from the NHS:

    https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/feelings-symptoms-behaviours/feelings-and-symptoms/anxiety-fear-panic/

    Escalating symptoms

    After this comes agitation that sits at the top of the pyramid and is hyperarousal turned-up to maximum volume.  Agitation can be present due to anxiety alone or as part of other mental health problems, such as severe depression, psychosis or during a ‘manic’ phase when someone has bipolar affective disorder. It can be extremely serious as the person suffering might not be able to switch-off at all. Physically that might mean:

    • Pacing the floor,
    • wringing your hands

    But nothing works as you are so wound-up. Sleep is something you never think will ever happen again as you pace indoors, outdoors, throughout the day and night. Suicide is a danger with agitation as the constant agitation won’t stop no matter hard you try.

    Due to the potential danger, if you are or know someone who is feeling agitated, then it’s important to get help as soon as possible. If a GP appointment can’t be found soon enough, contact 111 and explain the symptoms – it might mean an A&E visit is required. 

    How to get help for anxiety

    The NHS treats anxiety seriously with several diagnosed conditions that have anxiety at their core such as generalised anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

    If you feel you need support with anxiety, and anxiety related issues you can now refer yourself for free ‘Talking Therapies’ like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) from the NHS without having to wait for a GP appointment.

    Here is the link for finding this therapy: https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/mental-health/find-an-nhs-talking-therapies-service

    NHS Talking Therapies is the first line of treatment  for people with anxiety https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/nhs-talking-therapies/ and this can be helpful for many people.

    If you don’t want to refer yourself for Talking Therapies you can still get the referral through your GP, if you prefer it this way. Also, see a GP if:

    • You’re struggling to cope with anxiety, fear or panic
    • If the things you are trying –for example the talking therapies, are not helping
    • If you’re anxious about a health condition

    As we land in 2025, it’s completely normal to feel worried about what’s going to happen this year. But if you can’t ‘switch off’ and these worries are impacting on your daily life – making it difficult to do what you should be doing, then it’s important to seek out help.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ruth Hunt

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • St John Ambulance issues stark warning over workplace health in 2025

    England’s leading first aid charity St John Ambulance has declared 2025 the year of holistic workplace health, warning that organisations must proactively address outdated approaches to first aid in the workplace to best protect their employees.

    St John Ambulance: first aid is not what it used to be

    As businesses reopen for the first full working week of the year, employers are being urged to recognise that the traditional concept of workplace first aid is dangerously outdated.

    First aid is no longer solely about treating physical illness or injury, or maintaining emergency first aid kits, but integrating both physical and mental health first aid to holistically keep workers safe.

    Between 2023 and 2024, across the UK there were 33.7 million working days lost due to workplace injury or illness. Sick leave due to stress, depression, or anxiety accounted for 16.4 million (about half) of those lost workdays.

    A core component of wellbeing

    Lisa Sharman, head of Education and Commercial Training at St John Ambulance, said:

    Workplaces that do not upgrade their approach to first aid to incorporate mental health first aid, and a focus on mental wellbeing, are in significant danger of failing to provide holistic care for their employees.

    She added:

    First aid – both physical and mental – is a core component of employee wellbeing – and in 2025, it demands a more sophisticated approach from businesses.

    Mental health first aid focuses on identifying, understanding, and responding to signs of mental health issues or crises, providing initial support and guidance to professional help if needed.

    Mental wellbeing is about proactively maintaining good mental health through practices like stress management, resilience building, and creating a supportive environment. Together, they complement each other: mental wellbeing promotes prevention and ongoing health, while mental health first aid equips people to respond effectively when issues arise.

    Mental and physical health are deeply interconnected. The workplace has changed dramatically in recent years, health requirements are evolving, and people’s expectations of their employer have shifted.

    A holistic workplace first aid strategy draws on physical health interventions, mental health support, preventative training, and integrated wellness programmes.

    By investing in holistic health approaches, organisations can reduce incidents and build more resilient, productive teams.

    As we start the new year, we are calling on organisations to adapt in order to proactively contribute to improved employee resilience, reduced workplace incidents, and enhanced overall organisational health.

    Workplace illness: a growing problem

    Workplace illness is a rapidly growing economic cost for England employers. Of the £21.6 billion cost to business during 2022-2023, £7.1 billion was lost to workplace injury and more than twice that amount to ill health.

    St John Ambulance provides a range of physical and mental health first aid courses for the workplace that adopt a uniquely practical approach to creating competent and confident workplace first aiders.

    St John Ambulance is also one of the most trusted providers for first aid training, with organisations across England rating their courses at 4.9 out of 5, based on more than 40,000 reviews.

    The St John Ambulance Workplace First Aid Training Courses range from First Aid and Emergency First Aid at Work, to specialist training on defibrillators, pediatric first aid, annual refreshers and more.

    The St John Ambulance Mental Health First Aid Training Courses range from Mental Health Awareness to Manager training, e-learning modules, Workplace First Aider and Workplace First Responder courses, helping workers to spot the signs and respond to the needs of a person experiencing a mental health issue.

    St John Ambulance can help

    Employers have a legal duty of care to ensure that employees are provided with a safe working environment. They must take reasonable care to prevent personal injury (including mental or physical harm) that may arise in the workplace. Employers can address first-aid provision in the workplace with the latest Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance.

    For more information, and to book a training course with St John Ambulance, visit https://www.sja.org.uk/course-information/make-the-biggest-difference-in-your-workplace/

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Indians in Flood-Prone Areas Are on Front Lines of Growing Mental Health Crisis

    Whenever farmer Namdev Kamble visits a doctor, he remembers the hundreds of trees that once surrounded him. “We live in the same area today, but everything around us has changed completely,” he said in a voice heavy with nostalgia and loss. On his way to his farmland in Shirdhon village of India’s Maharashtra state, Kamble would see the giant tamarind, babul, neem, and several other types of…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.