As Sunak persecutes the vulnerable with yet another crackdown on “sick note culture” and Starmer mumbles in complicit agreement to appease the Daily Mail, those with the least, anxiously await more Dickensian blame and deprivation that would make Mr Bumble proud.
To the compassion-poor, “mental illness;” is a spurious label, easily gained from woke gp’s to steal hard working, decent “taxpayers’ money”. (It’s only, “government funding” when they want to spend the money of course). A capitalist society has winners who achieve through hard work, skill, perseverance, intellect and sacrifice. But capitalism also has winners who achieve through family wealth and connections, bullying and exploiting others. (We’re spoilt for choice here).
To have winners, there must be losers and they are thus dependent on the intellect, compassion and social conscience of the winners.
But what happens when the powerless and vulnerable are demonised or dehumanised? We have too many examples from history written in thick red, deranged crayon. Why might we be a “sick note” culture? Because of the lazy and feckless poor and ill? Or perhaps because nearly two million people await NHS treatment for mental health issues? Or that CAMHS is basically so under resourced as to have now effectively shut the door on children in distress, leaving them to their own harmful coping mechanisms, becoming institutionalised to their incapacity? The closing of homelessness shelters, women’s refuges and the Sure Start scheme just might have an impact on mental health too.
But far easier to scapegoat, to politicise and play into lazy prejudice. By shifting the blame from those in power, to those in powerlessness, this narrative becomes salient and believed. (As the late Daniel Kannanmen said “all we see is all there is”).
Poverty, trauma, chronic stress, loneliness and physical illness all increase the chances of debilitating mental health. The solutions are unsexy, complex and garner few immediate votes.
We must acknowledge real mental illness does exist. It exists in the leader immune to social conscience, compassion and honesty. It exists in the leader who heaps hatred onto those most in need. It exists in the leader who grins as he takes another vital few quid from those in despair. A healthy mind could never do that.