Professor Layard wants pschological therapy for all those people on incapacity benefit who are suffering from depression and other mental conditions. This would help them back to work, he suggests and save a lot of money in benefits.
Of course those familiar with The Welfare State We're In will know that I see this issue from a different angle. To me (and indeed to the government) at least a million people on incapacity benefit are in fact capable of work. Additionally they would be mentally in better shape if they worked. It is no co-incidence, in my view, that depression and back-ache are conditions that cannot be disproved and that these are the most common conditions enabling people to claim incapacity benefit.
Of course there are certainly people who are genuinely chronically depressed or who genuinely have terrible back-ache. But there are many others to whom this does not apply.
Indeed consider if there were genuinely so many deeply depressed people in existence. Britain would be a place suffused with depression. It could be called The Depressed Man of Europe, the Country That Couldn't Cheer Up or Glumovia.
If indeed this is a particularly depressed country by historical and international standards, why should this be? If it is true - and I agree that depression is more common than it used to be, though not as common as the incapacity benefits make it appear - I suggest it is because of the mentally depressing effect of unemployment and other aspects of the welfare state. It is a 'chicken and egg' debate. I suggest that the lack of insistence that people should get a job is one of the major causes of depression. (Another is the subsidy for unmarried, fatherless parenting.) Layard thinks that the depression leads to the unemployment.
The link to Layard and his works is here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits
Comments (5)
TrackBack (0)
Comments
an excellant book which confirmed many of my instictive fears about the the way our society has been misled about the benefits of the welfare state
Unfortunately there is a major factual mistake on page 11 ; Stanley Matthews scored three goals for Blackpool to beat Bolton 4-3 ! Please make sure that you correct this fundamental mistake in the next edition otherwise you will never get the man from the north to believe your analysis of the welfare state !
Posted by: graham smith at June 19, 2006 10:18 PM
Self sufficient people are among the happiest. A sense of accomplishment does not cause depression however dependency and a sense of worthlessness do.
Posted by: Windahl at June 21, 2006 03:03 PM
But we are labelled the depressed man of Europe - the Independent has tagged us as Dependency Britain because of the number of prescriptions that are issued for depression and they claim that our position is desperate:
Britain is in the grip of a damaging dependence on anti-depressant drugs such as Prozac, prompting calls from mental health experts for a radical rethink in the treatment of the 3.5 million people affected. The prescription of so-called "happy pills" has risen by more than 120 percent in the past decade amid soaring levels of depression and anxiety.I don't agree with that use of the statistics, however, it is a meme that is popular.
Yesterday we saw the release of a report that 1 in 10 Children Has A Mental Health Problem That Needs Treatment. Unsurprisingly, the children with the greatest incidence of mental health disorders or behavioural problems were predominantly those in low income or workless households. However, one reviewer finds the summary and associated comment striking for their "poverty of imagination" and their lack of costings.
Those Layard costings were a little suspect. However, at least they were costed. I don't have any idea what the associated costs would be if we were to accept the premise that 1 million children are in need of mental health treatment or they will become blighted, socially awkward generations who find it difficult to work.
Best - Tony
Posted by: Tony at June 22, 2006 11:22 AM
That you for operating your web site, which I have found to be very enlghting.
However, your web site clearly demonstrates just how narrow minded the middle class in our society realy are and you are most certainly not talking from experience.
The constant targeting of those that are attempting to merely survive within a system, that has been created in favour of those with wealth, will and does not help.
You should remember that those in power impose the system in which people from all walks of life have to survive.
In my opinion, it's those in power that should be addressed first and based upon experience, its those in power that are sucking the system with extortionate income for doing a less than satifactory job.
If the Media was not so bias, we might have a more just society. Who has created the society in which we live? They are the ones that should be held to account.
Stop picking on easy targets, that are taking very little from the system compared to those on the gravy train.
Posted by: JusMe at June 22, 2006 01:49 PM
Warning: file(http://63.247.138.2/~bartholo/randomquotes.dump) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No route to host in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/06/britain_the_dep.php on line 320
Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments. in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/06/britain_the_dep.php on line 320
Surely this is about diverting money to New Labour voters and increasing the Client State ?
Virtually every other policy is ....
Posted by: Paul at June 19, 2006 02:24 PM