Understanding Anxiety and Depression: A Call for Better Mental Health Support

If you have anxiety or depression and similar conditions, according to the Tory defector Reform MP Robert Jenrick, you will no longer get disability benefits, and there would be efforts to encourage you into work. It would also bring back in-person assessments and need a clinical diagnosis to get benefits.

Let’s break this down to help these politicians and others understand what even mild anxiety and depression are. We will also help the same people to understand what other mental health issues are.

• Anxiety conditions

Anxiety, more so social anxiety, is a dreadful condition that can leave someone stuck at home. Even in mild cases, someone with it will find it hard even just to go into a shop. For those that do not suffer, it is normal to think they are either drugged up or drunk due to excessive sweating, the stressed movements, the vulnerability showing, and the urge to escape whatever situation is causing them so much alarm (Fight or Flight).

The condition often arises because of childhood trauma. Some people, though, do not have any symptoms for a while until something happens, and they develop an anxiety disorder after being perfectly normal beforehand, which is a shock to the body for the person affected.

It will take some time to recover, and with the right help and medication, people can get back to doing things again. It is about seeing a psychologist regularly and maybe even a support worker to get you out and about on a daily basis, doing something that you enjoy, stepping into life again one step at a time.

Unfortunately, politicians like Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick and others have somehow forgotten that our Mental Health System is broken. If a GP can do a referral for a psychologist, it will be time-limited; everything now is time-limited to six sessions, which is not good enough for someone suffering with anxiety.

• Depression

Depression is not a cold, it’s not hay fever or a rash that you can shake off like the politicians and those who have no understanding of what it is.

It comes in different ways; maybe a death of a family member, job loss, relationship/marriage breakup, and other life-changing things. Having addictions can also cause depression; some of those people end up so bad they commit suicide.

For politicians and others who have no understanding, even mild depression is a serious problem that can only be resolved over time with the care of psychology or even psychiatry. Some people may even need to be sectioned for their own safety. For Jenerick and others to make it a trivial condition, even if mild, is a disgrace.

Medications will help but are not a magic wand. Someone with depression needs lots of time and the help to shake off the condition, but they will likely have to be under services for a long time.

Politicians are also attacking GPs and psychologists since, indirectly, they are claiming those with mild anxiety and depression are ‘putting it on.’ This is basically the same as calling them all ‘useless’ and believing everything; this, of course, is not true. You would surely expect all GPs to notice when someone is having them on!

People with ADHD have both anxiety and depression, although they are born with the condition, as with Autism (neurodivergence). Once diagnosed, they need specialist help and medications; some of these medications are life-changing for some people.

They all deserve the disability benefits as it costs more to get the care they need, the things to help them through the day. So although Jenerick and others give anxiety and depression a ‘faker’ name or ‘sponger,’ they are clearly in need of doing some research.

Whilst many understand the cost of having so many people on benefits, others are forgetting that the last and definitely this current government caused the problems. Labour has almost killed off businesses; every week we see jobs being lost due to incompetence, simply put ‘How can we reduce the benefits bill without people going into well paid full time employment?’ There are no next to no jobs!