A job is fundamental to our well-being. Of course there are the financial rewards, but work should be so much more than just our wages. It gives us purpose, structure and routine and can boost our self-esteem and mental health.
Yet I am constantly amazed that so many do not understand the importance and value of work. Just last week, Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said Britons should return to what he called the “old-fashioned belief” that work is good for us.
Stride focused on the rising numbers – especially among young people – who are unemployed due to mental health issues. That the satisfaction of work is considered ‘old-fashioned’ is both disturbing and discouraging.
Waking up knowing you have work ahead of you is often the best antidote to dealing with life’s other challenges, writes Dr Max Pemberton
Last week, Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said Britons should return to what he called the “old-fashioned belief” – that work is good for us.
The irony is that while many people don’t work (or are on long-term sick leave) due to mental health problems, there is good evidence that the best treatment for mild to moderate depression and anxiety is… work!
Waking up knowing you have work ahead of you is often the best antidote to dealing with life’s other challenges. Not only does it cost nothing, it puts you in touch with other people and it pays off!
I see many patients struggling with their mental health and I hate that they have been out of work for years – sometimes their entire lives. For many of them, a job would be far more helpful than any pill I could prescribe. But what I often encounter is the attitude that work is for other people, and that mental health problems automatically make work impossible.
When I was studying medicine, I lived with a group of friends in a flat on a council estate. It was well planned, with low-rise buildings, lots of greenery and trees. Our neighbors were nice, but it slowly dawned on me that no one worked in the household. The mother had a bad back, the father suffered from ‘stress’ and the two sons in their early twenties had depression. All claimed benefits.
As a doctor, I see people battling the most debilitating and life-altering diseases, who simply cannot work because their daily existence is destroyed by their condition. They deserve all the help the state has to offer.
But that was not the case with my neighbors, whose daily lives were not hindered in any way. Every day I watched the sons and their friends play a game of football in front of the apartment. And that is not the case with many others.
One patient I recently saw had been told that she was not eligible for disability living allowance because she was able to work. She called me a “sucker” for having a job and added that if I didn’t write a letter of support for her appeal, she would be harming herself and I would be the one to blame.
Believe me, I am the last person to downplay the impact of mental illness and the way it can destroy lives. But it is rare for people to be so incapacitated by depression that they can no longer work at all.
We know that unemployment and depression are inextricably linked, with the unemployed suffering from depression much more often than those in work. And those suffering from long-term depression will often move from unemployment benefits to sickness benefits, where they languish. Lifting people out of this spiral of hopelessness and instilling the idea that work will help them is a tough challenge. Yes, jobs can be boring and tiring at times, but I firmly believe this is better than the alternative.
That’s why we must continue to emphasize the value and importance of work for health and well-being. In the long term, this will not only reduce the number of people claiming benefits, it will also be therapeutic: a sensible and compassionate way to improve people’s mental wellbeing.
Tough love? Yes. But sometimes it is necessary.
Joe Wicks and I disagree on diets
Joe Wicks said he ‘ran on sugar’ as a child and thinks his love of foods like Wagon Wheels and jelly sandwiches is the cause of his behavioral problems
Fitness coach Joe Wicks has blamed ultra-processed foods for the explosion of young people being diagnosed with ADHD. Wicks said he “ran on sugar” as a child and thinks his love of foods like Wagon Wheels and jelly sandwiches is the cause of his own behavioral problems.
Food plays an important role in things like mood, but there is no evidence to show that foods or drinks high in sugar have a real effect on children’s behavior.
However, I agree with him that there are external factors at play in much of the ADHD epidemic. I worry that things like smartphones and multi-screening (watching TV while also on your tablet etc.), along with social media, where children are bombarded with short bits of information in quick succession, are partly responsible for the apparent collapse. in their attention span.
The French government has announced that it will fine patients who do not keep their GP appointments.
They have a different health care system than we do, but it’s an idea that’s been floated here over the years, and I can see why. The NHS wastes incredible amounts of taxpayers’ money on missed appointments every year – £220 million on GP appointments alone and around £1 billion in total when hospital appointments are included.
My view is that as long as we continue to view appointments as ‘free’, we don’t feel like there is a cost involved and therefore don’t value them.
I have done my best to research and understand the no-shows in my own clinic, to see how we can improve things. I spent a lot of time calling patients in the evenings and asking why they didn’t show up. Many of them had rather pathetic excuses (a discount day at Selfridges that they ‘couldn’t miss’ was one!)
However, I also discovered that there were some people who had genuine reasons and that there were quite a few instances where the administrative staff had made a mistake. Letters get lost, telephone lines are permanently busy. How can we ever be sure that the patient is really guilty?
Fines will only result in complaints and refusals to pay, and then what? It is likely that the NHS could end up spending more money chasing these fines than we could ever make from them.
Dr. Max prescribes: A pen and paper
Last week a brilliant study looked at the best way to deal with anger. The study found that running, deep breathing and screaming into a pillow all helped. But the most effective was writing down what made you angry on a piece of paper and then throwing it away! The method is so effective that feelings of anger are “almost completely” eliminated, scientists discovered.
A mother wants ketamine upgraded to Class A after her son died. Clare Rogers is right when she says it is more dangerous than many think. If it’s not fatal, it can still cause serious bladder problems; sometimes the bladder needs to be removed.