In case you missed it, UK health secretary Wes Streeting has just had a brainwave. If you\u2019re a millennial, and this thing called \u2018life\u2019 is your problem, then apparently talking therapy on the NHS is the solution. Never fear about the dearth of semi-decent job opportunities, the lack of affordable housing, the sky-high energy and food bills, or the rest of it \u2013 what you need is a space to speak your truth. Let the NHS sort that out for you, and you\u2019ll be back at the coalface in no time.<\/p>\n
There are now 4.4million working-age people<\/a> on sickness or incapacity benefits in England and Wales \u2013 a figure that has grown by a whopping 1.2million since 2019. Nearly 50 per cent of new claims are made on mental-health grounds, while one in four young people<\/a> has a diagnosable mental-health condition. It\u2019s painfully obvious that Labour must tackle the rise in both mental-health problems and worklessness \u2013 but a few weeks of talking therapy, as is being offered, is barely a sticking-plaster solution.<\/p>\n Last year, Streeting warned that mental-health problems are being overdiagnosed<\/a> and there is a danger of pathologising normal feelings. Yet only a few weeks later, he backtracked. He apologised for his \u2018divisive\u2019 comments<\/a> in the Guardian and launched an independent inquiry<\/a> into why mental-health diagnoses have been on the rise, especially among younger people.<\/p>\n Now, despite still not having the answers (the inquiry is due to report back in the summer<\/a>), Streeting has this week pledged to offer talking-therapy sessions to nine million people<\/a>, costing an estimated \u00a369million<\/a>, in a bid to get millennials off benefits and back into work.<\/p>\n Firstly, if the government itself has admitted it doesn\u2019t yet know the causes of our growing mental-health crisis, why is it pledging all of this costly assistance now? Why not wait for the results of the independent inquiry Streeting himself commissioned? And while free therapy might sound useful, we\u2019re only actually talking about a month of that under the current provision \u2013 that\u2019s five or so appointments. As anyone who has ever done therapy (as I have, for many years) will tell you, most private therapists recommend at least a course of six months of sessions. If you\u2019ve got anything from PTSD to bipolar disorder, or have an ongoing serious mental-mealth condition that requires regular close monitoring, five sessions isn\u2019t going to even touch the sides, let alone lead you to thriving in paid work.<\/p>\n Enjoying spiked?<\/p>\n Why not make an instant, one-off donation?<\/p>\n We are funded by you. Thank you!<\/p>\n \n \u00a35 Choose an amount<\/p>\n \n Donate now\n <\/p>\n \n Please wait… <\/p>\n Even more pressingly, while all this help is being pledged for a range of mental-health conditions currently affecting worklessness, people with the most severe problems are frequently slipping through the cracks, especially those suffering with personality disorders or psychotic delusions.<\/p>\n Make no mistake \u2013 I am a believer in the power of therapy. It has saved my life at least once, no exaggeration. But there are some serious caveats to that. Firstly, the therapy that saved me when on the brink of a serious psychotic episode last summer was the private kind I had to pay a clinical psychologist for. That clinical psychologist was the only professional support I had when a junior NHS psychiatrist took me off my long-term anti-psychotic meds, \u2018as an experiment\u2019 (her words), despite the fact I had been sectioned for a psychotic break in the past.<\/p>\n Secondly, talking therapy works best over a prolonged stretch of time. Streeting\u2019s proposed month of help is enough to stir up all sorts of deeper issues, but not enough to actually deal with them. \u2018When you change the things you look at, the things you look at change\u2019, therapists are fond of saying. But while this might make for a natty wall hanging, it doesn\u2019t actually alter the fundamental realities of your life.<\/p>\n Thirdly, talking about stuff that is troubling you is valuable, but it can only ever be a precursor to taking action. Yes, of course, many people benefit from feeling heard and identifying what about their life is distressing them. But if the source of your worries happens to be the paltry wage you\u2019re getting for a non-job that barely covers the essentials \u2013 or maybe even having no job at all \u2013 therapy isn\u2019t the solution.<\/p>\n As fantastic as the right therapy can be, it can\u2019t wave a magic wand over structural, societal issues. It is meant to work alongside other vital tools, such as basic healthy living (exercise, nutritious food, decent sleep), sometimes medication, social connection and, critically, a solid support network. Good therapy can teach resilience, sure, so that when life isn\u2019t going well, you have some inner resources to draw on to keep going. But therapy without opportunities is just more neoliberal, individualist blather, the kind that Labour tells us it abhors.<\/p>\n Labour may be making a serious mistake here with millennial voters. If thousands of them sign up for talking therapy, only to realise their lives suck for structural and economic reasons, rather than their own \u2018traumatic\u2019 experiences, the Labour government won\u2019t just lose workers, it will also lose critical voters come the next election. Joblessness, low pay and poor working conditions are the real epidemics it needs to tackle.<\/p>\n
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