Wes Streeting’s comments that there is an “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions has prompted experts to warn against stigmatising and punishing people.
The health secretary also said too many people were being “written off”, as he was questioned about the government’s welfare measures. Speaking to broadcasters, Streeting was repeatedly challenged on whether ministers were leaving disabled people uninformed for too long about the plans – and whether they would freeze the personal independence payment (Pip) as part of their welfare package this week.
Streeting did not deny the government had dropped plans to freeze Pip after a major backlash from Labour MPs this week. There are still expected to be significant changes to Pip including making the disability payment – which is not dependent on work – harder to claim, as well as changes to employment support for those too sick or disabled to work.
Asked whether he thought overdiagnosis of some conditions was a problem, he told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I want to follow the evidence and I agree with that point about overdiagnosis.
“Here’s the other thing: mental wellbeing, illness, it’s a spectrum and I think definitely there’s an overdiagnosis, but there’s too many people being written off and, to your point about treatment, too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need. So if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or get back to work.”
Minesh Patel, the associate director of policy and campaigns at the charity Mind, said Streeting was right to say that not enough people were getting support, and advised against stigmatising those with mental health problems.
He said: “Applying for benefits is not an easy process. People with a mental health problem must go through a lengthy and arduous assessment process, with decisions to not award support often overturned at appeal stage. We must also be extremely careful with the language around mental health diagnoses, which risks creating a climate of stigmatising people’s real experiences and undermining the opinions of medical professionals.”
Robert Howard, a professor of old age psychiatry at University College London, said “punishing” people would not get them back to work.
He said: “I’m really anxious that the kind of language that Wes Streeting was using this morning will be used to justify further disinvestment in mental health services.
“If we want to get people with mental illness back to work, the way to do that is to make sure they can access timely and effective treatment, and pretending that they haven’t got a real illness, it just doesn’t make me feel encouraged that the government will invest sufficiently in mental health services to help people get back.
“There’s so many young people with kind of chronic generalised anxiety who can’t work. The way to get them back to work isn’t to kind of shame them and punish them and tell them they’re not ill. The way to get them back to work is to make sure that they have access to proper psychological therapy and treatment so they can be fit and go back to work.”
The Guardian reported on Friday that ministers had threatened to resign over any potential freeze to Pip, which would require a vote in parliament. But there remains widespread concern from Labour MPs about how tight the criteria to claim the disability payment will be, and about the changes to employment and support allowance, which covers those who cannot work.
“I haven’t seen the full plans, they haven’t come to cabinet yet,” Streeting said. “But what I do know is the work and pensions secretary wants to support people who need help the most and we’ve got to make sure that there is a wider range of support, and that everyone’s playing their part, including me, because with those levels of illness, for example, if I can help people back to health, in many cases I’ll be helping them back to work and that’s what we’ll do.
“I haven’t seen the proposals but you’ve seen the briefing, you’ve seen the speculation, I think the moral of the story is wait for the plans.”
Streeting said he did not come into politics to take money from the most vulnerable in society but that there was still a need for reform. “We want to support people who are the poorest and most vulnerable to make sure they’ve got dignity, independence and great quality of life,” he said.
“Without that support from an active state, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. The challenge we’ve got [is] we’ve got one in eight young people in this country not in education, employment or in training. We’ve got one in 10 people who are off work, sick, and 3 million people shut out of the labour market because of long-term illness.
“Now, of course, there will be some people because of serious disability or because of chronic illness that can’t be turned around, will not be able to work, and those people need to be supported. But the welfare state’s also got to be a springboard back to work and lots of people get written off, you know, as if they can’t contribute when they can and should and want to.”
