Tony Blair tells Brits to stop self-diagnosing with depression as ‘UK can’t afford spiralling mental health benefits bill’
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/tony-blair-mental-health-benefits/
Posted by SlySquire
Tony Blair tells Brits to stop self-diagnosing with depression as ‘UK can’t afford spiralling mental health benefits bill’
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/tony-blair-mental-health-benefits/
Posted by SlySquire
34 Comments
Well he can fuck off.
He entered us into an illegal war and destroyed the value of an undergraduate university education. He needs to be locked up not gaslighting people’s mental health.
Surely you need an official diagnosis if you get mental health benefits. What is he talking about here?
It seems to be that TB has a monthly diary reminder for him to say some new fresh right wing trolly thing to het him headlines and stay ‘present’. He thinks some people are not handling ‘the challenges of life’ they way he would like. Well Tony you are one of the challenges of life.
Self-diagnoses isn’t going to unlock many financial benefits. At best you may have an employer who allows a mental health day or two, but that’s out their own budget.
To get to the point of treatment, medication and long term sickness, you’re going to have been properly diagnosed by a medical professional.
This guy always backs up his assertions with hard evidence, so it must be true.
I think he’s giving us a hint here on how he’d solve the NHS crisis. Just magic away your illness with positive thoughts.
Does he even know how the system works? You cannot access any of the benefits unless you have been diagnosed by a medical professional, self diagnosis doesn’t come into this.
I am getting depressed just reading Blair’s statement. Perhaps he can do us a favour and get a nice cushy political advisor job outside the UK.
On a more serious note, what is he on about? Depression is a serious condition that you can’t self diagnose. I have no evidence for this, but can only assume depression isn’t helped by the cost of living crisis, and a stalling UK job market. Perhaps he can focus on the cause rather than the symptoms first.
I’m shocked he’s taken a short break from the ID card crusade to share a new pearl of wisdom.
You can’t self diagnose depression and get PIP. Also be nice for the nations mental health if we had a government who put the interests of the citizens first, stopped the populist nonsense, removed politicians who only do things in their own self interest and instilled some pride in this country. But that’s impossible because you can’t sell those things to the highest private bidder.
I wonder how many servicemen/women have PTSD, or others who lost friends and family members thanks to the illegal war you dragged us into you twat
> The former PM added: “Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those.
Like when some cunt half way across the world bombs your country to shit and leaves it significantly worse than it was before, contributing to the further destabilisation of the entire region and problems the whole world has to deal with for generations to come?
Are we talking about noted self-medicator (with alcohol) Tony Blair, who admitted to using it as a prop to help him with his own stressful job?
I think the only thing that’s actually changed is that more people are willing to be open about their struggles, and that’s absolutely a good thing, so please Tony, go away again.
I swear Blair is trying to get back into politics as a Tory
“Look guys, we can’t afford for you to be miserable so cheer up!”
“Yes Tony”.
You can’t claim disability benefits by self diagnosing
There is no such thing as a self diagnosis. You have to be diagnosed by the GP and professionals and go through the work capability assessment in order to qualify for state disability benefits so he needs to put a cork in it.
Saying ‘Life has it’s ups and downs’ is pretty much the same as saying to someone with depression ‘get over it’ or ‘ cheer up’. Shut up, Tony.
“Have you tried just not being depressed?”
I mean it’s certainly a tactic to tackle the issue…
Wow. Where to start?!
Millionaire ex-PM, with millionaire barrister wife and millionaire adult kids and cushy advisory job, who backed neoliberalism, introduced tuition fees, supported Iraq war and PFI, tells UK people “Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those”.
“We’re spending vastly more on mental health now than we did a few years ago. And it’s hard to see what the objective reasons for that are.”
– How about: climate crisis, austerity, neoliberalism, wars/refugees, rising cost of living, stagnant wages, culture wars, Brexit, Trump, etc.?
“Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those. And you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life.
– Because the challenges above are largely out of the hands of individuals, and include civilisation collapse, so they feel hopeless with no prospect of things improving?
“We need a proper conversation about this because you really cannot afford to be spending the amount of money we’re spending on mental health.”
– Yes we do. Let’s try to fix the global/societal causes. But there is still a need for treatments – we can’t afford to just let people go untreated as they will get to a stage where they can’t function / work etc.
What a prick. Neo-liberalist Thatcherite centrist boy with no values and stands for nothing.
Tony Blair solves mental health crisis by one simple trick! The answer will shock you!
(It’s “have you tried not being depressed?”)
I do think people just need to man up and grow a pair.
Has this ghoul said anything of value about anything in the last twenty years?
Doesnt Tony Blair self-diagnose himself as a stable person despite being a psychopathic war mongering murderer?
Pretty sure the whole world is still footing the bill for that one.
Fuck off you manic eyed flappy eared cunt.
Why does he think anyone is remotely interested in anything he has to say.
Or… the politicians could get their shit together and unfuck the country and hence give people something to be a bit more optimistic about. That will help mental health
Respectfully he isn’t a mental health expert so I’ll politely ask him to shut up!
“boomer asks citizens with mental health problems to snap out of it because they are too expensive to keep alive”
You have less than 800’000 jobs in the Uk that businesses aren’t filling as the economy is that bad. Then you’ve got 16 million disabled people in the Uk and only 6% of them don’t work.
https://www.health.org.uk/evidence-hub/work/employment-and-unemployment/unemployment-rates-for-disabled-and-non-disabled
If we stopped sending money which is 22 billion for carbon capture schemes that will never be spent on that and nobody can even really tell me what that is and why it costs so much money. Yet we’ve got kids starving, old people freezing and a lack of jobs that aren’t 0 hour contracts.
So maybe carbon capture isn’t the best way to spend the artificial black hole in public funding, that is just money laundering.
It’s insane the amount of late teens early twenties getting together to giggle about their crippling ocd, depression, anxiety and more with nothing more than a fucking facebook post listing the most random and mundane things and claiming them as symptoms. All while streaming to hundreds or more strangers.
He’s right, they’re fucked and it needs to stop.
He’s aware you can’t get signed off work without speaking to a doctor, right? It’s not like there’s loads of people off work purely because of *self diagnosed* mental illnesses, they’ve all been reviewed and diagnosed by medical professionals. The amount of medical evidence the DWP requires before providing disability benefits is extensive (as it should be), and blathering on about self diagnoses as if they’re a credible issue only serves to lower the tone of debate even further and stigmatise people who are already struggling.
*Is it bad that I kind of agree?*
Just ignoring Tony Blair’s political track record for a moment: depression, I can understand, is something a lot of people need help with at the moment. And I say that as a slightly broken person whose dad died a week before a global pandemic which resulted in me losing my job. And I still don’t feel 100% 5 years on.
But what I do not like even the slightest is people browsing TikTok and seeing somebody just list some common bullet points (S*kipped brushing teeth lately? Couldn’t be bother to make your bed this morning? Still got dishes in the sink?*) and simply declaring that anybody experiencing these must absolutely be depressed. They’re treating a serious mental illness the same as star signs.
It’s the same with autism. It’s the same with ADHD.
Go to the GP, see what they think. Take up some counselling and be medically treated. There are people with real, non-TikTok qualifications ready to help you.
There are more autistic people on Reddit then there is in real life.