Government research has confirmed that mental health costs the nation £99bn. It doesn’t make financial sense for employers to discriminate
‘The trust I am under has had some incredible professionals who have cared for me, but in many ways I have been catastrophically let down.’ Photograph: Getty Images/Xixinxing
It’s official. The government-commissioned Thriving at Work report has found that many of us are not, in fact, thriving at work. About 300,000 of us with long-term mental health problems lose their job each year in the UK. For me, this is news alongside sky is blue; Liverpool FC are perpetually underachieving; David Davis understands the Brexit process as much as he does superstring theory.
We have been saying this for a long time. We the people who know. The people with mental illness; the mental health professionals; the experts and charity heads; and in some cases, the employers. It’s a positive step that Theresa May commissioned this report. It’s a travesty that it was such a long time coming.
The tactics shifted a while ago. Some of us stopped appealing to this government’s sense of altruism and began arguing that “it’s the economy, stupid.” Once again, it has been confirmed that the annual cost to the country of poor mental health is £99bn. This isn’t a revelation. I’ve been writing about it for four years, so have many others. The UK’s productivity is in the doldrums. The financial cost to employers is about £42bn.
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