Split image on a blue background. Left side shows a white woman with long red hair, wearing a pinstripe suit, sitting at a desk with her head in her hands. Right side shows a man slumped forward with his head in his hands, setting across a table from an older woman. Tony Blair's centre-left think tank wants people with conditions like ADHD, depression, and anxiety to be actively prevented from claiming welfare assistance for unemployment. These conditions, the think-tank believes, are "not work-limiting." As someone with lived experience of severe depression with suicidal ideation, generalised anxiety disorder and social anxiety, who has never claimed any of these conditions mean I "can't work", and who generally takes the view that you "may as well go to work depressed and anxious - at least you get paid for it", I'd like to agree. I've been into work the morning after a failed suicide attempt. I've had a full on psychotic episode...
Image shows a white male in a black hoodie, who looks unhappy A recent article found that 80% of British workers report experiencing violence or abuse in the workplace. Eighty. Percent. Eight out of ten people are made to feel some level of non-task-related concern for their personal safety when they think about showing up for work. I wonder if that might have any connection with the "endemic state" of "people claiming they're too mentally unwell to work" that the UK government keeps throwing shade about? Might the "failure to cope with normal human experience" that snide, comfortably-financed, well-protected MPs snarl about and threaten to reduce people to absolute poverty for "not just getting over" actually be a much more understandable cognitive block around putting oneself in a situation where you are at risk when you did not expect that kind of risk? Employers nope out on dealing with workplace aggression, whether from colleagues or...