How to claim mental illness benefits

For my newspaper I wrote last week about the rocketing numbers (now more than nine million) of our fellow citizens who are ‘economically inactive’ (aged 16-64, unemployed but not seeking work). Within that category, a fast-growing number (nearly three million) are claiming a range of disability or sickness-related benefits, usually a PIP (personal independence payment). Of these, something between half and three quarters are founding their claims partly or wholly on mental health problems. That number has been growing fast since lockdown, particularly among the young. And it was on the mental health component of this growing burden on our economy that I focused. I explained how a PIP can more than double the standard universal credit benefit. Once granted, the beneficiary is not chased to get a job.

My Times column attracted a fierce response from online readers posting comments. Most agreed, sometimes intemperately, even embarrassingly, scornful about mental illness; but a sizeable minority expressed outrage at what they took to be an attack on the vulnerable.