It’s time to eliminate the concept of ‘mental health’

The concept of mental health is a hypochondriac’s, narcissist’s, shirker’s and social security fraud’s charter: for who can prove that someone does not so feel depressed, anxious, or grief-stricken that he is unable to work? Who can distinguish between can’t, won’t and would rather not?

Fragile mental health, and especially mental health issues, are said to be preventing large numbers of young Britons from working, with people in their early twenties now more likely to be out of work than people in their early forties as a result. One even hears people nowadays say that ‘I’ve got mental health’ – not meaning something positive but negative. Mental health means something bad, something incapacitating.

Those with mental health issues, or just plain mental health, can get by economically without working. This is a powerful cause, I would guess, of considerable psychological unease, for even now most people do not like to feel useless to others.