Depression is UK’s biggest social problem, government told
‘Depression, anxiety and other forms of mental illness have taken over from unemployment as the greatest social problem in the UK, a health economist warns today.
Richard Layard, who is advising the government on mental health, advocates a network of 250 centres across the country to offer psychological therapies - instead of the drugs widely handed out by doctors in the absence of sufficient therapists.
Around 15% of the population suffers from depression or anxiety, says Lord Layard, emeritus professor at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics. The economic cost in terms of lost productivity is huge - around £17bn, or 1.5% of UK gross domestic product. “There are now more than 1 million mentally ill people receiving incapacity benefits - more than the total number of unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits,” he writes in the British Medical Journal.’
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