The wrong diagnosis for youth unemployment
A report by Professor Peter Fonagy suggests that the UK's welfare system is inadvertently encouraging youth to self-pathologize mental health conditions to access benefits. The article argues that this approach creates a cycle of inactivity rather than facilitating a return to the workforce.
Why it matters
The rising cost of disability benefits and the surge in mental health diagnoses among youth pose significant long-term fiscal and social challenges for the UK economy.
The purpose of welfare should be to help get people back into work. All too often our system does the exact opposite. It writes people off as sick, pays them to stay at home and spends vast sums while doing little to help them return to work. Today, almost half of young people who are neither in education, training or unemployment report having a diagnosed mental-health or neurodevelopmental condition.
Nowhere are the perverse incentives of our system more apparent than in the staggering rise of ADHD and autism diagnoses. Nearly 270,000 people now claim disability benefits with autism as their main condition, more than triple the 2019 figure. Those citing ADHD have risen more than fourfold. The rises among the young are particularly stark.
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