Depressed?

[Twazza]

I think you are confusing incapacity/ESA with DLA. The figures released were about incapacity, not DLA.

Thanks. What does ESA stand for? How much is it? Is it means tested?

[shipbuilder]

A hobby and a craft plus a job would be good. Research shows that a getting a sense of pleasure and/or a sense of achivement from an activity lifts the spirits. Although many people on this forum and elsewhere presume that you can have this great life on benefits, its pretty rare to be able to afford much unless you have a bunch of kids, and are also the registered carer for one that is classed to have a disability.

Of course getting off the dole alone doesn't cure depression. If you are commuting hours a day to work in a call centre where your toilet breaks are timed etc.. it is unlikely to lift you spirits. If you are being bullied or made to do things you fundamentally disagree with (remember the poster on here who was really down about working in a bank call centre and being made to sell financial products to people on targets), it could bring you down more, indeed trigger depression. In an ideal world though you could change jobs rather than just have no job.

If you hate your job and life is OK outside of your job it can help keep you balanced too. Trouble is when work = life and then work goes wrong, it will of course be a massive trigger.

Agreed, plus what Injin said. Unfortunately in the UK we have a 'work is life' attitude ingrained by propaganda since the industrial revolution. Unfortunately alongside this is the automation of all the wrong jobs - those requiring craft and skill, where one can achieve 'flow'. As I understand it, it is these activities, where one can get lost in the work, that are the most beneficial, for everyone's mental health, not just those with depression.

Instead of real job satisfaction, we are left with a thin veneer of corporate waffle - feeling 'passionate' about being a spreadsheet or phone jockey. But then the economy and profit rules and people with real satisfaction in their lives aren't bauble-buyers and fashionistas. It's actually quite easy for me to believe that the depression figures are absolutely genuine.

[OnionTerror]

A hobby and a craft plus a job would be good. Research shows that a getting a sense of pleasure and/or a sense of achivement from an activity lifts the spirits. Although many people on this forum and elsewhere presume that you can have this great life on benefits, its pretty rare to be able to afford much unless you have a bunch of kids, and are also the registered carer for one that is classed to have a disability.

Of course getting off the dole alone doesn't cure depression. If you are commuting hours a day to work in a call centre where your toilet breaks are timed etc.. it is unlikely to lift you spirits. If you are being bullied or made to do things you fundamentally disagree with (remember the poster on here who was really down about working in a bank call centre and being made to sell financial products to people on targets), it could bring you down more, indeed trigger depression. In an ideal world though you could change jobs rather than just have no job.

If you hate your job and life is OK outside of your job it can help keep you balanced too. Trouble is when work = life and then work goes wrong, it will of course be a massive trigger.

Latent depression is a huge problem...many go undiagnosed, and it only comes out of the woodwork when something dramatic happens in a person's life. A close cousin recently killed himself over something horrible that happened to him, and the family suspect that it was possibly the dramatic event that set him off. He got all the treatment under the sun, including trips to Harley Street, and by being committed, but unfortunately all to no avail. Another family member suffers from bipolar. Such issues are often just swept under the carpet...

[The Masked Tulip]

Crossword puzzles would certainly be more stimulating and productive than a lot of jobs.

Actually, crossword and sudok puzzles help enormously with depression and with dementia illnesses - they ain't sure why, but it helps.

Mindfulness meditation, youga, tai chi, long walks, swimming, aerobic excercise, cycling - all these help.

I have no idea what this thread is about it.

[Britney's Piers]

Anyone who'll listen that is, except a potential employer. Try getting a job with a past history of mental illness; you'd have more success if you told them you'd just come out of prison.

They won't have a chance. Then they will get soaked up by the public sector. Then someone will come and ask "why does the public sector employ so many feckless".

[the shaping machine]

Crossword puzzles would certainly be more stimulating and productive than a lot of jobs.

Maybe I'm missing your point here, but you seem to be suggesting that employment should be optional, and if people don't fancy that lifestyle then the state should support them. Have you not seen the deficit figures?

[shipbuilder]

Maybe I'm missing your point here, but you seem to be suggesting that employment should be optional, and if people don't fancy that lifestyle then the state should support them. Have you not seen the deficit figures?

The post you quoted is quite simple and no further inference should be taken from it - I wasn't 'suggesting' anything. The wider point I'm making on this thread is explained at length in a couple of my other posts.

[rw42]

I can well believe that the depression cases are 100% genuine. Spend 10 minutes in the average UK drone job and you will too. The idea that any sort of work is better than being on the dole is all part of the 'work ethic' lie that only the proles are meant to buy into - the idle rich certainly don't 'suffer' from a lack of work or direction in their lives.

We need a revolution of thought about work - let's stop trotting mindless cr*p about work being good for the soul and all technology is good. It's quite simple - there are rewarding jobs and sh*t jobs - for some reason we automate away the rewarding ones and keep the sh*t ones - why? That's the question that needs answering. EF Schumacher asked it four decades ago, but sadly there are few with the same foresight and vision as him.

I see a massive difference between too depressed too work, and finding the work available depressing.

One might have a genuine disability, the other is a lazy shit who can't be arsed to improve himself enough to find a proper job, and he can bugger off as far as i'm concerned.

[Injin]

I see a massive difference between too depressed too work, and finding the work available depressing.

One might have a genuine disability, the other is a lazy shit who can't be arsed to improve himself enough to find a proper job, and he can bugger off as far as i'm concerned.

Self improvement is not a cure for depressing jobs, which presumably someone has to do. (Note : jobs, plural.)

[deeplyblue]

I see a massive difference between too depressed too work, and finding the work available depressing.

One might have a genuine disability, the other is a lazy shit who can't be arsed to improve himself enough to find a proper job, and he can bugger off as far as i'm concerned.

Finding the work depressing does not necessarily mean that someone is really cheesed off with doing a boring job.

Finding work depressing can be a result of systematic bullying, as TeddyBear said earlier, "remember the poster on here who was really down about working in a bank call centre and being made to sell financial products to people on targets." This particular bloke was trained in selling old-fashioned mortgages, where you had to assess whether or not the would-be borrower could afford the mortgage they wanted. Now he was being told to sell people mortgages which were patently beyond their means, and sometimes beyond what they wanted. If he turned them down he got shouted at and humiliated and bullied in front of his colleagues. What he was doing was what the financial codes of conduct said he should be doing. What he was being told to do was trying to force liar loans down people's throats, and he ended up with a nervous breakdown as his training and his conscience and his self-confidence were put through the mincer that was the loans culture in places like NR (I don't know where he worked, NR is just an example). You could say that he found his work "depressing".

I am personally acquainted with a social worker who, like a number of others, ran out of what it takes to keep on inspecting and trying trying to help in the lives of the most desperate. He was moved into an admin job, where he was managing. Then there was a "re-structuring" and he was forced back "in the field". 12 months later a client he thought he had managed to pull through committed suicide and that was too much for someone with more compassion than detachment and he started drinking. A good, decent bloke who used the bottle to cope with his inability to stop bad things happening, and ended up making everything much worse. He now clings desperately to the round of AA meetings and attempts to re-establish relationships with his children, but he lives on the edge and the bottle still comes out too easily. He's in his 50s, living in a small, cold flat and unemployable for all his very real attempts to sort his life out. You could say that he found his work "depressing".

I really can go on with people whose work has caused their severe mental health problems, or exacerbated underlying problems.

No one disputes that occupation helps mental health - but not for everyone and most certainly not any work.

And for some, work is just not an option. Not because they're lazy, but because their brains have become too messed up to make it possible. And you can't tell by looking at the face or listening to the voice that inside they're screaming or planning how to kill themselves or simply unable to work out what to do with another piece of paper that comes through the door.

db