With 11 million sicknotes issued last year, the prime minister is concerned that the UK workplace is falling victim to the ‘over-medicalisation’ of normal worries and life stressors.
Rishi Sunak has said that the UK workplace is suffering due to a ‘sicknote culture’, with 2.8 million people currently inactive from work.
Sunak’s aim is to put in place specialist work and health professionals that can provide an objective assessment of a person’s ability to work. As well as the power to offer necessary support to assist a person to remain in the workplace. Fitness to work certificates are mostly issued by overstretched, and over-scrutinisted GPs, who feel pressured to respond to claims of mental health issues.
Sunak shares his concerns for the current model in which time restraints and accountability mean that “everyday challenges and worries of life” may be misdiagnosed.
What mental health charities have to say…
The Chief executive of Mind, Dr Sarah Hughes, is deeply disappointed that the prime minister has conjured up an image of mental health having ‘gone too far’ in this country. She says that “it is deeply insulting to the 1.9 million people currently on a waiting list to get mental health support, and to the GPs whose expert judgment is being called into question.”
What the NHS has to say…
Ruth Rankine, the director of the NHS Confederation’s primary care network felt that a review of the fit note process is desperately overdue, and that it could be more effective if training and investment were directed towards professionals that could support people back into the workplace. She felt that a national drive was needed to shift the focus from “simply treating illness to promoting health and wellbeing.”
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For more information on UK Sicknote Culture read this article from The Guardian.
