Ellee Seymour

There are more young people under 35 unable to work because of stress and depression than on the dole, according to today’s FT.

The report says that more than half a million young Britons are officially too sick to work and claim incapacity benefits. This figure includes more than 300,000 young people claiming for “mental and behavioural disorders”.

I bet the government wishes it had lost this data from the Department of Work and Pensions, something it cannot be proud of in this modern day and age, when it boasts about its flagship national health service and economic growth over the last 10 years.

And there seems to be no immediate solution, according to Paul Bivand, a welfare-to-work expert at Inclusion, a social justice think-tank, who warns:

“There is a second generation of people coming on to incapacity benefits for mental reasons. This may well be related to ingrained hopelessness in particular areas.”

I heard a claimant on the radio this morning describe the difficulties she faced in trying to return to work after seven years off sick with depression. She has no self-esteem and is doing voluntary work in order to mix socially. And, realistically, how easy is it for them to find work after declaring a long-term mental illness?

What help is being given to these claimants to treat them successfully and get them off this bandwagon? Young people want to feel well enough to work, and supported. This report highlights once again how we let down our young depressed society. Depression is a terrible, crippling illness, and dishing out the pills is not the right cure.

Richard Layard, who is advising the government on mental health, recommends 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. He says if you go to your GP with depression, the chances are you will be offered drugs and they may work in adults in the short term, but patients more easily relapse when they stop taking them, and may suffer side-effects.

Alternative psychological therapy is urged instead as patients themselves say they prefer “talking therapy” to long term drug use.

I use Twitter and think it is a great micro-blogging service. And now it has been credited with finding a missing runaway 16-year-old girl, Manessa Donovan, believed to have been with a 38-year-old man. This is what her family says:

In truth, the search had stalled out after 2 weeks of depending solely on local law enforcement. Once you guys were involved, we had locations, eye-witness sightings, an extended campaign on multiple fronts, and a boatload of information about the guy we believed she was with. Within one week, Manessa had basically been found. It took another week before she was where we consider ’safe’, but its unbelievable how fast things moved once you all got involved.

In retrospect, there really was no doubt that you would step up, which must be why we approached the Twitwork before even emailing our friends and family.

Those first crucial hours and days are vital for tracking down eye witnesses. Twitter can only be successful in these cases if it is used by the missing person’s social network, but it is easy enough to set up. I wonder if this is something that police and the Missing People charity will consider using in their searches of people who have vanished inexplicably.

In memory of those who are still missing.