Rishi Sunak invited to Gravesend home after ‘sicknote culture’ comments
A desperate mum has invited Rishi Sunak to spend a day at her home as she fights to keep her teen daughter from taking her own life after more than 20 attempts. Brenda Mannix is calling on the PM to experience how she has to lock away medication and sharp objects and remove clothes and bedding from 18-year-old Moe's room.
She also has to hide cleaning fluids and keep her windows and doors locked to stop the youngster from harming herself. Her invitation comes after Mr Sunak said an increase in numbers of people with depression and anxiety was down to "an over-medicalising of everyday challenges".
Delivering a speech on what he described as the UK's "sicknote culture", the Tory leader said he wants to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work.
He claimed benefits have become a "lifestyle choice" and said he wants to make it harder for some patients to obtain a sick note. He also suggested a "worrying" proportion of younger potential workers were among a record high of 2.8 million people out of work as of February. "There's nothing compassionate about leaving a generation of young people to sit alone in the dark before a flickering screen watching as their dreams slip further from reach every single day," he said.
Gravesend resident Brenda says she was left stunned by the Tory leader's comments which she believes are out of touch with ordinary people's serious problems.
She feels the increase in cases is more due to the lack of early intervention and what she describes as "inadequate" mental health support from the NHS.
The 47-year-old said: "I have an adult at home who is incapable of going out to work. "I invite Rishi to come round and see what we have to do in our own home to keep Moe safe and what she has to cope with on a daily basis. "See what it's like to look after someone with serious mental health issues and then tell my daughter she needs to go out and go to work."
Moe first tried to take her own life aged seven when she arrived at her school playground with blood dripping from her wrists. An ambulance was called and she was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).
Around this time, she also became fixated with a large first-floor window in an isolated part of the school and said she always planned to jump out of it if she found it open. She later escaped from home and jumped 20ft from a second-floor building nearby and was in hospital for six weeks after suffering five fractured vertebrae, a broken pelvis and a deflated lung.
Over the years, Moe has tried to take her own life repeatedly, including taking overdoses of medication, eating nuts, bolts and pennies and preparing to jump from a motorway bridge.
Her mum struggles to keep her home a safe place for her daughter ensuring anything dangerous that could be drunk, eaten, made into a ligature or used to cut herself is locked away. But she says she is finding it increasingly hard to handle physically.
"Once when we had just arrived home and the door was open Moe walked out and said she was going to kill herself. "She was walking in the middle of the road and heading for a busy main road.
I was following her on the phone to the police but I didn't have the power to physically stop her." Moe, who is autistic and was regularly bullied at school, has been in and out of mental health facilities and had courses with therapists, as well as being put on numerous anti-anxiety or anti-depression medications over the years. But she says nothing has been enough and every time she makes an attempt on her life she attends A&E, is referred to CAMHS and has one follow-up appointment before being discharged.
After taking 58 anti-depressants and ending up in hospital Moe says she was discharged the same day without even talking to a crisis team. Her mum said none of the therapy she has been offered has been consistent or prolonged enough to help.
"The service is inadequate," she said. "I would like to see long-term consistent care and early development support and diagnosis as well as better communication and respite care for young people." Laura Cordell, 41, who has suffered mental health issues since she was eight, also questioned Mr Sunak's comments.
After the death of her sister and her grandparents in a short space of time she developed crippling OCD. She said: "I felt if I didn't put the wipers down on my car or little things like that, then my whole family would die and it would be my fault. It's not logical but it was my waking thought, every waking minute.
"I felt like I was carrying the survival of everyone I loved on my shoulders 24/7." She said she would hurt herself as a way of coping with the thoughts. "It was almost my way of letting the feelings out," she said.
She feels having help earlier would have stopped the issue from escalating. And she is also angry at Mr Sunak's suggestion people with mental health issues are shying away from working. She added: "I am so much worse off than I was before I stopped working.
"It's not about trying to get out of work and then sitting back and rubbing your hands with glee." After being medically retired at 29 due to functional neurological disorder, a rare incurable illness, she said there was no support for her, so she set about creating a support group[1].
Defending the government's stance, Dartford Tory MP Gareth Johnson said: "We have a moral obligation to assist those who really can't work but if a person can work then they should work. "Holding down a job can be great for people's self-esteem and mental health.
"It doesn't help to just write people off when many people with disabilities can work if they are given the right help and support."
Downing Street was approached for comment on the invitation to visit the Mannix family.
References
- ^ creating a support group (kindness-community.com)