£13m plan unlikely to lift the recession blues
What are we to make of the news that the Government is spending £13 million to alleviate depression and anxiety among victims of recession?
No decent man or woman would, one would hope, begrudge help for the innocent victims of this greedy banker-induced economic crisis who are finding the going tough.
Even low level depression is, as this correspondent is finding out, a pretty debilitating condition from which escape can seem a dim and distant prospect.
Finding oneself out of work through no fault of one’s own is always going to be distressing. Factor in the need to pay the mortgage, keep the lighting and heating on, feed, clothe and educate children while, pehaps, paying down credit card debts, and life must become intolerable.
But what will this £13 million infusion of funds into the health system do to help?
The answer is, sadly but almost certainly, to be not a lot.
To begin with, any analysis of previous initiatives of this type leads one to the conclusion that much of the money will be absorbed by the bloated army of bureaucrats that sits on top of the NHS sucking up resources without ever seeming to improve services.
Second, there remains in this country, ironically in the circumstances, a healthy scepticism of “counselling” and “psychotherapy”. For many of us, it is all too redolent of New Ageism and its associated pandering to self-pity.
But a much more pertinent response must be this – if one of the most indebted governments in British history can conjure £13 million out of the public hat to alleviate the effects of the recession, how much better would it be to spend that money on helping to underpin jobs and prevent luckless souls being thrown out of work in the first place.
Admittedly, it is not, in strictly relative terms, a huge sum. But, properly targeted, it would make a big difference to many a struggling small or medium-sized business.
Who knows, it could even help to create a few extra jobs.
The key point is this – here is the Government, yet again, speedily and willingly putting money into an already unsustainable public sector while resorting to obfuscation, platitude and delay when asked to do something to help an embattled private sector that creates the wealth that pays for those public services in the first place.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson says the best antidote to the unemployment blues is to find a new job.
Well, he’s certainly helping there. An extra 3,600 therapists and specialist nurses are to be trained to establish and run counselling centres in every primary care trust by the end of next year.
Good luck to them and their patients.
