Social welfare reform: From dependency to malingeringfor people with mental health disabilities?

Of the 600,000 new claimants of incapacity benefits in the UK, approximately 40 per cent report mental health disabilities. The percentage remains consistent for the total number on incapacity benefits, over 2.5 million people of which 41 per cent report mental health ‘problems’ (Black 2008).These statistics are especially striking when considered in the context of legislative and labour market policy reform during the past 15 years, which have generally expressed a commitment to addressing the exclusion of disabled people. In the UK this has largely relied on two apparently positive and related pressures. The first has been legislative change, which for the first time in the UK provides a statutory right for people with mental health disabilities not to be discriminated against on the grounds of their health (through the Disability Discrimination Act 1995). The second pressure, and focus of this article, has come via active governmental labour market policy, most notably the Welfare Reform Act 2007. This has focused on a shift from passive to active policy, and attempted to improve individual employability through various employment support programmes. This paper presents a discussion of these changes (primarily incapacity benefit), their theoretical basis and a critique of their potential impact for those with mental health‘problems