Guardian readers have reacted with horror and distress to Rishi Sunak’s plans to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work, in favour of “work and health professionals”. We received an unusually high level of responses to a callout asking people about their experiences of being signed off work and their thoughts regarding Sunak’s proposals. Charlotte, a 35-year-old senior radiographer for the NHS, said that when she heard Sunak’s speech, she “felt a sense of panic”. “The thought of not being able to get signed off from work in the state I was in is terrifying. If I’d not have been allowed to be signed off work by my GP, or had it been made harder I wouldn’t be here. I needed urgent help and, via my GP, I got that it,” she said.
“Until someone has a mental health crisis it is hard to comprehend how scary it is and how you are literally unable to function, let alone carry out your duties at work. Simply telling people to ‘get on with it’ will lead to many more people being out of work long-term and, sadly, suicide will likely rise.” A 43-year-old specialist teaching adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, also said she found Sunak’s proposals “terrifying”. “If Sunak’s proposals had been in place when I had my breakdown and GPs couldn’t sign people off, then I would have lost my job years ago, had no career and wouldn’t have been able to be making the valuable contribution I am today, supporting children and young people with autism and communication needs in schools,” she said. “The idea of ‘other professionals’ assessing patients with a clear government agenda to refuse sicknotes is really worrying for someone like me. I’ve never received benefits in my life but if I lost my job because I was ill and couldn’t prove so to my employer, I could end up unemployed and need benefits for the first time.” Others said the government had made it harder to stay in work or return quickly after a mental health episode through the cutting of services. “The government has ensured that mental health services in the UK are on their knees, which has led to far more people becoming severally unwell than needed to,” said Elio Taylor-Conway, 31, who used to be a veterinary nurse before he became too unwell to work. “If I’d have had more barriers to being signed off work and forced to continue, I am very confident that I would not be alive today.” Despite Taylor-Conway being suicidal, his GP told him his symptoms were not severe enough to be accepted by the secondary mental health team. A sicknote for two weeks had to be repeated until, eight months after he was first signed off, he finally received a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. “By this point, I had been in and out of hospital and was actually more unwell than when I started,” he said. “I now no longer work and have to claim benefits.”
A 37-year-old lecturer, who asked to remain anonymous, had a similar experience: “The symptoms I experienced were debilitating, all-consuming and frightening but I would not have got to this point if NHS mental health services were accessible when required,” he said. “I can’t imagine how much worse this would have been had my livelihood been threatened as well [by the refusal of a third-party to give me a sicknote].” Jay Roberts, a 47-year-old Liverpudlian, said the process of getting signed off work was already hard enough. “When you are at your lowest, it is difficult to find the energy to get through to a GP to get a sicknote and get an appointment,” he said. “The earliest appointments tend to be weeks in the future and you have to persevere just to get an emergency appointment, something that can be challenging if you are having a bad episode.” Roberts also took issue with Sunak’s claim that those experiencing mental health difficulties should stay at work or return quickly. “Work for me has been a very toxic experience,” he said. “To suggest it’s some sort of wonderful panacea for mental health issues is laughable. The Tories are simply targeting the most vulnerable to score political points.” Sunak’s intention to give specialists the responsibility for issuing sicknotes as part of a broader aim to make them harder to obtain has been criticised by the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, as “hostile rhetoric”. One reader, a 54-year-old council worker who asked to remain anonymous, said he was was so ill he “couldn’t see the extent of it but my GP could and signed me off on the spot. “If they hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. If that option was removed and put in the hands of assessors that I’d had to ask for a note from, I wouldn’t have had the space and time to get well,” he added. An anonymous teacher in the north-west of England agreed. “All the health professionals that supported me had to literally persuade me to not go to work. Like so many in our profession, we want to do the right thing and feel guilty when we feel we are letting the children down, so we keep going and then eventually break. It’s that culture that needs sorting. Not the sicknote culture our privileged prime minister speaks of.”