Read on Twitter
Disabled people are 4x more likely to be experiencing depression, new ONS figs show. Last month, 4 in 10 disabled adults felt depressed. Months of isolation, and being more likely to suffer work and money problems from COVID have had a dire impact. We need to talk about it.
I often say one of the biggest hurdles in tackling disability isolation or poverty is people expect disabled lives to be lonely and hard. Reading a story about a wheelchair user stuck in their house for a year isn’t shocking the norm - it actually reinforces cultural perceptions.
We’ve seen it this year with (rightly) vast media + political coverage of older people’s isolation - Johnson literally only refers to the elderly - but barely any focus on disabled. Similarly, no strategy for how shielders can live, as if disabled people don’t have kids or jobs.
Mental health is often framed in terms of “we need to talk about it” when it increasingly requires the opposite: no more empty words, just real structural change. When it comes to disabled people and the pandemic, we do “need to talk about” - it isn’t being covered by the press.
But it will also require hard cash and policy change. The pandemic did not find disabled people in the U.K. in a secure place. A decade of austerity has already pulled billions of disability support away; a no deal Brexit will hurt more. Then COVID - and for many, shielding - hit
Disabled people’s jobs, social security, social care, NHS care, and day to day lives are simultaneously at risk. It is not hard to comprehend that this means so is our mental health. This is a public health crisis. We need to talk about it. And act. 6/6
