As a retired GP who spent 35 years looking after people with anxiety and depression in primary care, I find Rishi Sunak’s recent comments about GPs “over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life” offensive (Sunak to cite Britain’s ‘sicknote culture’ in bid to overhaul fit note system, 19 April). These disabling problems constitute around 40% of all those attending a GP practice.
He clearly has no idea what is going on in his country. People are suffering from multiple stresses, including huge financial pressures largely brought about by his own party’s total incompetence over the past 14 years. People are pretty resilient when dealing with stressful adverse events such as bereavement or job loss or debt in their lives, but when they encounter one more bad thing, they “hit a wall” and become unable to continue. It seems like a hard-wired mechanism that renders them incapable of carrying on.
