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Ben Baumberg Geiger's avatar

It's a great question, and a bigger one than I can answer in a comment... Basically: there's good evidence that some things influence mental health (including https://inequalities.substack.com/p/conditionality-and-mental-health), but lots of things that are probably important haven't been researched very well. (Trying to look more broadly is the focus of a major project I'm currently doing). I'll try to write about this in more detail later in the year.

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John Newton's avatar

The easy to ask but difficult to answer question is why the incidence of mental-related disability, especially among younger working age groups, has risen recently so sharply.

Factors could include: related to decline in unemployment and working age benefits, so providing incentive to access disability-related benefits using mental ill-health as a qualifying tag; increased numbers of NEET young people, then relating to above; increased tendency for young people to suffer and report mental ill health because of societal changes possibly related to, say: increased loneliness, post covid impacts,

ubiquitous smartphone use/dependence; increased competition/identity pressures; because of increased awareness of certain disabilities or charcteristics, such as autism spectrum, encouraging both medical and self diagnosis.

Like others, I have no definitive idea; insofar that there has not been a genetic mutation or eugenics change in the last decade or so, assume a mixture of above and other possible reasons.

Looking at Ben's comment answer below, answer is that needs to be more research, but some of the issues above poisibly more amenable to intuitive rather than positivist approach; and, in case factors difficult to disentangle and isolate.

Having said that, more granular disaggregated data on incidence and distribution of mental disability would be a helpful start.

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