 in 2018 – though it's essentially, a highly specialised employment service, it is offered by the NHS because it's key to health. Alice Cheshire, director of Well at Work, which provides mental-health training to employers, agrees that returning to work can be a huge force for positive change. Being economically inactive brings the added stress of financial pressure of course, but there's more to it than loss of income. 'There's good evidence that there are five key steps you can take that will make a difference to mental health – they're known as the 'five ways to wellbeing',' she says. 'They are 'connection', that's connecting with other people, 'learning', 'giving', 'being active' and 'taking notice'.){kind=link}
More than 2.5 million UK adults are now economically inactive for health reasons, but getting back to work is often the best medicine
Daniel Tustain was signed off work with depression in the autumn of 2020. For Daniel – as for so many others – the trigger was probably “pandemic- related”.
His 14-year-old daughter was developing an eating disorder before his eyes, and he and his wife felt totally alone, unable to access help, powerless to support her.
His job in commercial vehicle sales – a high-pressure role he’d enjoyed for seven years – became increasingly difficult. “I wasn’t sleeping at night, I couldn’t focus in the day, I was struggling in a big way,” says Daniel, 48, who lives in south-east London with his wife and two daughters.
“At work, I was forgetting stuff, missing stuff. I was crying at my desk, which was embarrassing, although my colleagues were lovely. My head was too full. If you put too much in a bucket, in the end, it begins to overflow.”