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The number of people not in education, employment, or training in the UK, especially among the young, is much higher than in most of Europe. Are we as GPs to blame and actually causing part of the problem?
This article does not touch on our ability to state 'may be fit ', which I would suggest applies to a very large proportion of people who feel they can't work. For decades, sickness (or being certified unfit, which may not be the same) in economically deprived areas has been higher than average, probably as a way to access benefits when work was not available. As a GP, our local benefits adviser told us of the ways people play the system (it used to be agoraphobia so they could not make review appointments) and the trigger points in time off work which make return to work vanishingly less likely.
My plea is for the 'may be fit' to be the default rather than 'unfit ' and then this might trigger support services to help people. And to use suspected rather than definitive labels for the new diagnostic kids on the block, such as POTS, adult ADHD, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, etc., again diagnoses very hard to reverse.
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British Journal of General Practice
