‘Lockdown wasn’t all doom and gloom’, says mental health minister Nadine Dorries

Tory MP says it is wrong to ‘hang the label of mental health around everyone’s neck’

Mental health minister Nadine Dorries is MP for Mid Bedfordshire. (EPA)

Health minister Nadine Dorries has said lockdown “wasn’t all doom and gloom”, on the day the government announced additional funding for children’s mental health services.

The Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire made the comment while speaking to the Commons’ health select committee on Tuesday about the effect of the pandemic on people’s wellbeing.

She told her parliamentary colleagues that although restrictions had been difficult for many people, others had actually “enjoyed” the experience.

Countering what she called the “doom and gloom” narrative, Ms Dorries said: “In fact, some people, particularly families, actually reported an improvement in mental health and improvements in wellbeing.

“Some people surprisingly enjoyed lockdown with their children for a year, so it wasn’t all doom and gloom.”

Ms Dorries added that it was wrong to “hang the label of mental health around everyone’s neck”.

On this subject, she said that children should be seen as “a very strong, resilient” generation rather than one labelled as “experiencing and suffering from mental health issues”.

Earlier on Tuesday, NHS England said an extra £40 million would be spent on helping young people, who had been particularly “hard hit” by the pandemic.

The new funding will go towards increasing bed capacity in mental health hospitals, improving eating disorder services and bolstering community care provision.

It comes after the government allocated £79m to improve community support services for children struggling with their mental health.

Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s national mental health director, said more young people had been seeking mental health support recently. “This additional funding is in recognition of the rising demand and our continued commitment to provide the best care as early as possible and to do as much to prevent children and young people needing hospital treatment,” she said.

Mental health minister Ms Dorries referred to how eating disorder services have seen a 22 per cent rise in demand over the past 11 months of the Covid-19 crisis.

She added that the government was playing “catch-up” over mental health, which she said had been underfunded by past governments.

Additional reporting by PA