Disabled people living with mental health conditions came on the receiving end of an exponential surge in corporate media attacks against benefit claimants in 2024.
Across the year, the right-wing press cranked up its concerted campaign to vilify chronically ill and disabled claimants more than eleven-fold. But significantly, over half of this coverage featured references to mental health as a leading factor in the recent post-pandemic-height rise in claims.
Of course, the substantial uptick in attention on claimants with mental health conditions could have devastating ramifications in the real world. The Canary’s analysis comes amidst “senior government” sources tipping off the Telegraph that Labour Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers plan to proceed with some iteration of the former Conservative government’s brutal Personal Independence Payment (PIP) reforms.
Already then, this media-manufactured outrage is serving as a convenient pretext for the Labour government to unleash an ideological swathe of new austerity assaults to the welfare system.
It’s all a crucial reminder of how the right-wing manoeuvres to single out disabled demographics as undeserving of social security support.
Corporate media sizing up scapegoats
The Canary unveiled that in 2024, the corporate media enormously ramped up its scapegoating of disability benefit claimants.
Specifically, coverage of disability benefits in the Telegraph, the Times, and the Daily Mail together sky-rocketed more than 1130% from 2023’s output.
But notably, the Canary’s research also found that the three outlets had certain marginalised demographics in their sights in particular.
The outlets honed in on mental health within the context of disability benefits and unemployment specifically in at least 23 articles (7.7%). In total, the three outlets put out 147 articles either focusing on mental health and disability benefits, or mentioning the two. Notably, the Canary only included articles that did so in a way that made a connection between the two, or at minimum implied it.
It meant that nearly half the articles in the Canary’s data drew attention to mental health in the context of disability benefit claims and unemployment. They published the majority of these – 135 – in 2024 alone.
What’s more, they weren’t the only marginalised group the mainstream hate-merchants put in the firing line for benefit clampdowns either. Neurodivergent stigma featured heavily across the corporate outlets’ output too – again showing a marked increase in 2024.
Articles attributed the rise in disability benefit claims to the increase in claims from autistic people, and people with ADHD. There were 19 pieces (6.4%) that specifically focused on these in the three outlets’ coverage. All but one of these they wrote in 2024.
Neurodivergence and the connection to disability benefits cropped up across 39 articles within our analysis time-frame all told (13.1%). The Telegraph published just two of these in 2023, while neither the Times nor the Daily Mail linked these in articles before 2024.
The results offer more proof – if we needed it – that the right-wing press and government have a blatant joined-up agenda to strip disabled people of their benefits wherever they can whip up politically-motivated moral panic.
Preying on the mental health pandemic fallout
Where mental health was concerned, a clear narrative emerged. Specifically, the outlets visibly capitalised on the Covid pandemic’s psychological fallout. In particular, they visibly did so to prey on claimants with mental health conditions.
Articles frequently posited pandemic lockdowns and school closures as a key factor in the surge of mental health problems among young people. Naturally, the right-wing press has been quick to condemn Covid protection measures that helped to shield more clinically vulnerable populations at the height of the pandemic. A Times article in January 2024 proclaimed that:
The effect of lockdown and school closures on the mental health of young people has also meant more need help with everyday life, officials believe
By contrast, as for the trauma of living through a global deadly and disabling pandemic, it was tumbleweed from the trio. So between them, outlets simultaneously blamed protections that were vital for keeping chronically ill and disabled people safe, while at the same time managing to punch down on people psychologically disabled by the pandemic. Of course, leave it to the right-wing foghorns to deal a double-blow of ableism in one.
However, more than this, it’s patently clear that the aim was to invalidate new cases of mental health diagnoses.
Merry-go-round of media-political ableism
The Canary’s data uncovered a chicken-and-egg style dance between the corporate media and halls of power.
We identified how conversations on mental health and disability benefits first appeared noticeably in January 2023.
Then, in September 2023, then DWP boss Mel Stride announced proposals for a dangerous tightening of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Notably, this included honing in on mental health claimants.
Significantly, the Tories’ response to the consultation stated how the government would:
specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA [limited capability for work-related activity] Substantial Risk should apply.
In other words, the DWP will decide who this descriptor will apply to going forward. Or, in short, it will obviously move the goalposts to exclude many people living with mental health conditions.
Up to that point in September, we had found at least seven articles that disparaged the rise in mental health-related claims.
Of course, we can’t say for certain that these shaped the government’s thinking. However, it seems no coincidence that right-wing talking heads had been harping on about it not long before it took root in the establishment echo-chambers of Westminster.
Arguably, timing is everything where the corporate press treads. So, it was also no mistake that it started stepping up its vitriol against claimants with mental health conditions in 2024 either.
In other words, the Telegraph, Times, and Daily Mail planted the seed in the public consciousness. Policy-makers took up this convenient narrative and scapegoat. And on the merry-go-round of client media revolving door politics continued.
A timeline of tyrannising mental health disabled claimants
It’s easy to see how the corporate media fear-mongering then paved the way for politicians making a political football out of disabled people with mental health conditions. In fact, the Canary’s data helped plot a notable timeline of this very development as well.
Between January and the end of March 2024, the three posted a flurry of articles that directly honed in on this connection:
- 7 January – Times: ‘Millions more will claim disability benefits as mental illness soars’
- 8 January – Daily Mail: ‘Disability benefits for anxiety and depression have risen 200-FOLD in a decade’
- 20 January – Telegraph: ‘Are we talking ourselves into a mental health crisis?’
- 14 March – Times: ‘Benefits data reveals extent of claims over mental health’
Cue, a disgusting diatribe from Stride. On 20 March, he opined to the Telegraph on all things stereotyping and stigmatising mental health. He made classic bogus contention of work as a health outcome, claiming that:
we seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health
If that weren’t bad enough, Stride took to the dismissive and downright despicable diminishing of people’s mental health. He derided it as the “normal ups and downs of human life” and a case of people “feeling rather down and bluesy”.
The corporate media had been banging on about all this so vehemently, that it gave Stride the perfect ready-made justification for his atrocious claims. And that of course was the entire point.
Welfare reforms incoming…
It should therefore come as little surprise that the Tory government followed this up with a raft of ludicrous welfare reform proposals too. Less surprising still: that people with mental health conditions were a particular target.
In April 2024, the Tories launched their toxic proposals for changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP). As with the WCA changes, this would also legislate to shut people with mental health conditions out from the disability benefits system.
Naturally though, it wasn’t the end of it when Labour took to the helm either. Unsurprisingly, Labour’s DWP chief hate-hawker Liz Kendall has certainly been living up to her arch-right-wing ideology. While she made a big song and dance that she wasn’t jumping on her predecessor’s “bluesy” bandwagon – she basically did anyway.
In November, she suggested that “self-diagnosed” mental health had contributed to the rise in people unable to work. So, that would be: people unable to access underfunded mental health diagnosis services then? What’s more, it was all wrapped up in a grandstanding over sanction threats, naturally.
However, more than her disgraceful diatribes, she has gone pedal to the metal on policy-making as well. For instance, job coaches in more mental health settings is one example of Labour amping up this hostile offensive.
Moreover, lo and behold, Labour appears to now be mulling some of these PIP reforms too. And if it seems a little too on the nose that anonymous “senior government” sources were spilling the tea to the Telegraph, it really shouldn’t. This is what the client media do best.
The DWP is scratching the Telegraph’s back with an insider tip off. Conversely, the dutiful mouthpiece is doing the government’s dirty work, in preemptively announcing it. A shameless PR-type move to lessen the reputational blow this Spring? It seems highly plausible.
No different for neurodivergent claimants
The dataset also reinforced the fact that it has been a similar story for neurodivergent claimants.
The first piece the Canary found goading the link was a Telegraph article in August 2023 titled:
Number of children on disability benefit jumps after surge in ADHD and autism cases
Of course, many of the articles revolved around this bogus notion the right-wing scapegoat-mongers have been spouting. Specifically, this is that healthcare professionals are over-diagnosing people with ADHD and autism.
Naturally, the implication in the coverage seems to be that autistic people, and people with ADHD shouldn’t be claiming disability benefits either. Broadly, the articles are also suggesting that many have been wrongly diagnosed, and ergo again, should not be eligible to claim disability-based social support.
The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has been documenting this. In August, she debunked one of these shameful tirades. And notably, the article was emblematic of the broader discourse at play across the Canary’s dataset. For one, it had all the hallmarks of the most classic ableist tropes around neurodivergence.
Overdiagnosis made its cameo appearance, as did a sweep of antiquated terms which Charlton-Dailey incisively pointed out the outlet had used to “delegitimise the conditions”.
Significantly though, it was the Telegraph’s deployment of misleading statistics to underpin its nonsense claims that was most characteristic of the articles in our dataset.
In its case, it made a number of deliberate categorical conflations to misrepresent the figures. Charlton-Dailey explained that:
Despite linking the two and putting the main total of 730,000 kids with DLA – much, much further down, the article itself explains that less than half of claims (337,000) were for “neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and Asperger’s syndrome”. They then pulled out that 72,500 kids claimed benefits for “hyperkinetic syndrome – also known as ADHD”, despite making it sound like a separate figure this will have actually gone in with the 337k.
Separately, Fullfact also eviscerated the statistical claims of the piece. The article (still) claims that:
The number of parents claiming disability benefits for children with conditions such as ADHD and autism has surged by 200,000 since lockdown, new figures reveal.
However, this simply isn’t true. As Fullfact detailed, that increase instead:
refers to the total increase in DLA claims for under-18s, rather than only those related to ADHD and autism.
Naturally, there were other problematic parts of the article too. But the bottom line was that it was using inaccurate, manipulated figures to make neurodivergent claimants a target of public acrimony.
More mental-health related bile from policy-makers
In reality, neurodivergent claimants actually made up a small fraction of the overall increases. Not that it should matter anyway. Regardless, it hasn’t stopped outlet’s spewing a slew of headlines all making the same bogus over-egged connection.
Other shitty takes on neurodivergent disability claims? What the Times outlandishly branded “a new industry” of “disability influencers”. It tracks that the ableist bigot soapbox would frame a community of disabled people helping other disabled people with the notoriously inaccessible disability benefits process, in this egregiously derogatory way. The bullshit insinuation is of course that neurodivergent people are gaming the system – go figure.
And like with the media fanfare over mental health claims, politicians haven’t passed up the opportunity to pounce on all this either. Amidst his vile comments on mental health in April, Stride also questioned whether people with ADHD and learning disabled people should be entitled to disability benefits.
A warning signal for more harm
Predictably, the right-wing outlets have continued with all this in 2025. Less than two weeks in, and establishment shill the Telegraph was platforming former New Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s odious warnings to the government on mental health. He revived the ghost of DWP Tory past, parroting Stride’s facetious “ups and downs” of life drivel. In tandem, Kendall’s self-diagnosis claims made a cameo appearance. Once again, it perfectly illustrated how indistinguishable Labour’s welfare rhetoric is from the Tories.
Ultimately, disabled people know all too well where corporate media scapegoating leads. This latest maligning of mental health and neurodivergence is invariably a warning signal for the next round of callous cuts and reforms.
Of course, they won’t be the only demographics in line for this. The Canary has documented how it’s part of a broader-scale attack on disabled claimants en masse.
We don’t know the details of what Labour has in store yet this Spring. However, all chatter from the government so far points in the direction of some form of the dangerous WCA and PIP reforms. What is clear is that if it takes its cue from the corporate media’s crackdown circus, it will spell more misery and harm for neurodivergent folks and disabled people with mental health conditions alike.
Featured image via the Canary
