#34 The time an NHS press officer made me cry and other ways work can sabotage mental health

Jobs are meant to pay the bills—but sometimes we can end up taking home more than we signed up for...

If you are British, you’ll know that it is bordering on treason to criticise the NHS. I must have by now interviewed well over a hundred case studies for various health-related articles who will tell me heartbreaking stories of how they have been disbelieved, misdiagnosed or almost killed within the healthcare system, while stressing: but of course it’s doing its best. Even its staff will detail to me the pressures they are experiencing due to a chronic lack of government funding that’s as slowly debilitating as a cancerous tumour, while insinuating: but of course it’s an honour to be on the payroll of such a prestigious institution. Meanwhile, healthcare professionals now working in the private sector will note the flaws that drove them out of its employment at the same time as insisting: but of course what it stands for is a great thing.

I don’t think there’s a soul in the land who hasn’t had or heard of an interaction with the NHS that has left them reeling (mine is the story of mother-of-three Tinu in this Women’s Health piece I wrote last year )—but, beyond the odd news article and hushed corner of Instagram, you’d hardly know of any large-scale dissatisfaction such is the general fear of speaking against what has become such a hallowed institution. I’m certainly not suggesting that the health service doesn’t do a broadly brilliant job (here I am feeling the strange need to also caveat any criticism), and few of us don’t know someone who makes up its 1.2 million-strong, often underpaid and over-worked employees. But, where once we never spoke ill of the royal family (due to the very real risk of being thrown in the Tower of London and having our head chopped off), now it feels sacrilegious to callout the health service at all. I’m convinced I know the eery, icky reason why.