Britain’s mental health crisis is a leadership crisis, too

With 250 new disability benefit claims for mental ill health every day, Britain faces not only a health emergency but a leadership one. Behind the statistics lies a quieter story – of absence, belonging, and what happens when the people we need most stop showing up.

Recent headlines confirmed what many families already feel in their bones: Britain’s mental health crisis is deepening. Around 250 new disability claims for anxiety or depression are approved each day. Mental health conditions now account for more than 80% of all health-related benefits. And 365,000 people aged 16–24 are classed as NEET – not in education, employment or training.

Numbers like these are read in offices, but they are lived in living rooms, the empty chair at dinner, the unopened letter from school, the morning that never quite begins.

Absence has a shape

I know something about absence.

I grew up without a father in a working-class Yorkshire town. The streets were my classroom and survival the curriculum. What I lacked in guidance, I gained in resilience – reading the room before I could read the book, adapting before I had the chance to plan.

Those same traits are now called emotional intelligence or grit. Yet society rarely sees leadership potential in people who grew up without a map. We pathologise absence but seldom reframe it.

What if we saw those missing guides, fathers, mentors, role models – not only as losses to be mourned but as blueprints for how to lead differently: to listen before instructing, to show up when showing up is hardest.

Read more:

• Why it’s time to stop saying the c-word when talking about suicide
• Mental health support while I was in care wasn’t perfect – but now children are being turned away
• Therapists shouldn’t all be white and middle class. We need more from marginalised backgrounds

Masculinity and the silence epidemic

Much of the crisis is male-shaped. Men still struggle to admit pain or ask for help. When strength is defined only as endurance, breakdown becomes inevitable.

Leadership without vulnerability is brittle. A man who cannot speak of struggle cannot lead through it. And a culture that equates openness with weakness breeds leaders who crack quietly under pressure.

If 250 new claims a day aren’t enough to wake us, what will be? Employers can’t outsource resilience to HR; they must build it through belonging, cultures where people can tell the truth without fear.

Class, mobility and mental load

The crisis isn’t spread evenly. A child born in Doncaster or Dewsbury will experience absence differently from one born in Chelsea. Privilege cushions; poverty exposes. The NEET numbers show how mental health, class and opportunity intertwine.

When a young person falls out of education or work, we often see failure. What we should see is a system that failed first: schools without counsellors, employers that prize polish over potential, leaders too distant to notice.

History, though, is full of exceptions: children from broken homes who became builders of institutions; outsiders who learned to navigate chaos and later led others through it. The line between damage and drive can, with support, become transformative.

From treatment to leadership

We can’t medicate our way out of a leadership deficit. Therapy helps, benefits matter, but neither replaces presence. Young people need adults who model possibility; communities need leaders who show up between crises, not just during them.

Belonging doesn’t start in Westminster, it starts in classrooms, youth clubs and workplaces that see potential before performance. The answer isn’t another awareness week; it’s sustained attention, the kind that turns mentoring into infrastructure.

Behind every NEET statistic is a young person waiting to be seen. Behind every benefit claim is someone holding life together without a map.

Why I write this

I was one of those kids. Born fatherless in Yorkshire, raised without a blueprint, I built a life through trial and persistence, from the streets to the boardroom. My book, Built Without a Blueprint, is about turning absence into agency.

Britain’s mental health emergency is not only about broken systems; it’s about broken connection. To heal a generation, we must lead the way we wish we’d been led – with empathy, consistency, and presence.

Built Without a Blueprint by Ashley Mills is out from 7 November (Foreshore Publishing, £10.99).

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