In political terms, it seems a lifetime since Theresa May pledged to “tackle the burning injustice” of mental health. Less than 18 months later, that promise has been widely shown to be a sham – from long delays to access care, falling numbers of acute mental health beds, to underfunded children’s services.

But there’s one area that has received little attention: mental health and the benefit system.

Mentally ill people more at risk of losing benefits, study shows Read more

This week it emerged that people with mental health problems are at far greater risk of having their benefits stopped than those with physical disabilities. Researchers from York University analysed government data to find that benefits claimants who have a psychiatric condition are 2.4 times more likely than those with diabetes, back pain or epilepsy to lose their entitlement to disability living allowance.

When in 2017 May’s policy chief, George Freeman, said benefits should go to the “really disabled” and not those “taking pills at home, who suffer from anxiety”, it was not so much a slip of the tongue but an admission of intent. The York research shows a third of all people with anxiety have now had their claims disallowed – almost twice as many as those with neurological or musculoskeletal conditions.

It amounts to institutional discrimination, in which the government has orchestrated a benefits system less likely to help you simply because you are mentally ill. These figures don’t even factor in the many who can’t face applying in the first place. I’m routinely contacted by people with mental health problems who need benefits to survive, but they don’t make a claim because they fear they won’t be able to cope with the process.

The benefits system – arbitrary deadlines, lack of specialist support, complex paperwork – appears to have been designed by people who neither have any understanding of what it is to live with a mental illness nor any desire to.

It is something close to sadism to expect someone with severe depression who on a bad day struggles to get dressed to somehow fill out a 100-page benefit form, while collecting multiple pieces of evidence alone, in order to have a chance at paying their bills. That they are doing this only to enter a benefits system where the odds are proved to be stacked against them is only crueller.

This is not to say that people with physical health problems are somehow given an easy ride – on the contrary, anyone from people with Parkinson’s to terminal cancer patients are routinely rejected for benefits – but rather, that there is a deep-seated prejudice against mental illness running through the Conservatives’ social security system.

Back in 2013, as the coalition launched its so-called welfare reform, the court of appeal upheld a ruling finding that the process used to decide whether hundreds of thousands of people are eligible for employment and support allowance (ESA) “disadvantages” people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and autism.

Five years later, the high court ruled that another benefit, personal independence payment, was “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions – forcing the government to review the disability benefit claims of 1.6 million people with anxiety who may have wrongly been turned down for help.

Rather than having a system designed to protect people with mental health problems, the Conservatives have engineered one that pushes them into crisis. The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) says the government’s benefit reforms, including sanctions and cuts, “are having a toxic impact on mental health”; rates of severe anxiety and depression among unemployed people have soared by more than 50% between 2013 and 2017.

Universal credit has already been linked to an increased suicide risk, with the stress of being left for weeks without money, affecting claimants’ mental health so profoundly that some are being pushed to consider taking their own life.

Universal credit puts ‘welfare savings’ before human beings' lives | Frances Ryan Read more

Suicide has slowly become a fixture of Britain’s benefit system. Michael O’Sullivan, a 60-year-old father of two from north London who had long-term depression and agoraphobia, took his own life in 2013 after being found “fit for work”, with his coroner stating the benefit process was a key “trigger” in his death. He was far from the last. Gut the benefits budget enough, and human beings are cut adrift.

Even those who champion “welfare reform” cannot surely respond to this with anything but shame. If people with mental health problems can neither trust the government to treat them fairly or even protect their life, the safety net has lost all meaning. Theresa May was right: mental health is a burning injustice. But in the benefits system, it is the Conservatives themselves who lit the match.

• In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic violence helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is 1800 737 732. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist