Why is physical health and mental health treated so differently by society?

if we took depression and anxiety seriously it would be too costly for the NHS. too many people suffer from it and there's no cure, so taxes would go through the roof if we actually wanted to treat it. the 'no cure' part is why we're expected to just live with it, unfortunately.

That’s quite cynical but surely if we treated it and acknowledged it early on we could reduce the number of people who go on to develope a serious illness and as such fewer people would need costly treatment.

I guess it's because mental health is harder to spot than physical health. Also as people tend to joke about depression, suicide etc it's difficult to tell if someone is genuinely suffering from a mental illness as some fake it for attention (which is disgusting).

Or someone is joking about as a way to tell other people they are going through something like me. ( I used to do that)

That I can understand, that's fine. It's just the people who make fun of it to make others laugh when they genuinely don't have a mental illness that annoys me.