To be surprised and shocked that PIP is rewarded without official diagnosis?

Such as?

Exactly!
If you are not severely affected by your disability, you're not going to get PIP.
Autism, anxiety, and ADHD are not "milder disorders" though. They're disabilities. Not everyone with them will be affected enough in their functioning to need PIP, but some will, and that doesn't mean they're malingering, it just means they're disabled. Physical conditions are not the only things that are disabilities.

Jeez, another one of these threads. Why don’t you post your “shock” on one of the several other threads doing the rounds on here at the moment.

No, I’m not surprised. PIP is awarded based on what challenges you have to face, not your diagnosis. Backed up with a ton of evidence from health care providers.

Even getting the claim forms sent out is a bloody nightmare - we were considering claiming for my DD - we phoned up for the forms but the call handler was so bloody awful to her, DD burst into tears and the call handler hung up on her - she refuses to try again.

“Maybe if able people took 1 hundredth as much interest in the lives of the disabled as they do the benefits they receive, the UK would be a nicer place to live.”

👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

If you compare PIP/DLA with a child who has an EHCP, neither requires a diagnosis but both will require some sort of corroborating evidence from professionals.
The converse is also true - a diagnosis doesn’t mean an automatic right to an EHCP or PIP/DLA. I have taught children with Down Syndrome who didn’t get DLA and others who had no diagnosis but did receive DLA. It’s all about need!

I'm not surprised by that really
But I am surprised that SOME people get it.
There are many people that do need it.
But there are some who don't and have managed to get it.

@K0OLA1D it's true!! We have genuine people being turned down and twats like that taking every frigging penny they can get. A bit of detective work tells you all you need to know, whilst we have cases being turned down again and again - some of which are desperate situations of individuals whose first language is not The English struggling to complete the forms.. I speak from experience, as a volunteer for a disability charity assisting parents in this situation.

DS got DLA without a diagnosis.
He was "on the pathway" as they say. So he'd seen someone from CAHMS briefly and they'd put him on a waiting list for a proper assesment.
As evidence I provided the report from that meeting and his latest school report.
People can sit on waiting lists for a long time and they have all the same care needs during that time. So it's not unreasonable really.

And "other evidence" - what evidence do you think that is if it's not letters from doctors and medical professionals? Do we not trust them to do their job now? It's not like you take a picture of your bed and caption it "haven't got out of bed in a week #lol #freeMoney".

Reported as hate speech. I'm absolutely sick of reading crap like this.

There are a lot of disabilities that are never diagnosed,

For physical disabilities or a combination of physical and mental disabilities the normal term is "syndrome without a name"

geneticalliance.org.uk/support-and-information/swan-uk-syndromes-without-a-name/

Many of these people are very obviously visibly disabled but don't have a diagnosis because either it's a rare genetic issue or the combination of disabilities hasn't been named yet.

More generally PIP is deliberately a functional assessment - it is based on what you can do and what you cannot do not your diagnosis.

A diagnosis doesn’t make a difference to the person suffering. If you have a broken bone, having a doctor confirming you’ve broken it doesn’t change anything. If a doctor doesn’t confirm it, it’s still broken. Evidence is far more important than a diagnosis.

Yep, if you're on medication you have to show the repeat prescriptions.
And what people are not getting is that to get PIP, you have to be so incapacitated by your condition (whether anxiety or otherwise) that you can't go out alone, can't feed yourself, can't cook a simple meal, can't bathe, can't manage your medications or therapies independently etc etc..... In that case whatever the "disorder" is, it's clearly a disability!
And they don't just take your word for it. If you don't have evidence, they just write back to say "you have said you can't do xyz, but there is no evidence to support this claim so I have decided that you can".

You do know that when you get diagnosed, you don't get told that you're disabled, right? There's no list that says who's disabled, or what counts as a disability. It's an understanding you can come to based on what you can and can't do. See the Equality Act.

You don’t just self diagnose and get benefits.

You are frothing for now reason.

You must be able to demonstrated evidence of the support you need. Lots of evidence.
from medical professionals, support workers etc

Then his PIP is doing its job and paying to put him on a level footing with people without difficulties, and enabling him to work. PIP isn’t a replacement for income, it’s to give you what you need to make life no more difficult for you than someone who doesn’t need help, to enable you to live like anyone else - so if it allows him to afford a car with necessary adaptations and take up a job that doesn’t require him to be able to walk, that’s its purpose.

Having social housing and choosing to smoke has no bearing on this. You sound like the worst sort of prejudiced idiot who understands nothing about the world. I’m sure you’re not, though.

Not surprised at all. Pip is based on your challenges not your diagnoses.
What you do need is an absolute fuckton of evidence (and the will to go to appeals when your claim is routinely turned down because they know lots of people genuinely entitled to help will just give up if turned down)

As it happens, my sons and I do all have formal diagnoses and still the amount of evidence required was astronomical. The pack weighed a bloody ton what with all the reports, hospital letters, proof of prescriptions etc. They didn't take my word for anything. I had to provide evidence in support of everything I said (and quite right too)

You don't just fill in a form saying I need help cos I'm all sad and hurty and have them go oh no poor you here's the cash.

Technically you don't need a diagnosis. In reality my PIP was denied the first time as I didn't have a diagnosis (thank you, NHS waiting lists). The second time I applied I had multiple diagnostic reports and letters explaining my condition from consultants, and it went through.

but yeah, as Serendipity says, do you care about our lives apart from the "free money"? Do you care about why we might need it? Or about all the many many layers of inaccessibility we face every single day? Or do you just want to bash benefits?

No because I have a child who gets the highest rares of DLA so know how the system works ,when it comes to Autism / ADHD etc a diagnosis is pretty pointless as the spectrums are so broad
It goes off extra care needs and how the condition impacts the individual.

Just because someone doesn’t have a diagnosis doesn’t meant medical professionals aren’t involved in their care and won’t give evidence for PIP applications. Somethings are tricky to diagnose and it takes time to work out what is going on for someone

Maybe if able people took 1 hundredth as much interest in the lives of the disabled as they do the benefits they receive, the UK would be a nicer place to live.

It’s so hard to get PIP even if you’re entitled to it, someone very close to me had theirs taken off them after claiming for 5+ years and a 30-year history of mental health issues, and inpatient stays and lots of therapy in that time. A person that can’t manage without additional help, and after a phone assessment even when symptoms were unchanged from the last assessment the PIP was stopped. Appealed it but as you can imagine someone with severe long standing mental health issues isn’t up for advocating for themselves in court. Capita, who do the assessments, are notorious for this unfortunately and are always trying to catch you out during the interviews (things like ‘so you can’t go to work half the time due to anxiety? So you have got a job? Okay’ that kind of thing.) If this post is a veiled way of asking if anyone can just say they have ADHD now and get PIP, it’s not the case. It’s already hard enough for people with all the documentation and evidence of the effects it has on their life to get awarded it. It’s shit.

It’s also worth mentioning that waiting lists for diagnoses are years now, in my area the waiting lists for ADHD assessments are years-long. The symptoms that make life hard to navigate as a result don’t stop while you wait for the NHS to work through the list and get you. I was diagnosed by an ADHD specialist by chance during unrelated mental health appointments in a different county 5 years ago, moved house and having to get re-diagnosed in order to get the meds I badly need (can’t get a repeat prescription as I couldn’t afford them during lockdown, and when I could afford them I’d forget to pick them up and the prescription would expire). It’s a stupid system!

Is this thread being started as an insidious attempt to try and influence voting behaviour after the conservatives have had another drubbing at the local elections?
There's been so many of these recently it's becoming ridiculously desperate.

Have you got any idea if how long the process is for some types of disabilities? Four years here. The need was their so PIP was awarded pre diagnosis.
Maybe educate yourself a bit?