To think we are becoming a country of hypochondriacs?

I agree to an extent. It might be unfair to use this woman as an example though. We do all get headaches but migraines are different, they can be debilitating. I've had migraines, luckily they are very rare, but when I have them my vision is really impaired and I can't drive. If I was having these regularly I may struggle to hold down a job away from home with set hours.

Don't you think that your friends are probably suffering more from health issues as you're getting older now? That's certainly what I've noticed.

I think you should call Women's Aid - 0808 2000 247.

What you're experiencing is abuse, from a man who hates you and wants no chage to his lifestyle that involves having a skivvy to do tasks he considers too menial for him.

Cruel words are abuse. You don't deserve this treatment.

And that is exactly what you are told to do if you have a dynamic disability.

Starting with fair, proportionate taxation and closing loopholes so that money made in our country doesn’t disappear in to the ether without giving back to the society that props it up, right? 😜

I do not think many people are faking things for disability benefits. I know people exaggerate though. People apply for PIP citing their symptoms on their worst day, even if that worst day only happens a few times a year.

I work for a GP, the number of calls we get for appointments for coughs, colds, minor ailments. We can signpost them to their local pharmacy but many refuse "they want to see a doctor". Don't know how to solve the problem though

TBC, that group of people is so small that it’s offensive when people raise it. The UK fraud rate for disability benefits is 0.2%. It’s not worth mentioning and it muddies the water and it allows people to diagnose people as frauds by eye. Like those people who see someone stand up from their wheelchair and assume they’re a fraud because they think all wheelchair users are paralysed. Or people whose disabilities aren’t visible having to deal with friends and family saying stuff like you did x, so you must be able to do y/ you did x yesterday so you can do it today. People who make those examples against chronically ill people aren’t medically qualified and if they were, they’re not the ones who performed their medical history, examination and tests.

if it was another subject, a lot of people would be more careful about allowing sweeping statements to be made about an entire population, based on the actions of less than than half of a half of a percentage point. It’s horribly unfair and it means that disabled people like me and my disabled DC are looked at with suspicion by the general public.

i wrote something a few years back- it was published for scope and was a guest post for Mumsnet. It was called, ‘I’m tired of having to perform my disability.’ And so many people agreed with the article because they experienced the same feelings as me about being paranoid about societal judgements. So a lot of us ending up vocalising our pain when we’d otherwise be silent in it (which makes it easier to cope with) or having to transfer out of my wheelchair in a way society expects and accepts, rather than the way which is comfortable for me. It’s not fair that 0.2% of people who’ve decided to pretend our disabilities are having such an awful impact on the 99.8% who are genuine, not to mention all the genuine people who are wrongly turned down and have to appeal and put in for tribunals, and go through a hell of a lot of work to generate the necessary evidence.

if I only had one of my conditions (uncontrolled epilepsy with cluster seizures- which require emergency meds, but can also make me blind, paralysed, psychotic, incontinent, and wander off in my wheelchair), I would still need to claim disability benefits. But without my other conditions, I would seem just like anyone else between seizures, even though I have to have someone with me who’s trained to use my life saving medication at all times, it wouldn’t impact my other functions outside of the above. And when I am experiencing the above problems, my kids try to keep me inside the house (when I’m trying to run away in fear because the seizures have that impact on me afterwards) and I often just doze in bed, sometimes for a couple of days. I am often left with horrible vomiting and migraines. How would someone know what I look like when I’m very unwell when I’m either in bed or in hospital when it happens? Friends visit me in hospital, but only when I’m on the mend. They’ve seen seizures but only a couple have seen the clusters, and only one has seen my debilitating projectile vomiting condition (cvs- look it up. It goes beyond vomiting and is debilitating) because I don’t want to see people when I feel so unwell. The only reason the one friend who’s seen it has seen it is because she came to see me in hospital sans warning so I was still too ill to want visitors when she came in. So please, everyone, stop judging people as fakers and fit and we’ll because you really don’t have a clue.

i know I'm going to die young because of my health conditions (I’m 42 now and in 6 years alone I’ve been in trauma/ resus 10 times and have to be hospitalised several times a year. I lost a friend af the age of 34 to 2 of the same conditions as me, and another at 45), and I am so scared about whether my sons will be able to figure out the forms after I’m gone. Basically, I’m trying to create a guide for my eldest for how to fill in the forms for each of his brothers (he also has bipolar himself but doesn’t claim anything for it).

Can those (by no means do I only refer to the person I’m quoting but others on this thread) please actually do some research, but about fraudulence with disability benefits, but also relapsing and remitting conditions? In adding suspicions and repeating cliches which don’t apply to many, many disabilities, you’re allowing govts to effectively commit eugenics by starving us to death. Please stop, I beg you all.

I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’ve had family cut me out because I can’t go see them- because I’m extremely ill. The last time I saw my mum, I was in hospital and quite delusional from my brain being swollen (my liver was failing and I’d had many seizures- they said my liver enzymes were dangerously out of control due to my vomiting condition (CVS) and it had caused acute pancreatitis (something only alcoholics usually get. I don’t drink due to epilepsy (& I couldn’t afford to anyway). She then sent me a message near Christmas suggesting I just don’t bother enough. My lack of bothering has caused problems for her and it’s why my young adult sons (18-22) keep trashing my house. People think they can just imagine what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes, but they can’t.

i went through PND after I had my second child. It’s no joke. I even had episodes of psychosis within it. I’m so sorry a nurse had that attitude to you, especially one you felt you could trust. How is it now? Sending all my love x

@LazyArsedMagician

I do believe there are a lot of people swinging the lead, but it’s difficult to come up with a system that weeds out the feckless, without harming those who are genuinely sick and disabled. By forcing them into work, we’ll also be forcing those people who are truly incapable of working off benefits too. I think that we can all agree that would be evil and inhumane?

Erm.......Brexit is currently costing us at least 4% of GDP every year........the Tories only helped during the pandemic because doing nothing would have been worse for the economy.......they didn't really care........3 million self employed people got no support at all.........amazing how some MPs and Lords made a killing out of Covid contracts.
The covid support was the lesser of 2 evils. They'd have been happy to
"let the bodies pile high"
if it meant the economy was better off.
Thinking about it sensibly, Covid exacerbated conditions that were already chronic because of poverty.
Tories we're hardly generous with their £20 extra a week for benefits.......that went straight back to them with increased tax revenues.
When Labour left office in 2010 the country's health, education and services were the best they've ever been.

But do you really believe that there aren't people who swing the lead to get out of things they don't want to do?

Of course that happens. But whatever system you have you'll have people who want to take the piss. I don't think there's any way to design a system that always helps those who genuinely need it, and is able to accurately weed out those who don't.

I'm genuinely sorry for those of you who have shared your illnesses.

But do you really believe that there aren't people who swing the lead to get out of things they don't want to do?

(Yes I did ask this earlier in the thread. I'm still interested because most posts seem to be from those people to whom that does not refer to).

(Also no I'm not referring back to the OP as the article is referring to a person with what looks like actual medical problems).

Absolutely this. One of my oldest friends from high school was horrid to me after I had PND and it exacerbated my symptoms of my medication induced neurological involuntary movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia. She actually said that she didn't have the energy to talk to me... and this is coming from a nurse! 😞😳 She told me to find a decent therapy or something that would help me, beyond the things I'd tried already as they clearly weren't working 🤔 I've got over it now, but at the time, I was really upset. How anyone can have so little empathy is beyond me.

The government's panicked over-reaction to Covid taught people to become hypochondriacs. Yes, Covid has severe consequences for some. But I echo what previous posters said about people expecting the government to solve all their problems. After all, there are many other threats to people's health and well-being that the government pays no attention to at all, or says the cursory "lessons will be learned": sewage dumped in rivers, for example. For one reason or another, the government sacrificed EVERYTHING we had on the altar of Covid, including the well-being and education of our children, and the livelihoods and careers of many people. If it had been a two-week lockdown much earlier, to get the NHS in order, with a definite end of "after this, we cannot lock down any more, because of the massive damage it will cause", things might now be very different.

Instead, they painted themselves into a corner by pledging "we will do whatever it takes to beat the virus." Saying this made it politically impossible to end lockdowns for months on end; at first you-know-who was pledging to eliminate Covid entirely. "Twelve weeks, and we can send the virus packing." I think he should have said "We cannot protect everybody. We cannot eliminate the virus, we can only lessen the harms. Prolonged lockdowns will cause massive harm, probably more than the virus would." That's what he thought privately, but his handlers didn't allow him to say it. I also think it was a very bad move indeed to pursue the strategy of "frightening the pants off the public" (the government's own words). It worked too well. People pleaded for more and more lockdown. And now, we are seeing the effects of our "saviours from the virus" decimating the country's wealth, health and well-being.

For every £1 spent on disability benefits, they make back something like £1.48. It’s literally profitable to support disabled people. It’s purely ideological not to. And yes, there’s some very DM informed posters here. If they’d like to swap lives with me and go through what i go through, which includes constant pain, constant projectile vomiting, frequent seizures and dislocations, with multiple critical health incidents, they are more than welcome. I’d like to hear how they find having to live like this. I have my young adult sons as my carers because you can’t even get a full-time carer without them taking some of your benefits, and you’re barely given enough to survive on in the first place. £4 per day of my money goes on incontinence pants alone, because i have sensory processing disorders due to being ND and cannot cope with the sensation of the non-elastic NHS ones- which you’re lucky if you can get anyway.

Well said Kitten1982.
I think some folks read too much Daily Mail!
Lots of people work when they are ill and lots don't work when they are ill. Unless these folks think doctors lie then the country's health is getting worse.
No surprise......poverty is a killer.
During Tory rule nearly 340,000 excess deaths were attributed to austerity cuts.
I'd think these people would have more important things to worry about, rather than muse about whether others are sick or not.

This is disgusting. I have multiple disabilities. I was born with one, developed another in childhood, and then more in adulthood. My life is hard. Disability is very much a part of my identity because it informs everything i can and cannot do.

You are not in other people’s flesh. You do not feel what they feel. And to any of you who say you’ve got a friend who says they feel x, but don’t bother or don’t look ill etc.- you haven’t got a friend who says and does that, because you’re no friend at all. You have no clue what they’re going through

Before my late diagnosis of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), I was often labelled as “lazy," and I believed it too. At the time, I just thought everyone lived with daily pain and that I was worse at coping with it. After my daughter was born, things took a serious turn. I became very ill, very quickly, and I knew something wasn’t right. Thankfully, after working with an amazing GP and specialists, I received the correct treatment.
While I’m much better now, I still live with chronic pain and daily joint subluxations. I've learned to recognise my limits and try not to let them slow me down too much. I work from home, which has been essential for managing my conditions and actually helps me be more productive. It’s frustrating that many conditions like mine are underdiagnosed, leading people to be unfairly labeled. My daughter has the condition too. I am happy for what I went through because it will help my daughter now go through the same.
.

I think 111 have a lot to answer for tbh as I think they often advise people to attend A&E inappropriately.

I also think budget cuts are a massive problem. I feel quite lucky that in my area, our services didn’t seem to really suffer until much later than other places, and it was only a couple of years ago that I had my first awful experience with the GP. Our local minor injuries unit has very limited opening hours, which puts more pressure on A&E, and sometimes GPs are advising patients to go there in lieu of an appointment (which is what happened to me).

The expectations of wellness and happiness have also changed. We are taught to strive for happiness and wellness, but maybe we need to lower our expectations.
When I was a child, if I ever told my mum that I was unhappy about something, her response would be "most people aren't happy, just be glad you aren't sad." If people took the view that it is normal to feel a bit physically and mentally crap, it would probably take pressure off everybody. People wouldn't feel Inadequate if they weren't "fulfilled", and would realise that the people they admire are probably feeling low level depressed themselves.
Note, I am NOT talking about clinical depression here, just normal everyday blah feeling that everyone gets.

I read the article and it is much more an example of what WFH can do to bring people back into the workforce who otherwise would have just simply been signed off with a disability. It talks about how the flexibility WFH brings gave them the opportunity to find and sustain a job they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. This is the opposite of what you’re going on about, so maybe a different example would demonstrate better what you mean by hypochondria. Statistically women are much more likely to be affected by chronic migraines, which is not just a headache, and I wish you don’t have to find out the difference yourself. Joint pains can be debilitating, especially if no cure/ operation is offered on the NHS to alleviate it. Routine ops like knee replacements, hip replacements could keep people working for much longer, but aren’t offered for years until the person can non longer move, let alone commute. Again, these illnesses affect women more than men. So on balance, you might be right, but these are not the evidence that would prove it.

There are a vast number of health conditions that won’t even come close to killing you but that doesn’t mean we can’t utilise modern medicine and modern knowledge to improve our quality of life.

Menopause can do you a lot of harm if you lose your job..

I think also, people's expectations of health have changed. Menopause symptoms, for example, are unpleasant but will not ultimately do you any harm. Depression, unless severe, won't do you much harm.Chronic pain won't kill you.
Some people argue that we should strip it all right back - I have seen views approaching that on this thread. But thankfully progress means that we can make life better and minimise suffering.