To think my brother does not have bipolar disorder?

[CundtBake]

My brother is early 20s and lives at home with our parents.

He doesn't work, he claims ESA (I think that's what it's called?) by saying he is depressed and basically spends it all on weed.

He is so lazy. His new tactic seems to be to convince himself that he has various mental health disorders to get him out of doing anything. Nothing has ever been diagnosed (other than depression years ago).

When he doesn't have weed he is moody and can't sleep. He's now decided he needs to be tested for bipolar disorder. AIBU in thinking he's taking the puss and he's just a lazy drug addict? I'm so fed up of him minimising mental health disorders like this. Surely if he had bipolar disorder it would be noticeable?

I don't know why people are so determined to pick me apart. I'm a real person with a real problem ffs.

When I said he told me he makes up stuff to get signed off I meant he exaggerates feeling depressed and having problems at home. That's what he has told me. He hasn't admitted making up these diagnoses.

My reading comprehension skills are fine thanks. Can you not try a more intelligent and well reasoned response?

Do you really think that a young (and I am assuming physically healthy) man would want to sit at home all day, smoking pot? Does that really sound emotionally healthy to you?
At best he has a substance dependency, which is a psychiatric condition in itself.
Cannabis alone has a negative effect on psychiatric health and is linked to mood disorders.
Perhaps he claims he is making it up as some sort of denial because of the stigma of MH conditions which people like the OP perpetuate.
He has no job, hangs around the house all day. I have Dxd bipolar 1 and I function at a far higher level than that.

raltheraffe

Erm yes, my ex was like that. He was lazy, didn't want to work, everything was getting paid for him and he was able to play his xbox and smoke weed all day long. He was quite able to stop smoking for the 3 weeks per year we spent abroad, and once I left him was quite able to get a job.

Not everyone who is lazy has a mental illness, just like not everyone who has a mental illness is lazy.

I was diagnosed (at the Maudsley hospital) with OCD, a panic disorder and depression, so before anyone says I don't understand mental health, please don't make me tell you the story about how I had to have my stomach pumped after attempting suicide. I know all too well about mental health, and I also know a chancer when I meet one.

OP- you know your brother better than anyone - he may need some help and assistance, try talking to him, see what his motives are and try and get him the help that he needs. He may not have a mental illness he may just not realise there is more to life than weed and xbox.

raltheraffe have you really read the whole thread? I perpetuate stigmas surrounding mental health? I suffer from mental health problems. I have been sectioned in the past. I have supported lots of people close to me including my brother through difficult times.

I have been my brothers main source of support. As I said earlier on I am the one who accompanied him to the doctors to try to get support in the beginning. But he chops and changes constantly, deciding he has certain disorders that just don't seem likely.

I do believe he has a drug dependency and if he would just admit it and seek help for it he'd be a lot better off. But he won't, and instead blames it on all these different disorders. Eventually you get to a point when you start to see a pattern and it's hard to believe him.

You probably won't listen to anything I'm saying because you seem intent on picking a fight with me.

Do you really think that a young (and I am assuming physically healthy) man would want to sit at home all day, smoking pot?

Thats an incredibly naive thing to say, so I am assuming that the lack of understanding is actually coming from you not the OP.

Some people really are that lazy, they have no goals, no ambition and are happy with that because the alternative is getting off their arses as Number3 s experience illustrates perfectly. Her ex "too ill" to work for as long as she was there ponying up the cash, but as soon as his cash cow left town he miraculously recovered and got himself a job because the alternative was homelessness. Funny how he suddenly recovered when he had no money being thrown at him isnt it?

Why are you taking this so personally, the OP didnt call YOU a liar! She is concerned that her brother, who has admitted that he lied to the GP, is playing the system rather than being actually ill. I fail to see how that affects you in any way. As I said above, if anyone is responsible for how MH in the UK is viewed, its the brother for being the Daily Mail stereotype of a lazy lying scrounger, not the OP for being pissed off with it.

i agree there are people that play the unfit to work/abstain from responsibility card etc,and an exscuse is always trotted out to why they cant get their act together

it's been going on since time began

i find it amazing that some on MN dont believe it exists

i must live in a diffferrent world to some on here

ilovechristmas1

And absolutely people do go to the docs and feign illness, I know people who do it with back problems and with depression symptoms.

Once again, my ex being one of them!!!

Sorry to let some of you guys know, but liars really do exist!!

my ex Bil must have been your ex

he has managed 20yrs and he's only 44

Plus some people aren't ill but genuinely think they are and convince the doctor of that.

I often think depression and being unemployed go hand in hand and it can be hard to say - chicken and egg? Depressed because they're unemployed or unemployed because they're depressed?

Weed makes you depressed and prone to mental health problems. Over my life, I have known many people who smoked too much and did absolutely nothing with their lives. Weed makes you lazy.

I have lost count of the number of friends who have ended up in institutions with mental health problems after years smoking weed. Some will probably never get out. Weed also makes you introspective and self-indulgent and it is not uncommon for people addicted to weed to self-diagnose mental health problems.

I don't know what the answer is, but you have my sympathies.

I'm quite sure liars do exist.

I'm also struggling to see how some of the posts here can be true, under the current benefits system.

GPs don't get to sign people off for ESA for "years and years", even if they wanted to.

The only post that comes close to explaining how the OP's story could be true (as opposed to a slightly mistaken joining of dots from different eras), is SoonToBeSix's, which claims some people still haven't been ported to ESA.

And that's also demanding quite a lot in the belief stakes, to say that over 6 years after ESA was brought in, there are still people who haven't yet been processed even once (for scale, I've been through reassessment 2 or 3 times since ESA was brought in).

I quite agree with the OP that living with people with any chronic illness can be frustrating, and mental illness and addiction particularly so.

And I can completely see how an addict would attempt to reframe their issues into something they themselves find more acceptable.

I also agree that some people in the world are lazy.

But I'm not prepared to sit by and let anyone perpetrate the much-loved myth that under the current system, large numbers of perfectly healthy people can wander into their GP's, tell a sob story and get signed off on incapacity benefits by the GP for years and years. There will always be a few try it on, but anyone who does will have to put in a fair bit of welly to the act and will still end up being turned down by the DWP at some point.

Interesting to see all these armchair psychiatrists who just know that Uncle Joe is faking depression. Only on MN! You can be related to someone and have no idea that they are mentally unwell.

I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and not assume they are faking their illness. Maybe her brother is lazy and unmotivated but hey, guess what....lazy and demotivated people get depression too!

Many, many men are written off and told they need a boot up their arse. Men have high suicide rates compared to women too. No prizes for guessing one of the reasons why.

well i tell you this believe if you want or not

where i live the mums that now have to look for work when the child turns 5 and also have to show alot of evidence that they are looking and often having sanctions put upon them are now claiming ESA

as they see it they can get a note easily enough and they wont be assessed for approx 6-8 months and worry about it then,they get left alone by the JC for months and months while the claim is processed,they get the same money,no sanctions,and no pressure to find work

thats whats going on here

im on the fence on this one,as i know how much pressure is put on jsa claimants,and if their a SP childcare etc,lack of job experience must be frightening

you see some people dont look to far ahead in their mind their getting the JC of their back for awhile

What is ESA?

So those people are gaming the system for 26 weeks - which should only be 13 weeks except the DWP is behind with its paperwork.

Not "years and years".

It's not the issue that's affecting the OP's brother.

(And indeed you point out the driver for this is a problem in the JSA system in the first place - the levels of unproductive hassle from the JobCentre. I think the amount of the benefit is actually similar. )

My friend has never worked, her child is at college and she goes for interviews etc and has been doing this for years and yet, despite the claims that they will stop benefits for those who are capable of working hers have not been stopped.

She goes to the interviews and applies for jobs and purposefully screws up the job interview.

I don't know how she has managed it for so long but she has.

Oh and crumble, I am not pretending to be a armchair psychiatrist. My family member simply doesn't have all these mental disorders they have claimed to have and I know this for a fact and why this person does what they do and yes, this person has got away without working too. No one has to believe me if they don't want, but it does happen. Its not me being uneducated or anything of the kind, it is just the truth.

The whole ESA issue really wasn't the point of my thread, I wish I hadn't even mentioned it. But just to clarify, this doctors note stuff hasn't been going on for years and years. He was previously on job seekers. I don't know how long this has been going on it seemed to stop for a while but now it's back again.

Thanks for clarifying, cundtbake. I thought it must be something like that.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, Kittymum. As I said above, people put in the Support Group won't be sent for back-to-work interviews for at the JobCentre.

But they will continue to be called for medical reassessment in case their condition has changed. So whatever words they're using, they're not permanently signed off. Just on a much longer interval than they were before.

Well, I still stand by what I said up thread, and no SunnyBaudelaire I did not say her parents should throw him out FFS. The OP has had a bloody hard time on this thread. Some people have experience of dealing with mental health issues, their own and their relatives, myself included and some people also have experience of relatives who hide behind made up illnesses as they just can't be arsed to do a hard days graft. Both things happen much as some people don't think it does, it does.

The OP is concerned for her brother, that genuinely comes across, it's disgraceful how she's been treated on here by posters who are outraged at her 'lack of empathy for mental health' don't make me laugh. Where's your empathy?

Well you know some people.. if it hasn't happened in their world then it obviously doesn't happen at all!

Well I hope this makes you smile Cundt and U2 but my own DB's life ambition, was 'To become a lollipop man As you don't have to start work until you retire'

If you are your brother's "main source of support" then he really is screwed, poor guy.