People who work have anxiety too

[Fedupandgrump]

Anyone else on the verge of a breakdown with work, kids, mortgage and cost of living?

I’ve read a lot of threads recently about people with mental health conditions worried about being forced into employment when they feel as though they would not be able to cope. Whilst I sympathise, it’s come at a time where I am completely overwhelmed, burnt out and wonder how the fuck I’m going to get through the week. I treat myself to a half hour sob in Sainsburys car park every couple of days and I wake up every morning with dread, fear and anxiety about what the day will hold. However, I go and work because I. Have. No. Choice. I have two kids and a mad dog that relies on me and my husband to keep our shit together and a roof over our heads. Every day I can feel my heart racing and I feel permanently like I’m in fight or flight mode and I wonder if this is going to lead to a premature heart attack in my 30’s.

I sometimes feel like people who don’t work due to poor mental health thinks those of us who do work, are suffering less than them. I know IAMBU but I can’t help the way I feel at the minute.

Yeah, and me. I pay full rent and service charges. I wish it was free.

Every bill I pay is at full rate.

Reductions only usually apply to those on means tested benefits - whatever their age.

Sadiq Khan has introduced free school meals for all primary school age children. Some of these parents will be very wealthy, but I don’t begrudge them anything. I bet they are not refusing the free meals though.

https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-mayor-does/priorities-london/free-school-meals

I was responded to your first paragraph.

I'm sorry to hear about your breakdown but good that you didn't need professional input and were back in work 3 months later! But you must know that's not the norm. Most people are in hospital for a long time, sometimes years and then need further recovery in the community.

I am not annoyed that “lucid” (what does this even mean?!) people post on here and receive benefits. I wouldn’t swap my life and my manageable mental health needs for their lives. I wouldn’t give up my mortgage, my career, my freedom and my life and therefore, why would I be annoyed?! I am not envious or jealous.

I note it’s always about working when we talk about PIP which is an OUT OF WORK benefit. I also note many posters have children but I assume the posters all very high earners in their own right and use private education and private healthcare. Even if you’re a net contributor earning £41k, a couple of kids will push you surely into taking from the system. Couldn’t possibly have that!

I don't claim benefits

Please do report my posts to MN if you don't like them

But you know what, people are allowed to have opinions

Yep people like me too, except you seem to be objecting to me having opinions, wierd that

But there’s giving and taking from the system, and then just taking. We need people in lower paid work, so do not begrudge them at all not being net contributors. I do begrudge people feeling entitled to a life on benefits because they’ve got 4 children and so ‘would love to work, but can’t’

Oh the irony just drips off this post.

But you must know that's not the norm.

Sigh, hence why I said 'I realise not everyone has the support of family and everyone's situation is unique.'

100% agree with this. I do genuinley sympathise with people suffering with mental health issues of any kind I really do. I have suffered from anxiety on and off for as long as I can remember, iv had counselling on and off for years and I have put alot of work into making sure I have ways of coping when im overwhelmed.

There absolutley are many people with dibilitating mental illnesses and MH services are so stretched that people are left with no help to get themselves on a better path again, however I do agree that people can treat it as a final diagnosis and end up succumbing to an unhealthy way of living day to day rather than putting in small steps to help keep themselves as healthy as possible. I think people end up labeling themselves and treating their whole selves as just their illness rather than a person with qualities which include their illness.

For anyone who is working and struggling, I hear you, and I urge anyone to get help and support in whatever form that it as you also matter and shouldnt have to go through daily hell just to pay bills (i say this as someone whos been in this predicament).

Apologies, should have said, that my post above applies to you as well (and a few others).

P.S. Not sure you understand the meaning of irony.

sigh why do you have such an issue with me expressing my opinion? I am responding to what you have written. If you want to clarify a point surely you can do so without being so rude?

Calling out someone for personally attacking other posters and then in the next breath personally attacking that poster = irony.

HTH

😘

So basically anyone who you disagree with is a mean mean nasty bully, who needs to understand you have a right to an opinion, but if their opinion disagrees with you then they are vile

Yep irony is the correct word

Maybe stop taking things so personally?

Apparently not...

I’m not talking about people who have 4 children and don’t work - although the system doesn’t allow that - there is a 2 child benefit cap and parents need to work some hours…
This is about disabled people claiming financial support. They can’t help being disabled any more than you or I can help the fact that society needs lower paid workers who do very valuable jobs like care workers and hospital porters. 🤷🏻‍♀️

How is it possible to have 50 panic attacks a day which is more then 1 every 30 minutes plus recovery time as your body takes a while to recover from a panic attack yet your saying you just carried on. A panic attack is debilitating and stops you in your tracks. You can't just carry on. If you have 1 or 2 a day you can work around it but 50 would be impossible to function are you sure they where panic attacks or where they anxiety attacks as there very different

There are no medals given out for this kind of thing.
Mental health comes first. If you are are in crisis then please seek help as it is out there. Life has it's pressures, more so than ever but nobody should be going around on the verge of a breakdown.

Right. Been flipping between the several threads on this subject fir the last few days.

Let me spell this particular bit of nit picking out for you.

If you are physically or mentally vulnerable, there are a myriad of reasons why having a cleaner, if you can afford it, is beneficial.

In the case of physical disabilities it's trip hazards, keeping on top of refuse disposal, preventing the build up of grime in bathrooms etc etc. Many disabilities come with a side order of immunity issues, meaning increased vulnerability to infection. Keeping a clean and tidy environment reduces that risk. It also helps with mental health which is usually impacted by having a physical difficulty because of the restrictions placed upon a person. If they have a lifelong disability while they may have an acceptance of it, they may spend most of their time confined to home. If they can do a hobby they will benefit from help keeping their supplies or whatever in order. If a disability is recent, coming to terms with it can be devastating due to the bereavement effect - losing everything you previously had and the fact that people see you and treat you differently. I could go on. If you want to watch a drama about precisely this, I recommend "You before me" on Netflix. In fact, I recommend it to everyone who needs an insight into how physical and mental challenges intersect at the extreme end

People with mental illness - well, let's start with the fact that awareness of the state of their surroundings will likely be impaired. Their reasoning around safety may be impaired. Hoarding disorder is a symptom of and a mental illness itself,
it can be due to depression and trauma. It's real. I watch a channel on YouTube called Mid West Magic cleaning. The guy that runs it is ND. Yes, he works. He gives up his free time to help extreme cases of people struggling with their environment. There are back stories if abuse, bereavement and the way life can easily spiral out of control. It's a domino effect. He does not judge.

Consider OCD. Sufferers truly believe their environment is a threat. And it's not just obsessive cleaning. It's order and rituals. Drugs and therapy might ease this but it takes time and just leaving someone overwhelmed rocking in a corner through sheer terror is inhumane and will cause everything to worsen.

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list of why someone might spend their PIP on a cleaner but if able bodied and mentally sound people who can afford a cleaner to facilitate their lifestyle choices are encouraged to do so why the hell shouldn't people with disabilities be able to do the same when what they are facing is NOT A BLOODY LIFESTYLE CHOICE?

I think the key is to remind yourself ‘Does the way these people are living affect my condition/ income/ opportunities’. It’s likely to be a resounding no.
Instead of creating a competition of who’s more poorly and who is more or less deserving of help maybe focus on your own needs and what you can change instead of what you can’t.
I don’t think anyone chooses to be on the most paltry of benefits as an easy way out.

Pip is NOT an 'out of work' benefit.

Pip isn't means tested, you can get it if you're working full time.

@Kendodd

I live with Dh and ASD Dd.

Ive been to ill to leave the house and quite often the bed for 3 years.

Dh works full time and is on his knees. Dd needs a lot of support.

The house was filthy. He tried to keep on top of all meals/washing/house repairs/everything. He couldn’t do it all. He’s the only one who can function at the moment, so we had to keep it that way.

So we paid a cleaner. And I’m allergic to dust and the levels need keeping down.

The garden was a fucking jungle. Were we supposed to just let it become like that?

Pip pays for things you can’t do because you’re disabled. Does that answer your question?

And before you suggest l move to somewhere without a garden. I’m too ill to move anywhere.

Hospital appointments make me ill for 6 weeks after.

But maybe I’m just scrounging eh? Even though l got the full award first time.

Reading long items is very hard. So l buy audio books. Maybe l should just lie and bed and stare at the ceiling?

Ok so I'm bored.

(and if the person who thinks that people who are mentally ill shouldn't post lucid posts is talking about me, then a) sod off and b) FYI I don't get any benefits despite using a wheelchair after being in an accident and having severe physical disabilities as well. Happy now?)

DWP have a lot of data available about PIP claims. It's available here and for stats geeks it's really lovely data because you can basically SQL it and find out loads of stuff..
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/metadata/dashboards/pip/index.html

There are currently as of Jan 2024 about 500k people getting PIP for anxiety or depression or both, made up of 50K anxiety 76K depressive disorder and the rest both at the same time.

So for the people with anxiety who are working - having anxiety is shit. I hope that you are able to get treatment - personally I found drugs and therapy helpful, as well as HRT in my case.

But there are only 50k people in a population of 66 million getting PIP for (just) anxiety. And PIP is an in-work benefit so they may all be working as well.

That's 0.0007% of the population.

I got interested at this point so I made a time series and looked at how it had changed over the last few years. It's gone up, but not a lot. There were 28k in Jan 21 and it's gone up fairly steadily since.

and if you look at how long those people have been claiming PIP, it's fairly well spread out, both in Jan 24 and Jan 21, suggesting that most people who claim PIP due to anxiety don't just keep claiming and claiming. They stop. Either because they are made to (there's three year re-assessments) or because they find their way out of the system. I can't currently tell that from the data.

But only 130k of the 500k claiming for anxiety or depression or both have been claiming for more than 5 years, which means that any sort of claim that there are multi-generational households claiming PIP to get out of work due to anxiety... just is not in the numbers. Not least because PIP can be claimed whether you are in work or not and as far as I'm aware there is no way to tell from the DWP data whether these people work or not.

The January 21 data shows the same pattern with how long people are claiming.
so this doesn't seem to be new.

I'm sorry to anyone going through anxiety, or depression, or indeed any kind of mental illness. Support from the NHS is difficult to find, but GPs are normally happy to prescribe drugs and I have found them very helpful. I hope that if you are going through tough times that things improve. But benefit bashing, especially for disability benefits that are an in-work benefit, isn't going to improve anyone's life.

Thank you. You summed it up perfectly. My disabilities are all physical, but the impact of physical disability also impacts on mental health at times.

I became disabled in later life, and the stress with my whole life changing was severe. But, I couldn’t change the physical stuff very much, so I’ve had to work around it.

And, yes, part of that is keeping a nice home and tidy garden.

I don’t know anyone disabled, or with disabled children, who wouldn’t give up their disability payments for good health.😗

I was diagnosed with OCD as a teenager. Somehow I managed to get to school and to function. And one day something flipped in my brain and I slowly started getting better. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the gist. My 11yo now has OCD. It has been going on for about two years. He is struggling much, much more than I did. But I DON'T expect him to be like me because he is a different person. I don't say 'Well I coped, why can't you?' I accept he is different and probably suffering much more than I did and his condition, while the same as mine in name (even down to the type of OCD), is much more debilitating. I just see a scared and anxious wee boy looking back at me from a very dark and far away place. It seems from this thread that the very people you might expect to understand the complexity of mental illness, are the ones who are claiming that other people need to just get their act together - because THEY did. I shouldn't even be surprised.

Another day, another despicable ableist benefit bashing froth fest on MN.

Populated by posters fretting about "their taxes" yet with plenty of time to post on MN for hours each day.