AIBU to hope that able bodied people will support disabled people against the tory attack on PIP?

[Blackcats7]

I have just been reading posts from many terrified disabled people on a facebook group I belong to.
People are afraid for their lives after the government's recent announcement to stop huge numbers of people with mental health issues qualifying for PIP anymore.
This attempt to scapegoat disabled people has a long history in the tory party and is popular with their traditional core but the attack on PIP is a new low.
Even those claiming PIP for other reasons think they will be the next target and that the tory aim is to pretty much eradicate any support for us with the half hearted usual disguise of "concentrating help on those who need it most" when they know they can't get away with saying what they actually are doing.
Disabled people have votes too (being housebound I thank goodness for postal votes) and I think this current tactic will have a big influence on how those votes are used but my question is how many able bodied people will take this attack on us into account when it comes to the election?
Should this nightmare come to pass there will be blood on government hands because I have no doubt people will die bearing in mind the targets are people with mental health problems and the tory propaganda that they are removing a right to benefit from those who feel a little bit depressed and anxious about life as most people will at some point or another is utter nonsense. Claiming PIP is extremely hard and requires a very high bar to succeed, especially for mental health. Popping to your gp for some anti depressants would not cut it.
So we need your support.
YABU we aren't that bothered or think the govenment is quite right to stop you scrounging bastards
YANBU this is disgusting ableism and we have your back

It’s more that you didn’t realise that was what I was calling exaggeration, not whatever experience you personally had

You responded to my post which stated my personal experience with "Total exaggeration". I am not a mind reader and you had not said that you were only claiming part of my post was a "total exaggeration". Then you followed up with a further post accusing me of making "a sweeping generalisation of the elderly" when in fact the part of my post referring to "the elderly" was clear that it was a response to the comment I had referenced about those in that cohort with mental health problems and I also stated "in many cases". So not a "sweeping generalisation". Perhaps you should examine your own exaggerations and misrepresentation.

This research refers to police officers attending "debriefing". It refers to "a debriefing or face-to-face training session, of varying lengths". "One intervention involved getting workers to write about their emotions for 15 minutes per day in consecutive work shifts". It's a bit of a stretch to claim this constitutes anything resembling "therapy" let alone trauma therapy, and then claim that it provides evidence that trauma therapy is ineffective.

Given the time time trauma therapy takes, with careful background work beforehand to develop an appropriate treatment plan with very experienced specialist clinicians using specific types of therapy, I am guessing that the police are not providing this for their officers. A "face-to-face training session" isn't even a proper course of basic therapy, let alone one appropriate for trauma.

It's also well known that certain types of therapy can worsen trauma as they effectively mean the patient being forced to relive the traumatic experience rather than process it.

Your link mainly indicates - as many posters have said - how totally inadequate mental health provision is, even that provided by employers to staff who have suffered trauma at work apparently.

Not to mention:

"... All of the 14 studies received at least one high risk or unclear rating on the strength of evidence criteria. One study was rated moderate to high quality [35], nine studies were of moderate to low quality [27,[31][32][33][34][36][37][38][39], and four studies were of low quality [28][29][30]40]. ..."

Great evidence base. 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️ Did you even read the link before you posted it?!

I don't think it should be means tested either. PIP is meant to mean that a disabled person is not out of pocket for being disabled.
Not only that, means testing is not usually done on an individual level... it is done on a household one (like it is for UC already). So someone who is disabled and not able to work, could possibly be denied PIP if their partner/spouse earns a certain amount.
Imagine being single and disabled.... that is hard enough, but throw in the whole thing about your partner being automatically assumed to take over the financial burden of your disability too.... it does not bear thinking about.

And being entitled to PIP opens up other help anyway that is not just financial.

There is also the fact that if we continually try to tell those who are net contributors that actually they shouldn't have access to things that should be universal services - which they fund for everyone else - like childcare funding or as many now suggest also disability support or state pensions - then we further increase the divisions in society the social contract is completely destroyed. I have never met someone who pays lots of tax who objects to funding these services for others, but do know lots of others who agree with me that it would be completely unreasonable for us to fund them for everyone else then not be allowed to use them ourselves should we need them. That is a step too far.

Cynically, the fastest way to undermine and destroy any system is to means-test it. Initially lots of naive people think it's a great idea, because why should someone who earns more than them (shock horror) receive a penny (neglecting of course that these services only exist for anyone because such people fund them)? Then, obviously, the threshold is never raised, fiscal drag kicks in, and before you know it, it comes back to bite them and they're all shocked apparently because "it was never meant to mean people like us were excluded!" 🤦🏻‍♀️😆🙄

Every time it is the same. If you want to effectively eliminate a service entirely the first step is to undermine universal provision, then gradually the threshold will be lowered in real terms (in terms of means-testing) or raised (in terms of criteria-based entitlements) until the service is effectively non-existent for almost everyone.

With this slow erosion you can take the public along, stirring up resentment against those who still receive it and using that as an excuse to further adjust the threshold until you've pretty got rid of the pesky demands from citizens to receive services in return for their tax money. It's so obvious that I'm astonished how many people seem to be obtuse about it even though we've seen the tactic play out in front of our eyes in various areas of public life, in an unusually compressed time period of 15 years, yet gullible people still seem oblivious to the motivations and are happy to get involved with the spite against anybody who earns just slightly more than they do.

There is a reason that in other, more civilised countries with effective public services nobody is suggesting that pensions, childcare funding, disability provision etc should be means-tested. I even saw recently - disgustingly - a suggestion that SEN provision for disabled children in schools should be means tested!

I think economics should be a compulsory core subject at school.

Not always. I've been sectioned at work by police on a 136 due to a psychotic episode. Had no insight into how unwell I was & had been trying to go to work as normal.