To be really cross about the proposed cuts?

[Byjimminy]

And feel really effing sorry for those with genuine anxiety and depression - it is disabling!

Already seeing threads in MH with people despairing in anticipation of cuts. As if mental health services haven't already been decimated beyond recognition already. GP appointments as rare as hen's teeth, CAMHS and access to decent therapy is next to non-existent, the conservatiives slashed all the support workers and sure start centres and we've had the worst pandemic in decades (centuries?) - long covid is thing too! And now people are just self diagnosing/making up mental health issues? How the hell anyone believes anyone manages to claim PIP without a proper diagnosis is insanity itself.

I completely agree with this article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/wes-streeting-overdiagnosis-mental-health-adhd-b2716618.html

I know there will be umpteen threads on this already, but maybe some others like me just want to let stuff out in frustration and have a fresh place to say it. To think this is a labour government making these decisions BEFORE putting the services in place to actually help and treat people is beyond comprehension.

Some people think it is easy. That you can just see your GP and get therapy.
I can't access IAPT services as I have EUPD and my local one wont touch that. CMHT will no longer see me as I am autistic and they blame everything on that. Autism is not a mental health problem. I am stuck in the gap. I am supported by charity services but they are very limited in what they can do.
My boyfriend is autistic too and has had so much time off work for depression lately. He had been expressing suicidal thoughts. The mental health nurse at his GP surgery has referred him several times to PCLS and they just refuse to see him. Say it is his autism and to see the autism services in our town. He did that and was told him he was too intelligent to access them.
At least we are in the gap together.

Genius! no government ever had this idea, it would solve all our problems!
No-one wouldn't even notice losing 2% of assets.
We desperately need to invest more in education...

You're quoting from the wrong professor and missing the point.

Dr Lade Smith CBE, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said:

“People can experience mental ill-health for a variety of reasons and a professional assessment can often help distinguish between everyday distress and a mental illness that requires medical care and treatment.

“Historically, many people with mental illness have felt that they could not reach out for support. It is a good thing that this is changing but research shows many mental illnesses, particularly severe mental illnesses are still under-recognised and underdiagnosed. The sooner people access care and treatment, the less likely they are to develop a more complex and life-long illness which impacts their ability to lead productive and fulfilling lives.

“It is important that people have access to an evidence-based comprehensive assessment from a trained psychiatrist or qualified mental health professional that will clarify whether or not they have an illness diagnosis but also provide a package of care and support to enable that person to recover and have the best quality of life they can. Many people will be able to engage in some form of work if appropriately supported, but it must be acknowledged that for some people, the severity of their illness will mean that they may never be able to work.

“The significant rise in the number of people being diagnosed with a mental illness in recent years has been driven by real issues that affect us all, such as increases in poverty, housing and food insecurity, as well as loneliness and isolation. This crisis is having a substantial impact on people’s lives, the health service and the economy.

“The Royal College of Psychiatrists wants to work with the Government to ensure that where a person's mental health would, on balance, benefit from the structure, financial independence and social interaction that work can bring, they can access effective employment support and mental health treatment.

“However, for people with more complex, severe and enduring mental illnesses, reducing, restricting or creating further barriers to their access to benefits will only make them more ill, and in need of more NHS care.

“Mental health services must be provided with the resources and funding they need to deliver timely assessments and ensure that those who need it receive the care and treatment they deserve.”

It's simply wrong to pick people with treatable conditions as collateral damage. Pushing vulnerable people further into poverty will mean they are more likely to deteriorate (needing more expensive care or longer unemployment) than suddenly finding themselves capable of work in a sustainable way, with an employer willing to take them on. Time will tell unfortunately but my feeling is this is the wrong approach and will lead to more costly issues, not less.

We did try it, in the thirty years after world war two. It accompanied the greatest ever sustained rise in living standards for ordinary people, a spectacular achievement.

we desperately need to invest more in education.

what about this WhywasawealthtaxfortheUKabandoned_(lsero).pdf
instead of youtubers?

Er, ok, seeing as we're going to make it three LSE proposals (that Youtuber also has a degree from LSE)

https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-Inequalities/Assets/Documents/OLDWealthTaxCommission-Final-reportold.pdf

This is heartbreaking to read. I am so sorry to read of your situation.

My ds has autism and correlated diagnoses plus mental health issues. He frequently expresses suicidal ideation. He has been referred to and assessed by CAMHS three times and each time we are told they cannot help and he needs to access autism support services instead. They don't exist! At least, not for people in crisis.

I truly hope things get better for you and your boyfriend.

This is getting to be so boring
If people want a wealth tax start a thread

Meanwhile this is a thread about welfare benefit cuts.

The bill is too big.
It is unaffordable
It is happening ………

Lets look toward to how the £££ savings are spent.
Preferably within the nhs I hope

Thanks for posting
But let’s face it all these threads end up with

Make someone else pay ………

If any savings from this specific action went 100% into timely mental health services (and employment support) I may just about be able to stomach that. They might have got a better reception had they soundbited (soundbit?) that instead, but presenting it as overdiagnosis is inflammatory and going to take some serious undoing.

And feel free to find another/start your own thread if you find this one boring @DontWheeshtMe

Really? ….

I don’t think anyone on these benefits would feel better about the cuts if better wording was used.
( that does not mean the language was acceptable )

I don’t thanks.
Why would I
I’m not the one bringing other subjects up
This thread is about the welfare cuts

Therapy isn’t the only answer to improving mental health…

YABU. My sibling has suffered from anxiety and depression their whole life and they have worked FT without ever claiming any benefits. Working is GOOD for your MH, far more than sitting at home all the time and not doing anything.

Yes and spending your whole life worrying when your benefits are going to stop

Actually I started it as a place for people worried about the cuts to let out their frustration, I've no bother if people want to chat about related topics...

Yes, really.

That's really good for your sibling, not everyone is the same though. I've no problem with people being adequately supported while they wait for appropriate diagnosis and treatment - that needs to be timely though, to save long term issues, both for the claimant and the state.

To whip up a frenzy about overdiagnosis and minimise the effects of anxiety and depression, when they don't have access to diagnosis, support or treatment is unhelpful to say the least.

Couldn’t agree more.
But it may not be the easiest option initially and therein lies the issue.
it has been far too easy for some people to ‘check out’ and claim government financial support rather than put themselves out of their comfort zone and support themselves financially.

I really do empathise with those whose safety net may suddenly be pulled and they have to fend for themselves more than current but what I suspect is that it is more likely new claimants who ‘lose out’.

But it remains the current benefits bill is unsustainable for the country as a whole and therefore something has to change, irrespective of the theoretical arguments why people with MH challenges should not be made to work.

It wouldn’t be 2% of assets. It would be 2% of assets above a £10 million threshold. As recommended by Patriotic Millionaires. They wouldn’t notice it.

I'm guessing you don't know a huge amount about how GPs diagnose mental health problems (which is understandable if you don't work in the field or know where to start).

GPs tend to use the PHQ9 questionnaire to assess depression and GAD7 to assess Generalised Anxiety Disorder. It is extraordinarily easy as a patient to tick 'nearly every day' on every question and come out with a 'score' of severe depression/severe anxiety. GPs have ten minute appointments, including patients getting to the room, taking a history, exploring symptoms (which includes the above questionnaires), enquiring about the patient's goal for the appointment, discussing treatment options, discussing risks and benefits, and then prescribing.

GPs also are sadly known to overdiagnose. For example the time I went to the GP to be signed off for a few weeks due to severe chronic pain (work advised me to do so as my sick record was atrocious due to being off for a day, struggling in for half a day, off for two, back for two, etc.). They asked how things were going and I mentioned that I'd lost a parent two months ago but I was coping okay with it, it was the physical pain I couldn't handle. They gave me a PHQ9 to fill, which I did. It scored me as having symptoms of depression. I explained the answers I gave were due to the impact of the pain (questions include asking if your sleep is impacted which it was, whether you feel like a failure/you've let people down, which I did about work, whether you have had little interest or pleasure in doing things, which I did because I was constantly in pain, and boom that was enough to take me over the threshold).

I did say very clearly I'm not depressed, I'm bereaved, but I'm not here for my mental health, I don't believe I have depression, but it was easier for the GP to send me away diagnosed with depression than to investigate the pain (which later transpired to be stage IV endometriosis), and to prescribe antidepressants, which I never took. He was absolutely incapable of parsing out depression or bereavement and listening to a patient instead of going solely by a standardised questionnaire which is easy to game, extremely sensitive, and designed to score as many people as possible as having depression (was designed by a drug company who could then prescribe for it).

Then there's the fact that if a patient attends the GP, scores on the questionnaires and says they have anxiety and depression, the GP can't disprove it. So they have to diagnose.

I think the proposed changes are a really positive thing. Work is good for mental health in many ways, and it's shocking that as a country we have such a huge percentage of the population claiming they're unable to work, often for things that can't be proven or disproven (like mental health problems).

My spouse is a GP and welcomes these changes, as do his colleagues. It breaks their heart seeing 18yr olds come in stating they can't possibly work because of their MH and expecting to be signed off as unfit for work, not learning those crucial life skills early on, being thrown on the scrap heap. They're also aware that many patients are taking the mick and could do some form of work. But with such truncated appointments and the threat of complaints towards the practice or medical register, and using tools they're expected to utilise which are easily gamed, they haven't really got a chance.

With respect, you don't seem to understand how poor mental health services are. People cannot get appropriate psychological supportat all. Not just a case of waiting for it.

I know very well how poor mental health services are, how limited NHS provision is and how complex therapy and recovery are. I also know how easy it is to become completely stuck when your mental health is struggling.

I also know how many people tell me they have anxiety and/or depression based on self diagnosis, having seen something on social media that sounds a bit like them. The standardised measures used for diagnosis are easily available online and so they know what to say to their GP, who duly gives a diagnosis. Or they’ve seen a counsellor or psychotherapist who gives them a diagnosis of anxiety or PTSD when they’re wholly unqualified to do so. The person then adopts that as part of their identity and they start to spiral.

It can be true both that some serious mental illness is under diagnosed and access to clinical services isn’t good enough and that some people fall into an identity that includes mental illness for all sorts of reasons, including that it allows them to disengage from a world that can be very hard at times.

Online and self diagnoses is an issue, you only need to look at the number of times someone is described with absolute certainty as a narcissist on here, based on very limited information. In fact narcissistic personality disorder is a serious psychological disorder and relatively rare, except online where every second person has it.

Saying some mental health issues are exaggerated and over diagnosed doesn’t take anything from people who really do suffer - in fact gatekeeping services might just improve access for people who need them.

I have checked my privilege thank you and with significant ND and MH in my immediate family, we still claim no PIP or other disability benefits. We instead work long hours and pay our own way in society and do not expect the state to support us when we get earn the money ourselves.

@Pandersmum Do you or your relatives have extra expenses arising from their disabilities or not? Do you or they qualify for PIP?

Plenty of people work with ND, MH problems and/or physical conditions and don’t have any expenses arising from them. It’s amazing how many posters say “I’ve got depression, anxiety or ND, but I still work and think it would do everyone else good if they did too.”

They can’t look beyond their own experience and see that their depression, anxiety or ND might be mild or moderate, so 3/10 and while their functioning is impaired, they still can work - but other people might be severe and are 10/10, and they can’t work! Those are the people who should be getting benefits, because no stick is going to enable them to work. You can work long hours, so yes, you are better off than all those people who can’t work at all.

I don’t agree with PIP and it’s stupid descriptors to qualify - the fact someone can wash their hair, but not their upper body or vice versa, does nothing to convey their health related inability to work imo. However that is the system and people do qualify for it. One of the reasons the benefits bill has gone up, is that the government decided to save £2.5 billion on DLA, so they abolished the lower rate, which they thought would take 20% of people out of qualifying and renamed it PIP. However, they didn’t reckon on court judgments affecting the criteria and the high number of people appealing to the tribunal, so instead of saving money, PIP cost an extra £1.5 billion. How is that the fault of the most disabled that governments can’t foresee the results of their actions?

Likewise, there was an article in the BMJ in February, talking about the health inequalities in the most deprived areas of the North, after the mass redundancies of the 80s, where men’s life expectancy is 12 years less than some other areas. If the government removed those area’s health inequalities, those people could contribute another £12 - £13 billion to the economy. We don’t hear the government admitting it’s not the fault of the people in the deprived areas, their communities were destroyed by Thatcher’s political decisions to break the power of the unions, like the coal miners; and it still impacts on their health today? The BMJ recommended tackling health related worklessness first, and using more carrots than sticks.

I learned recently about the term 'spurious diagnosis', where a patient will disclose that they self identify as having a specific illness, then the next clinician that sees that person references it, and the next assumes it's a formal diagnosis, and so forth. It can happen with things like autism, ADHD, mental health problems, and even physical health problems.

The person you quoted definitely doesn't speak for the whole country and it's a shame they perceive to be able to do so. Without disclosing my exact location (oop North) our local mental health services are fantastic. Assessment within a couple of weeks, treatment within around 2wk to 4m, and up to twenty sessions of therapy if required. Secondary services have gone through a huge transformation to be able to focus their resources on the people who need it the most (often severe mental illness), and new primary services have come into force for the people that used to fall between the gap. Unfortunately though you can't force someone to seek help, you can't compel anyone to make good use of the help available, and people will often cry there's nothing available when actually they've already been through all of the treatments recommended by NICE guidance for their specific problem.

In physical health services nobody expects doctors who have ran out of evidence-based NICE-recommended treatments to start going off piste and experiment. But that's exactly what is expected of mental health service clinicians.