To wonder if all those gleeful about PIP cuts are going to welcome people with serious mental health conditions as colleagues and employees?

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

Given the amount of ableisism I see on MN I think the likelihood of people welcoming people with serious mental health conditions into their workplace is pretty low.
And yes, these people will very likely now be forced to try to work even though their condition makes it impossible. We are not just talking about some lazy twenty year old who expects to sit at home gaming due to his “anxiety” as many people seem to believe is the case. It will be people with significant impairments to social functioning.
Even if they get support to apply for jobs, and even if they then get the position (doubtful) how accommodating will colleagues or customers be if the person seems a bit odd, or gets adjustments workmates deem unfair?
This is going to be a total shit show.

No it’s not “simples”, every time a thread like this comes up, taxing the rich is always trotted out as the golden solution but no one ever has any answers to what that actually looks like in practice.

Who exactly are the richest? How are you going to tax them more? Has anyone looked at the figures to see if it actually stacks up or is it just another meaningless soundbite?

Everyone also looks at each issue in isolation and not as a bigger picture:

NHS? Tax the richest!
Social care? Tax the richest!
Education? Tax the richest!
Housing? Tax the richest!
Childcare? Tax the richest!
Welfare? Tax the richest!
Etc etc.

Just how bloody rich do people think the “richest” are that they can prop up EVERYTHING in this country year after year?

That is good, and great that your employer is understanding.
But do you think someone who has not worked for years, has no references or qualifications going to land themselves a job like yours? No... they will end up in high turnover NMW jobs that have no WFH option at all, no flexibility, just be an employee number, then get sacked because they could not cope.

I think Labour have lost their minds, personally.

There were many reasons people wanted the Tories out, but an end of austerity was arguably the biggest. This betrayal of their voters may well do for them what tuition fees did for the Lib Dems.

Labour are convinced they've got time to make up goodwill with voters - they haven't.

This is so true. I worked with a woman years ago who had a nervous breakdown and was off work for months. She was then basically bullied back into work with threats of losing her job etc. So she came back. No surprise, the poor woman couldn’t cope and needed various accommodations, which were put in place by Human Resources. All everyone did was moan about how much time she had off for appointments, the days off she needed due to feeling incapable of functioning, the fact they thought she wasn’t pulling her weight and even about her preference to spend lunchtime walking along the nearby towpath, which of course was of more use to her than listening to a bunch of women asking personal questions and generally being passive aggressive bitches. People do not understand mental health problems unless they have personal experience. And I mean personal to them, because there are people with family members who are suffering with depression, anxiety etc and they don’t get it either, despite seeing its effects every day with their own eyes. If you’re walking and talking, it can’t be that bad. To be honest, I have heard plenty of moaning about the accommodations made for people with physical disabilities too. Oh, Brenda is late for work every day and we have to answer her phone and pick up the slack. Even though it takes poor Brenda three or four times as long as her colleagues to get ready in the mornings. Just an example. People are shit.

Exactly, and who decides who 'the richest' ?
That phrase usually means 'anyone who I think has more than me' which will be the squashed middle. The truly rich know how to do tax avoidance!

This is my fear. It will become a choice presented to the sick and disabled

No of course not, and I didn't start off in a job like this either. But lots do have have qualifications and do have previous work experience with transferable skills, and there are existing schemes like access to work to help too. I hope that there will be support to help those who could work but don't have qualifications or experience to be able to get that, or help with retraining into more suitable roles as they are out there and there are employers who are more understanding.

The issue will be without daily living component it will also affect carers . Someone receiving CA will have that stopped so it will also take away a disabled persons carer and it’s going to then get a lot of carers with work commitments again so they are going for them as well by default with these changes

I'm not 'gleeful'. But the entire welfare and PIP system is a massive fucking shit show. It's got no common sense built into it at all. The motability scheme especially is the biggest, most jawdropping, un-regulated, senseless money-wasting scheme I've ever experienced.

And yes, despite the cries of 'abelism!' and 'PIP is so hard to get, no one gets it without it being genuine!' - there are those of us who know different. Not because we're all morons who believe the Daily Mail comments section, but due to personal experience. But of course you can't say that on here or you're simply accused of wanting all disabled people to go and die in a ditch somewhere.

Some kind of review and drastic overhaul is long overdue.

I for one welcome it. Sweet relief when my body and mind says enough (they already do!) and my options run out. I've already set my life up to be as "small" as possible and my exit seamless for this reason. I refuse smears, mammograms and other inventions because I've already cost the taxpayer enough and saving me would be pointless. I'd never have another transplant or do dialysis. I have no kids, no jobs, no pets, no social circle and just down to my elderly parents. When they go, nothing left for me here.

I don't think assisted dying is a bad thing and glad a state sanctioned suicide would be a humane option to get me out of this.

Given that in terms of global wealth distribution approximately 10% of the world's richest people own over 85% of the wealth, I'd actually say very damn rich.

No one is meaning your neighbour who is a consultant with their 4 bed house and Mercedes with a comfortable life. We mean people who can spend millions of pounds on a item of jewellery, for instance.

But by all means, let's target 50 year old Debra who has been on antipsychotic medication for Schizophrenia since she was 20 which has given her a speech delay, living in her 1 bed flat and getting by with local family cooking her meals.

I remember managing a person who was in the process of being diagnosed with Dyslexia. On telling my boss, the head of department, his first words were 'oh does this mean we won't be able to give her as much work?'

Disability is the forgotten child of the woke culture - so many companies putting rainbow flags on their front page for pride month - but how many of them really have a disability friendly culture?

my personal experience as someone with diagnosed ADHD is that I just don't tell anyone now after a few bad experiences. I'm medicated so don't really need adjustments - well maybe some would help but it's not worth the cost (for me) of disclosure after being treated like shit the last two workplaces I did that.

If he is unable to handle his own affairs then someone needs to become his appointee. They can then make applications and appeals on his behalf.

Quite a long time actually. The mega rich have a disproportionate amount of the resources and pay accountants to find ways of avoiding the tax they should already be paying.
And far from “propping up” everything they in fact make enormous profits on the back of ordinary people.
Crack down on this and the world would be a better place.
I have been a higher rate tax payer (though never anywhere near the mega rich category) pre disability myself so it isn’t something I would only apply to others.

Everyone thinks the severely depressed should be in employment until that severely depressed person can’t remember what they’re meant to be doing, cant concentrate during a meeting or doesn’t finish a task in time.

And heaven forbid they haven’t washed and have been wearing the same clothes for at least a week.

In my opinion we should be doing more to reduce the cost of living, because that’s why people need such a lot in benefits.

And more could be done to fund good volunteering programmes which can be a win-win for reducing loneliness and improving mental health for volunteers as well as the beneficiaries.

Yes perhaps this would be easier if our gas prices didn’t keep going up at an exponential rate, with the government saying “that’s just the price of gas now.”

Meanwhile the gas companies themselves are making new record breaking profits every year.

I agree. Every new government and it’s all over the news. BONG - sweeping changes to the benefits system. BONG - cuts to disability payments. BONG - biggest ever shakeup of the welfare system. That was Big Ben by the way! Severe Disablement Allowance became Incapacity Benefit became Employment Support Allowance became Universal Credit. Similar changes in name and associated form shuffling for DLA/PIP. And what did it achieve? People’s disabilities and chronic conditions and mental health problems didn’t magically disappear overnight. All that happened is that they had the added stress of moving to a new system. The number of claimants wasn’t reduced. They just had to jump through more hoops. It’s like fucking Groundhog Day.

And there is something much worse about these changes. They are financial rather than ideological. I don’t agree with the Tories and their ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ ideology, but it’s particularly low to be grubbing around for spare change by targeting the vulnerable.

My husband was senior management in a large company, overseeing hundreds of staff and multi million pound projects all over Europe. He had to travel to other countries on a regular basis.
Out of the blue he developed psychotic depression. He tried to keep working but in the end was not functioning , even basic tasks.
He qualified for high rate pip. We are 3 years on now. He cannot work, hardly ever leaves the house, is a shell of eho He was, has to take high strength high dosage medication that cause very severe side effects. I am his carer and also work full time.
There is no way that he can go back to work, we've already dropped from his 4k a month wage to £700 a month pip and now they want to take that from us too.

I am certainly not gleeful. Realistically, it's just not sustainable. It's also a chaotic system that needs overhauled to make sure it is fair and consistent and that the right people get the support they need.

In my own circle I know a man who is is getting about 2000 a month in disability benefits. Not saying he doesn't need support but this man does still does cash in hand for accounting services. He is also very physical, he does lots of work around the house, all the odd jobs he even came and cut the grass at my family home whilst my dad lay in bed most of the day a year after a stroke. He could barely walk, struggled to communicate and if he fell, physically couldn't get back up. He was told he didn't qualify for PIP.

We had to appeal but even now the man gets at least double what my father gets and my father is in a far worse condition. It simply does not make sense.

Yes they pledged growth not wiping out £9bn in 7/8 months leading to welfare cuts.

Yes. I had an acute episode of general anxiety disorder in 2021 (due to harassment by a former business partner).

My symptoms were:

• loss of appetite
• palpitations
• difficulty falling asleep, waking at 4.30am
• shaking
• stomach cramps
• constantly tearful

I was lucky to have an understanding boss who belatedly recognised that the company should have done more to protect me (there was some internal bullying too). I left with a settlement, and spent a few months recovering whilst the medication helped. Worked part time and retrained, and am back in at the same level a few years later.

I think that there's a lot more to be done in making work less generally stressful though. Stress is an underlying factor in a huge range of medical conditions, which is costing the country money treating or supporting.

If we went after stress factors, there would be fewer people NEEDING support.

I have anxiety and I find working helps.

Sending love. Psychotic depression is debilitating. People have no idea what it means to live with severe mental illness.