To be sick of all the newspaper articles saying lies about DLA and PIP

[elliejjtiny]

To get any DLA or PIP you have to be significantly disabled. To get the higher rate of either part you have to be severely disabled.

A motability car is not free, it's rented. To get one you need to either be unable to walk 50 metres or have a severe learning disability, which is very difficult to get.

It's always happened but since the stuff in the news about changes to PIP it's got worse.

Articles in the newspapers claiming you can get a free car for bed wetting, which just doesn't happen. There will be children like my ds who get DLA because they have a number of problems including bedwetting but nobody gets high rate mobility for bed wetting on its own.

There are other articles about people claiming PIP and DLA for various minor sounding conditions and I am so fed up with it. I know from experience that the newspapers will have talked to people claiming PIP/DLA and twist everything they say to make them sound like a scrounger.

All these articles are giving off the message that anyone with any minor disability can claim loads of benefits.

I didn’t call you a “half brain”. I merely observed, when you became enraged that many posters had given up responding to your outraged, unscientific, ableist, Daily Mail style fact-free rants, that posters appeared to have - wisely, in my view - concluded that they would have more chance of having a rational discussion with the mouse that has had half of its brain removed.

This is what I never understand anyone agreeing with the government about disability benefit changes are risking there futures to just because it doesn't effect them now it might effect them or their children in the future. Nobody chooses or expects to become disabled but things can happen in a second that can change your life forever.

So in your view we should allow disability benefits to continue to rise indefinitely ‘just in case I need them one day’?

I mean wouldn’t it be prudent to want all services to have their fair share (but no more) in case we need them as well? Ambulance service, hospices, search and rescue, police?

Enraged 😂 I’m the only one who hasn’t been using pure insults.

I think expecting the level of government hand holding that many posters on here do is ‘hard left’. It’s borderline communism sometimes.

Well, I’ve been a MH inpatient (some years ago now) and have a serious medical condition that will likely kill me one day. So I’m already there in a way.

I agree with all this and I think you’ve explained it really well.

When browsing a respectable MH website the other day it said young people with the highest rate of MH conditions aren’t the unemployed or those in NMW jobs - it’s university students. Nobody can argue this cohort are a ‘victim of the system’ who have nothing to live for. They should be having the time of their life, not working but studying something they find interesting, in a new place of their choosing.

My personal suspicion is that this is a spin off of the fact universities are hotbed of identity politics - most student politicians are very left wing, very supportive of transgender, they love pronouns and labels and tribes. I’m not surprised that most of them have latched onto MH labels and that they have to free time to sit around and introspect as to whether they think they have this or have that.

Of course a small number of students will find university tough for a number of reasons and need support, I’m well aware of student suicides.

But our overall suicide rate has been decreasing since its peak in the 1980s, so despite an explosion in diagnoses and MH crises, fewer people are actually dying by suicide now, by quite a long way.

It would be very hard for an adult with ADHD alone to successfully claim PIP though, I’m not sure why you think ADHD = PIP, it really doesn’t.

Nearly half of claims are successful.

And it’s not hard to claim for DLA:

Over the last decade, the number of under-16s in receipt of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in England and Wales has doubled, reaching 682,000 in 2023, equivalent to one-in-sixteen children. This growing caseload has been driven almost entirely by awards made to children whose main condition is either a learning difficulty, behavioural disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): in 2023, four-fifths of all Child DLA awards were for children whose main condition was one of these three.

Oo, What MH condition was that? I thought you didn’t believe in medical conditions that can’t be verified through a blood test or x Ray or some sort? Especially if they have varying presentations - isn’t that right?

Why are you so against others getting benefits?

You talked about adults ADHD and PIP so I’m not sure why you have quoted something child related.

Because this thread is also about DLA?

Four fifths though!! Come on, that’s a shocker.

I’m not. I’ve said I’m very passionate about very disabled people getting the quality of life they deserve - but they’re not as they’re competing with people who are perfectly functional with ‘conditions’. I want the cut in benefits to fund respite centres which I guess would primarily be for non verbal autistic children as they are high in number now and those parents desperately need a break. Their lives are incredibly hard. I also have a friend whose little girl has Downs. I would never want benefits taken away from these people. But no able bodied adult should be on benefits for decades with ‘anxiety’.

OCD.

I’m also open to OCD eventually being reclassified into several subsets. I don’t believe my type (harm OCD) is the same as ‘pure O’ where there is no ritual/compulsion. I think it’s another one that could do with a good look because it’s become all encompassing.

Ok , but suggesting improvements and nuances are required in classification of these types of conditions is totally reasonable- we are still very much in the process of developing scientific knowledge in these areas. But earlier I thought you were suggesting that autism doesn’t exist? You were certainly declaring that being trans doesn’t. Because it relies on clinical judgement and self report right? So what makes you think your OCD diagnosis is so believable?

I’ve never said autism doesn’t exist. Read my posts and quote where I’ve said that once - I haven’t. I absolutely believe in autism, but not in the numbers we see now. I believe a lot of SEMH conditions are being wrongly identified as autism.

It will level off the reason it was rising is because we've just had a pandemic and have a failing nhs. The same will happen in 100 years or whenever we next have a pandemic. Also the problem is the government and press aren't being clear with their figures. Sickness disability doesn't always mean pip it can mean ssp, lcw, lcwra, dla and pip but people automatically think pip. You can't leave people with no income just to die its immoral. Now if there was help for people to work part time when they can my views would be different but the government are going for an all or nothing approach to where if you lose pip you also lose the health element of uc which means expecting disabled people to suddenly be able to work a 40/50 hr week which just isn't realistic. If you read the descriptors for pip it's actually shocking. So if you can use a microwave that means you can cook a meal if you need someone else to wash your hair and the lower half of your body that is not enough points so you would need to be able to work 50 hours a week. Can you honestly not see what I'm saying and see what the government is doing to disabled people. There is already more people out of work then there are jobs available so how likely do you think employers are to hire disabled people knowing full well they will need adjustments, flexibility and a significant amount of time of work for appointments and flare ups etc. I currently work part time but I already use all my holidays on appointments so anything after that is unpaid. When I worked full time I actually worked less as it was to much and I got ill all the time and kept being hospitalised. So working a 50 hour week would be impossible so all that will happen is I won't be able to pay my bills so I will lose my house, end up on the street and lose my job completely. So what do you suggest people like me do just die

Ahh I see. Well that’s more reasonable. Now- if only - on the trans issue…

Well that's interesting considering medical research and advances are pointing at the idea that undiagnosed Autism is the root cause of behaviours routinely regarded as MH issues, particularly women. You know, the old "hysteria" and borderline personality disorder etc.

Brain research is still in its infancy in many ways, but if autism is the result of a highly nuanced organic / physiological variation in actual brains, that might well be the key to helping society function better in general.

The comment you made and subsequent response from me was nothing to do with DLA though.

You seem to just throw something else in whether relevant to the comment or not when you don’t know what to say.

Also the four-fifths thing for children, since you mention it again is quite clear that’s it’s not for ADHD alone (or even at all) which the previous comment re PIP had been about. It refers to the main condition being a LEARNING DIFFICULTY, BEHAVIOURAL DISORDER, or ADHD. It absolutely does not say ADHD (or two the of the others) alone, but merely as the main condition. But it’s not even just about ADHD, there will be many of those four fifths of DLA claimants who don’t even have ADHD

You are stretching so far here to prove that ADHD = PIP that even your irrelevant quote about DLA actually proves you to be incorrect.

I think you probably need to step away from this thread as your need to be correct is making you ignore the facts and it’s getting worse

The rise has been explored and there is no link between hospital waiting lists and Covid. As evidenced time and time again, the rise is mainly driven by MH conditions and primarily ND conditions. We can’t even afford for it to level off, it’s unaffordable now and there is no evidence it will do anything other than continue to rise.

But who on earth would’ve thought 80% of all disability benefits for kids would be for non-physical disabilities and behaviour issues? It’s madness and needs urgent investigation. If you really can’t see the problem with it then you’re being faux naive. No stretching needs to be done, the figures speak for themselves.

I don’t believe people are born with pink/blue or NT/ND brains, sorry.

You don't think mh conditions got worse after lockdowns. You don't think millions of people have been left with long covid. You also haven't answered my question about what should I do if I lost my benefits just die