PIP for Anxiety

[IntelligenceIsFree]

AIBU to clear things up?

The current nasty rhetoric around disabled people at the moment is astounding. Society needs to be reminded that we are ALL one illness or accident away from disability.

Everyone knows someone who is gaming the system, yet the PIP fraud rate is extremely low. The public demonising, does not match the reality.

The hot topic is “anxiety” and how people with “anxiety” are gaming the system, getting “free” cars and robbing tax payers; this is being constantly fed through media, news articles and so on.

This is simply not true. The people spouting this nonsense clearly have no idea how PIP works. Nobody gets PIP without strong medical evidence. Nobody.

Before anyone posts “my neighbour got PIP just by telling lies”. No, they did not. That’s not how it works.

People need to be educated properly on how benefits work, how they are awarded and what the criteria for mobility cars actually is; the cars are not in fact free.

People need to be educated on the fact that there is anxiety, which every human suffers from at some point, and then there are anxiety DISORDERS which are entirely different and can be life changing and debilitating. Hence, the need and entitlement for PIP.

Brenda down the road who feels too anxious to go to Bingo on a Friday night is NOT getting PIP ❌

Mary up the lane who has such severe OCD that she cannot leave her own home for fear that she will die, IS getting PIP .✅

There’s a huge difference.

The current turning on disabled people is shameful and we are living in a country full of hate because Bob (and his Uncle) are annoyed that they are paying tax to “support all of these scroungers”.

Bob (and his Uncle), needs to hope that they never get cancer, or suffer life changing trauma or have an unfortunate accident to avoid being served a huge scrounged humble pie.

I do not suffer from anxiety but as a human, I am pleased we have a system in society to support the most vulnerable people who need it. Life can happen to anyone.

If the tax you pay every month covers the amount you receive from the state (let’s say you pay £500 in tax and receive £300 in benefits) than you are actually contributing. If it doesn’t than you are a net recipient and in that case you couldn’t say that you pay for your own pip.

It more than covers my pip.

A very admirable speech op but unfortunately we all probably know people who get pip for minor mh issues or medical conditions that do not impact daily activities.

They Google, they know how to up their completely normal anxiety to life debilitating OCD/ADHD or whatever to get PIP and a blue badge.

Not sure what the answer is but GPs managing their patients better and not giving everyone anti depressants long-term would be a start.

They havent got PIP for anxiety as such They have PIP for meeting the criteria which are based on specific care, communication and mobility needs. The government estimates that if you are too disabled to wash, cook, eat, manage your meds, plan a journey, manage your money, communicate that you will have extra costs due to not beinv able to do those things and the PIP is just a nod to that.

That’s good ( although it’s not just pip it’s all benefits).

Sadly in the UK over 53% of individuals live in households receiving more in benefits than they pay in taxes.

This is why the system needs to be questioned and it needs to be challenged. Unless we really just want to go bankrupt.

If PIP is anything like DLA, they want evidence from specialists and have little interest in what GP's have to say.

Exactly, the published figure is people that have been caught wrongly claiming PIP. Think what it would take to catch someone out. You would need immense levels of intrusion and surveillance to prove that Betty who claims to have anxiety actually doesn't have it. Especially when Betty will claim she has good and bad days so seeing her out and about living a normal life wouldn't disprove her claim.

It would be much better if DWP just admitted they had no idea about the level of fraud rather than publishing these misleading figures.

These threads are getting tiresome.

If it helps, the DWP has a few teams looking into benefit fraud. False PIP claims are in the thousands per week. A lot are awarded so when someone says "so and so got pip for lying" they're bang on

Does the amount of tax you pay also cover your household, healthcare costs on top of your share of general costs like transport, defence and education that everyone should be contributing to?

No idea. How much would I need to earn for that to be the case?

I know several people who get it. One is well enough to have 6 kids and run after them in the park (has asthma) but has never had a job as their asthma is too bad to work.

There is a sub section of tiktok on how to game the system and get PIP 🤣🤣

but no, no one gets it that shouldn’t

this seems to be a thread just to stir up discontent though. Pretty sure someone posted exactly this the other day

PIP is not awarded on the basis of medical diagnosis. It is a non-means tested payment awarded to individuals whose disability or illness means they have costs that would not be incurred if they were not disabled or ill.
Essentially, for example, it covers the cost of a carer to come in for an hour a day to help the recipient to prepare for work. It allows the recipient to buy a car so they can get to work, particularly if they find public transport difficult to use, or it covers the cost of taxis.

It is not classed as extra income because if they weren’t disabled or ill they would be no worse off.

Much of the confusion is due to the increasing number of people applying and being refused the payment because they see it as a top up for benefits. The vast majority will not be successful.

Many people who are entitled to it don’t apply.

The problem is that anxiety covers a huge area of mental health conditions, many of which an individual is unlikely to disclose. I’ve been working in healthcare for 40 yrs. My job requires me to take a thorough medical history. Not once in those 40 yrs has a patient with serious mental health condition such as bipolar, schizophrenia or similar disclosed their condition. I only know because of the meds they take. Often anxiety is part of the condition and it is less polarising to say you have anxiety than schizophrenia. There is still a huge amount of fear surrounding these conditions sadly.

So people with serious mental health conditions may be functioning and appear ok, they are unlikely to alienate others by disclosing because they’ve probably had a lifetime of being isolated after telling people. It’s so much easier to say you suffer with anxiety and it has been a euphemism for serious mental health conditions for a long time. You will often hear older generations referring to it as “ suffering with their nerves”.

As an HCP I am more likely to interpret “anxiety” as a serious mental health condition unless the person is unmedicated.

So yes some individuals with anxiety will be awarded with PIP but not necessarily for anxiety but because of the underlying condition they are not comfortable with disclosing..

I’ve just looked up what evidence would be needed to claim pip for anxiety ( I have never done it before so please challenge me if my understanding is incorrect):

Evidence of anxiety medication/ diagnosis - let’s say i go to my GP today tell them I have anxiety and get prescribed medication ( which I do by the way but I don’t claim any benefits I guess it is mild enough…), so it get’s logged today and I start collecting my nhs consultations as evidence to claim in a few months.
mentalhealthandmoneyadvice.org says that a letter from GP is ok and enough

diary/log which details your daily struggles- ok this can be made up and only needs to be taken for about 2 weeks

letters from the family / friends- as above , surely my husband would write whatever I asked him to if he also wanted the extra money

employer / school letter showing days missed due to ill health etc- I could now decide to miss a couple of weeks off work on purpose tell my boss I am off with anxiety . Easy

So this tells me that if someone wanted to defraud the system , it would be fairly easy to do as all these things are easy to collect in terms of evidence - basically lying and making sure that you collect enough „evidence” before your claim.

please tell me what is different as I genuinely hope it is not THAT easy!

I think you are naive about the fraud levels.

Yes, there are many people with genuine issues and claims. Nobody (sensible) disputes that.

However, there are many people who are gaming the system and saying what they need to do their GP.
Both are true and the existence of the first group doesn't mean the second group does not exist which seems to be the basis of you not believing they exist?
You not knowing these people also doesn't mean they don't exist.

As PP have said, the official fraud figures are BS. The number and depth of investigations are tiny.

Around £50k for the lowest level of PIP and around £65k for the highest.

please tell me what is different as I genuinely hope it is not THAT easy!
You are not wrong at all. Few people would previously consider going through such length. What hold them back was something that seems to have disappeared and is called pride. Also fear of being judged.

However, pride is now deemed as arrogance, and judging others is seen as a crime.

The extra money is worth the one time effort for many people, hence the significant increase in applications.

They don’t have the man power to investigate all the fraud that why the number is so small.

Family member gets pip. For a bad back and mental health issues.

Yes they do technically have both slightly however the symptoms are very over exaggerated. They also know the system. So for the back issue they have been offered adaptive items for their home, they don’t need them they admit that but they got every single one installed, why? Because when asked on the forms and interview it’s yes the house is adapted they have multiple of aids at the property that they need. When they have their face to face and are asked to show how far they can walk they deliberately get up slower than they would, they shuffle rather than actually walk.

They call the doctors to their home for the visits as mental health means they cannot leave the house. But they do regularly near daily in fact trips to Manchester and such on the train.

But their mental health team and doctor note patient unable to leave home without severe distress so only leaves for emergencies.

A Greggs is not an emergency 😅 scuba diving is not an emergency and nor is seeing a comedians act.

Those that do get PIP, what extra living costs do you have as a result of your disability? What extra costs do you use it for? I’m not trying to be rude, nor goady, just asking a question. If it’s a physical disability do you use it for mobility equipment or equipment to help perform daily tasks? If it’s related to mental health, do you use it to pay for therapy or something?

It is terrifying you say that and I genuinely hope that someone will come and prove me wrong.

because if it works in the way that I described than pretty much everyone (!) could claim this after just a few weeks or months of „collecting evidence” with little effort. A few GP visits, a diary, letter from wife/ husband and some time off work.

and how much can you get ?

We didn’t have all this in the 70s and 80s did we. People took pride in going to work. It’s been made too easy not to bother now. I knew someone who got a motobility car because she was deaf in one ear. I shit you not.

On another thread someone said that 1 in 5 cars sold in UK last year was purchased through the motability scheme.
perhaps the government is allowing it silently to prop the car industry

My son has a physical disability and as he's a child, it's DLA rather than PIP.

It is used for physio, hydrotherapy, a maths tutor, adapted footwear and things like that.

What happened then? What rate was you easily awarded lol🥱.

Any official stats that show 0% are clearly bollocks.

For there to be no fraud you either need to have a system that no one tries to defraud (people will always try and get something for nothing so that’s not going to be the case), or a system that is so good that it catches every single attempt to defraud it - that’s just not realistic in any type of system.