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.

You clearly don't understand what severe anxiety disorder actually is so instead of assuming people are making things up because you've be lucky enough to not have experienced it. Maybe actually really listen to what people are saying you might learn something.

Unfortunately anxiety is a relatively easy condition to fake compared with other conditions and illnesses that can be tested for using definitive medical tests or observations. It's like the old stereotype of the 'bad back'. We can go back and forward arguing about the amount of evidence needed to 'prove' you have these conditions but it always boils down to the fact if we were all at gun point forced to fraudulently build a dossier of fake 'evidence' and apply for PIP then the majority of us would say we have anxiety, depression or another condition of this nature. We wouldn't be claiming we had cancer or epilepsy when we didn't.

The people ultimately to blame for the stigma are those that have committed fraud and claimed to have conditions that they don't have or exaggerated their symptoms. Their actions have caused the general population to be suspicious of disability benefit claimants when they claiming for a condition that could be more easily manufactured or exaggerated. The system is also to blame because there are clear and obvious perverse incentives in place for people to lie. If you're struggling to scrape by on benefits and there is a potential way to increase your income by a significant amount then there will always be a lot of people tempted to game the system. This will especially be true when we know the outcomes of assessments can be inconsistent and proving you have debilitating anxiety for example is really difficult so you can blend in with genuine claimants relatively easily versus cancer patients where evidence will involve a lot more definitive testing and proof of treatment such as radiotherapy.

But what if you didn't have a work from home job what if you say worked in a supermarket. Would you of been well enough to go to it. What if you changed jobs to a work from home job would you of been well enough to go for interviews. Do you think you where well enough to of done well in these interviews above others. If the answer is no to these questions then you would of had no choice but to consider claiming pip unless you have a rich partner who's willing to fully financially support you.

Yes the media love to tell stories about scroungers, and benefits for nothing.
You are quite correct there are strict medical criteria for all benefits (my partner worked for DWP for 35 years on benefits) There are of course people who game the system but nothing like what is reported in the media.
The huge elephant in the room is that a good 85% of the benefit budget is spent on Old Age Pension which journalists never mention.
Demonising any group is wrong, however the whole principle that being ill or disabled costs more than not being ill or disabled is something that has needed looking at for years TBH, I am happy to support people who cannot work, but I do not think being ill or disabled should attract a much higher rate- this fact has always made disability benefits a major target for those who do want to game the system.

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Of course they would have a choice. There are lots of people unemployed at the moment that can't outperform others in interviews and hence have no job. They have to cope without disability benefits.

Being unemployed isn't necessarily an additional cost of being disabled when 25% of the working age population don't work. 3.5 million people have never had a job. They aren't all disabled.

But she would still have had to claim benefits and with uc expected to go to interviews

Yes, but you're implying the regular amount of benefits wouldn't be enough. Why is that good enough for other people but not enough for her?

You get more in uc then you do pip. But if she can't go to interviews she can't claim uc.

This post hits home so hard.

My disability has taken everything from me.

I hardly go anywhere and I hardly see anyone. I feel like I’ve lost everything.

If she is disabled then she can request reasonable adjustments to the interview process. PIP wouldn't be enough to live on so she would have to do this whether she claimed PIP or not.

And here you lose all credibility. It's not "huge 85%". It's 50% of welfare bill.

So whatever you say next is irrelevant.

Due to the huge increase in those claimed UC whilst in work this has changed the figures, so I was wrong- but you are wrong too the official figures have it as 55% currently.

She can. My dd gets UC and is signed off from attending interviews.

What is fake evidence?

Then I would say they probably are!! Because they are not taking responsibility for themselves = more anxiety IMO

What I still wonder about is the motivation behind the people who start these threads. What are you hoping to gain? If your need is genuine, shouldn't you be white hot with anger about the number of people who are taking the piss to such an extent that your own claims are going to be put under the spotlight and assessment made harder? And yet instead, you flat refuse to accept there is fraud and tell everyone who has a story about a friend/family member that they are effectively lying. As @Chewbecca said earlier, just because you believe something to be true, it doesn't trump the lived experience of those who have evidence to disprove your belief.

The expenditure on PIP has increased from £21.6bn in FYE 2024 to £25.8bn in FYE 2025. This is from the government's own figures. £4.2bn more in a year. And there's no fraud? Talk about wilful ignorance.

How does somebody who has repeatedly tried to kill themslves, who is battling CPTSD after severe trauma, EDs, several NDs, depression and severe anxiety needing intensive treatment supposed to take responsibility for themselves? How does that get rid of all the above?

So she on the disability element lcwra disability benefits come in many forms not just pip

That’s not just anxiety though, is it?

Nobody has denied there is fraud, the figures (which are low) have been repeatedly linked to.

They don't realise how lucky they are not to understand

The severe impact of anxiety is one of the main qualifications for PIP in this case. You don’t get pip for diagnoses.

Very few people have just anxiety. I've never met one person with just anxiety.

And it has been repeatedly pointed out that there cannot be between 0% and 0.4% fraud. The figure is too low. Robust investigation is non existent.

I know, absolutely no idea.