Have you notified the DVLA of your mental illness?

[dontrunwithscissors]

I'm not sure how many people realise that various mental illnesses have to be reported to the DVLA?

It's not just conditions such as schizophrenia, it also includes depression where your memory or concentration are badly affected, or you are agitated, or have suidical thoughts. This page on the Mind website is good:

www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/driving/my-right-to-drive/#.Vd7647SJndl

This is something that has never been told to me by any MH professional. I think that depression involving agitation/suicidal thoughts/poor concentration is really quite common. Has anyone on here been through the process?

'Regular' depression varies of whether it's notitiable. It depends on symptoms--see the link to MIND.

Bipolar is an automatically notitiable condition. It makes no difference whether you take meds or not. In fact, so long as they don't cause daytime sedation, they will probably look more faviourably on someone who is taking them.

With bipolar, schizophrenia, it's not a question of whether you're GP or pdoc thinks you're OK. The onus is upon the person to declare it--and to declare it to the insurance company. The premiums should not go up. If you don't declare it to the dvla, your insurance is completely completely invalid and (if they were to discover about the bipolar) they could choose to not pay out on any claim, regardless of the cause.

I think you need 6 months of stability after a bipolar depressive episode and 3 months stable after a high episode. I'm not sure about psychosis.