Saturday, April 19, 2008

Mental Heath Champions Rise To Fight The Incapacity Benefit Government Dragons




Well done Cecilia Weightman for starting the Incapacity Benefit petition - it is time those that care about mental health (MH) Users on Incapacity Benefit in the UK showed their colours.

The UK Govt is showing their colours for sure , yeah... as skull and crossbones on black and white, with their RAID ON WELFARE POLICY or WELFARE TO CORPORATE WEALTH POLICY as it is known to Dave Freud (main welfare to work advisor to Gov't) of the wonderful merchant banking sector that gets so much right - eh Dave ? .....

Fancy a sub prime dance Dave ?

The mental health charities in the UK we think are two faced despite their false claim of hand wringing anxiety on behalf of MH Users now being attacked unreasonably by the "Welfare State" and booted off benefits.. (Here is a case from a staff based blog)

They are too far up the f-arse and colon-y of Government policy to be objective and to be trusted . They have largely supported, cross-organisationally from their special links with the Dept Of Health, with their mates running parts of the lottery , the massive national charity Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health's (SCMH) business-case attack on mental health Users especially with their PATHWAY TO TROLLEY's (welfare to work) approach ....

SCMH is backed by the Sainsbury supermarket family who power it with the Gatsby Foundation that donates the funds into SCMH

SCMH along with the Dept Of Health UK , planned the National Institute For Mental Health Education (NIMHE) (in 2000 - 2001 ) which has wasted 100 million (2004 - 8) by taking eliter and fit mental health ex-Users up and down the UK and creating a bureaucracy that has become nothing more than a major work-drive as opposed to a real-choices-of-treatments-and method-of-support-agendas for Users ... We think many Users could have emerged better and quicker into the world over those years of NIMHE's existence - if they had been able to get supports - which many did not .. We know them and they are more disabled now !

Work ofcourse is just one way of recovery and a valid end point for some - so is getting the right treatment and supports - still a great trial for many despite all the re-configgery-jiggery of "services" and so called help ...

But the new way to make MH Users disappear, is into the benefit-stigma Bin of the Freud's-Void . Boot them off benefits make them eventually even more ill - and perhaps emptily die in the arms of the Suicide God often strangely named on his "T" shirt as :

"Tdgas-btaf"

"They don't give a shit because they are fit"

(What a betrayal all this is ..)



Here's what Cecilia writes though at greater length on the Prime Ministers E Petition Site :

"More details from petition creator

The government plans to introduce changes to incapacity Benefit in April 2010 that mental health charities have already voiced concerns over. It is feared that many people with mental health problems will be adversely affected due to the stress that such arbitrary measures of evaluation will introduce. This new system will apply to all existing claimants and assumes accuracy in mental health diagnosis which many of us already know doesn't exist. Many of us believe that such measures will only attach further stigma and prejudice to those with mental illness. A large number of people will fall through the system and fall into poverty and a system of expectation and penalty that they will be ill equipped to deal with. Please sign this protest to prevent this kind of change in favour of a fair standard of living and care for the vast majority of people on Incapacity Benefit who are genuine. "


[Just In

We have had a tip off that one of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust's User Voice Staff might have signed the petition too .. One Barbara Norden apparently ? Well that's her right and we support that right . Its a democracy !!! ]


Links Mental Nurse (see post below too from MN)


"Dirty scrounging benefit scum


Since the rules are about to be changed to make it harder to claim incapacity benefit (presumably in order to fend off the hordes who are supposedly bleeding the system dry claiming spurious illness), here’s an account (reprinted by permission of the author) of a mental health service user’s tussles with the DWP.

She doesn’t mention her diagnosis, but since she’s on Quetiapine and has just been discharged from the Crisis Team, I’m going to take a wild guess and suggest it’s not a mild case of the psycho-sniffles.

Anyway, she writes to inform us that her bank balance currently stands at the princely sum of £1.01. Here’s why:

My incapacity benefit was stopped because apparently I’m not ill enough. My tribunal is on the 22nd of this month and it’ll be approaching seven months since it was stopped.

I made a new claim in January and am still waiting for an appointment before they can process my claim. It’s another department which deals with booking appointments and they’ll have to call me back. It’s always the same.

I also can’t claim Jobseekers because, shock horror, I’m not seeking a job. They won’t accept a Dr’s note for this because I’ve failed one of their medicals in the last six months.

If I could work at the moment I would. As it is, I can’t. My CPN, psychiatrist, and GP all think I can’t, the DWP think I can. Stopping my incapacity benefit has made my illness worse, no doubt about it.

So next time you hear David “Tosser” Cameron going on about getting people off benefits. Think of the people who have already been fucked over by the system, who have had to endure humiliating and stressful medical examinations because the word of three medical professionals isn’t good enough. The system doesn’t work as it is. Making the rules stricter is just going to mean more appeals (costing lots of money), more tribunals (costing lots of money), and probably more mentally ill people ending up dead because they can’t cope with the stress of all this bullshit. I suppose that would save the government money.



So, to summarise: (mental Nurse says)

Her CPN thinks she’s too ill to work.

Her psychiatrist thinks she’s too ill to work.

Her GP thinks she’s too ill to work.

The DWP thinks she’s just fine and dandy, ergo no benefits.

And all this before they start tightening up the rules.

If anyone wants to e-mail me any similar horror stories, I’m on

zarathustra at mentalnurse dot org dot uk"




[Just In

We have had a tip off that one of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust's User Voice Staff might have signed the petition too .. One Barbara Norden apparently ? Well that's her right and we support that right . Its a democracy !!! ]


4 comments:

Made by Mandy said...

Will read petition, at some point. Do loonies have voting rights on this?
As in are we allowed to defend oursleves and our insanity (which sounds insane in itself)?

I have read the debate on mental nurse. It is a debate which comes up every so often and you get the tax paying and twatted off ranting about the 'scroungers' but not willing to defend those who are deserving. I wonder if they had to re-define who the deserving are how they would assess that.

It is difficult being one of the dirty rottern bastards who have mental illness (and claim benefits) to write anything in a personally objective way because the so called silent majority would think "She would write that wouldn't she"? I would be exempted from any debate in power houses, I think.

I find your posting about the Gibraltar monkeys relevant. perhaps us loonies will be given the 2 options of trying to sustain work or lethally injecting ourselves. In some ways that would be better (and reflecting on friend's recent suicide) more painless than trying to fit in or around a society that cannot or will not provide the proper care and support for those who have mental illness within it.

And I have fallen into the trap of generalising those who have mental illness because the likes of Stephen Fry do quite nicely, in spite of their illness, but I would summise he had a financial comfort blanket (courtesy of his family heritage) that allowed him to do so and that the sort of money he brings in for doing his work could easily sustain him should he become incapacitad for a period of time. And if that didn't....the family could easily finance him through such periods. Or am I assuming too much?

Those of us (leper loonies) from poor backgrounds and with family heritages of instability are more likely to find getting work and continuing within it difficult, if not impossible. And who will sustain us during our 'acute periods'? But that won't stop the fekkers trying to manipulate us into their boxes.

I think I am getting beyond joining in such debates because there is a level of futility in so much as the dye is cast...and it is a shade of blood red.

People are dying under the non care of MH services and more will die under the scapegoating that will take place to appease the angry workers and promote the bureaucratic suits.

PatientGuard said...

Yes I have seen Mental Nurse's posts. Pity they don't allow me to post there. But Zarathustra already thinks I am divisive ...That's what I pick up . Z does not see I am just socially real .

I don't think you are being unfair by looking at others and seeing their social class or positional interests in the weave that is termed mental health services and the way it effects and impacts diffentially ..

I am aware of class and genuine social differences all the time because the NHS is full of it and those at the top are often well educated middle class girls and boys who were head boy or girl types ... That is simplistic partly but also true because what some people : Users Carers and staff like to create is a false uniformity of effect in their perceptions which emerges as :

"We are all in it together"

This is partly their own window of view but actually wrong generally and not particularised enough but it does create a seductive way forward for certain types of NHS useable people...The truth is the middle class in this country practice economic apartheid and create silenced social divisions which they do not wish to talk about and when someone does they are automatically labelled as the others that "divide us" - or practice divisions

The reality is we are already divided by class or sub cultural group interests and the bulk of the middle classes are comfortable with that so long as its relatively silenced and not activated ......

Made by Mandy said...

Sorry you aren't allowed on mentalnurse.

Was quite surprised I was allowed cos I ain't exactly compliant.

Am I the acceptable face of the miltitant dissenting? Somehow, i don't think so.

Certainly, from recent goings on in my life I am not enveloped in a glowing feeling when I think about the care(or access to it) that I am getting or that others around me get either.

It's a case of what's not there rather than what is.

As for some ideal of a collective. Others ideals not mine. That dream died after various 'user involvement initiatives' which led back to the paymaster.

I don't mind joining in things but with a get out clause, as in, if I can't speak freely, then count me out.

PatientGuard said...

Staff I find do not tolerate me Offline or Online because I am not them and they are not me and our experiences are wide apart.

Mine is about helplessness and no needs met by their useless un-therapeutic systems and often their take is my helplessness is taken as an internal attribute as opposed to the real contextual hopelessness they create ..

There are answers to pain and suffering and its called therapeutic support and empathy . These are just fucking words to many staff I have met, and the rarist good ones actually know these are organic human capacities of feeling the other feelings and helping to navigate them towards reesolutions.

I rarely see this quality in the NHS but actually see grey containments as the major reality . In truth most of these NHS concept-nurse-bots do not know they are concept-nurse-bots, they lose their consciousness too .. Are numbed out by system corporacy and being cogs.

I forgive them only when they see what they do to others like Users ..

Forgiveness in life has to be based on redemptive reflection and an acceptance of deep flaws towards the other.

This is why I am part of the mad "Wire King" that stands watching them all with their anti-empathic existential electrocution of so many over years ..

Theirs is the voltage
And current
Where my life and pain
Are spent

Mine is the insight
Of NHS hell
Where they practice
Mal-concepts
And being bent ..

I reckon Mental Nurse secretly loves me though .....

Dont you Rand ....

Whoops sorry ...Mand ..