The Mental Health Forms

Being a service user in the mental health system, I have to fill out forms. Forms most users get another person to help them with. They are long, and very detailed.

The first one you fill in you understand it being long and detailed. This is how they get to know you, to make their decision.  When you get your second, third and so on, they send the same form, the same length, the same amount detail. It made me wonder.

Have they lost all the details I sent the first time? Why is there not a follow up form for long term ill people? Do they think I have been cured in-between forms? Do they think I and my team of professionals, who help, would be dishonest?

I have been given professionals to help me, I didn’t hire them myself. They also write to back up the forms, so they know who they are.  So if they all agree (because it is a team, not an individual who helps.) Why do the people who pay me, show such doubt? 

To fill in the book they send I need someone to give me some time. It takes a few hours, sometimes more if my head is in a bad state. Then I have to remember to get letters from others. Then I worry and fret. Then I fret and worry. If I’m in a bad mental health state, than I can close off from the world. Why don’t they believe me? Why are they checking again? Why is this happening to me? Paranoia starts to run rampant.

So my mental health at the beginning has fallen as I fill the form. I’m stressed. Now I’m wondering; why they just couldn’t be bothered to write a follow up form? Why can’t they be bothered to understand people with mental health conditions?

For Information and help on any mental health issues go to Mind.

©Louise Goodson/Magicmayflower.

Irony and the Paralympics

Does anyone recognise the name ATOS?

If not, then you have never had the courtesy of an invite by them on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions, for a Benefits Assessment Medical Examination. I use the words "Medical Examination” loosely as the "medical" is conducted by a question and answer interview prompted by computerised questions. A fully qualified doctor very rarely does this interview. It could be conducted by a nurse, a medical secretary, or, who knows, by someone just walking by with nothing else to do?

The company, which is being paid over £100 million a year, for at least 5 years, for this privilege, is the health care arm of ATOS.

The company is charged with getting claimants off the higher rate of benefit and into a “fit for work/able to work” category. This includes terminally ill people, I prefer to use the word people rather than claimant, who have died a couple of months after being classified as “fit for work”.

Over 70% of people who appeal the ATOS decision to withdraw their Disability Benefit win their appeal.

The appeal is funded by the British Tax Payer and not by ATOS, who still receive their payment in full, and suffer no financial penalty for their wrong assessment of the person who has gone through months of the mental and financial suffering of being on a low benefit (when you appeal a decision you are put on a low benefit until your appeal is decided), and not knowing if their appeal will be successful.

Appeals can often take months to be heard due to the increase in people appealing, and backlog of appeals due to the cut back in staff and resources to deal with the appeals.

Here is a statement, the first part of which I find laughable, from the ATOS home page:

We support the Department’s efforts to drive disability equality. Disability assessments for benefit eligibility are transformed by Atos-delivered business process outsourcing services. We are handling 1.2 million referrals a year and six million face-to-face assessments across 142 locations. 

There are claims, which have never been denied by anyone when questioned over this, that ATOS and the medical assessors receive a bonus for every person that is declared “fit to work”.

The Irony is that ATOS has been selected as one of the main sponsors of the Paralympics.

It is reported that ATOS paid a paltry £63 million for this privilege, which in reality is being paid for by the British Tax Payer, to promote the company as a benefactor for people with a Disability (if I may use the word for the context of this blog).

ATOS Worldgrid: promotes itself as a unique player delivering innovative services to the new smart energy market.

ATOS Worldline: advertises itself as using core expertise in HI-Tech Transactional Services (HTTS), as a specialist in electronic payment services, eServices, for customers, citizens and communities and services for financial markets.

• Nowhere does it mention about removing people’s benefits and forcing them into poverty or mental stress or depression. 

• Nowhere does it mention about any support, financial or otherwise, for people, communities, or organisations dealing with any Mental or Physical Health situations. 

McTaggart