The governments understanding gap with ESA

The last few months have seen many changes in attitude to ATOS and ESA and to those who claim Incapacity benefit (IB). It seems that there is still a very large gap in understanding between the people who are making policy, delivering it and those dealing with the people trying to claim for the help they need to recover their good mental health. And I think their lack of understanding was typified for me by the comment I heard many moons ago when the change over figures from IB to ESA were first reported. When asked why so many people were fighting the decisions that they were fit for work the man replied

‘When people are faced with loosing up to £30 a week off their benefit of course they’re going to fight’

Really!

I do so hope we have moved on from this kind of misunderstanding; however I fear that we have not, and I fear this because of comments in the newspapers about the number of people who are attributing suicides to the decisions to cut benefits. It seems many feel that logic and reason would prohibit people from killing themselves because they have received an unfair decision over ESA that would leave them without the higher rate of benefit; but more importantly the ability to not look for work which they are not capable of doing. A situation that would ultimately result in them either repeatedly being given and then losing jobs, or in them being sanctioned and their benefits cut. Both situations so torturous that it is unlikely that they would not commit suicide and fighting the decision is just as torturous a journey, as Andy Worthington and many others have said before. (http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/06/06/brutal-benefit-cuts-for-the-disabled-are-leading-to-suicides-in-the-uk/ )

But it appears that many people do not understand, what to me seems an obvious thing, that people with severe mental health issues/disabilities will commit suicide as a result of these decisions. The common person and many, if not the majority, of government seem quite happy to deny that this is happening and they quote logic and reason and say things like if you deserve it then you will be granted it you just have to put your case across as the reasons why it is not so.

Am I really the only one who thinks that actually they need a lesson or two in the reasons why people become mental ill and why they remain so?

Because it seems that just explaining to them that this is so is not having an impact, people do not believe that people will go to such lengths and so dismiss the claims without recourse.

So this is my four penneth.

All of the people in this group will have suffered some of emotional/physical abuse, neglect or abandonment during their childhoods and from the people they either believed cared for them the most or had those they trusted not believe them. In many if not all instances they will have believed that they cannot escape it no matter what they do and it will have been overwhelming for them. They are extremely unlikely to trust on sight and will often have great difficulties forming relationships with any trust involved, which is not to say that they don’t have trusting relationships but that it is extremely hard for them to form them.

They will have very little if any self esteem or confidence but will almost certainly have found a way to bluff their way through and as a consequence you may not notice this lack. These people will not fight in any logical manor because ultimately they believe they will not win because they so rarely did as a child. They may well put up a good fight but far too many will just give in too easily without putting their case across.

If you push these people too far they will not be reasonable, or logical or rational and will feel so overwhelmed that they will harm themselves and quite possibly fatally.

 A bleak picture..? yes well that is not all.

I guess my point is that when you have had all your trust obliterated when you are a child by the people you have to trust, your parents or parental figures, and feel that you have no way out to the point where you have suffered so badly that you have become mentally ill to this extent I have no idea how you expect them to deal with an arbitrary system that says it’s going to help when the people who were supposed to care the most either did such terrible things or allowed others to do them to them.

The lessons learned as a child last a life time and these lessons were learned so well and so thoroughly that rather than seek help from another person they became mentally ill. I’m not sure how the government thinks this family is going to help when it made such a bad job of bringing them up yet it seems they do.

So please consider that the fear of returning to a time where they felt so overwhelmed and in such pain, where neglect and/or abuse was commonplace these people will do anything to avoid it include take their own lives and then ask yourself why you feel the need to put them through a system that makes them face this fear?