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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 12:43:57 GMT
What counts as mental health care? Briefings: funding grassroots groups, welfare support & accessible transport Posted on 15 January 2024 www.nsun.org.uk/resource/what-counts-as-mental-health-care-briefings-funding-welfare-transport/Introduction & background We are releasing a set of three briefings focussing on precarity, access, and mental health. They are the result of a two year process of consultation with grassroots and user-led groups in London, discussing the barriers faced by those who live with mental-ill health, distress, or trauma. Collectively, the briefings highlight the need to consider mental healthcare far beyond medical interventions; and instead call us to reimagine the material — including the systems and structures that create and exacerbate distress in the first place. Read together, we show how the marginalisation of the so-called mentally ill extends beyond stigma or an inability to “talk”. Instead, it is woven into the structures of our society. Taking a wider view of mental health sometimes involves flashy new interventions; and others, the solution is very simple, boring, even. Here we highlight the need for better funding for grassroots groups in the context of the cost of living crisis, accessible and affordable transport, and more transparent systems for managing welfare claims. They may not seem exciting, but each are valid and necessary forms of mental health care, which would improve the lives of so many. When we talk about mental health, often the conversation is so broad that we lose specificity and talk about mental health as a universal experience touching all of us. At NSUN, we know that the impact of mental ill-health and distress is unequal, and that many who experience the sharper end of mental ill-health and distress are invisibilised, pathologised, and excluded from mainstream conversations. Focus on prevention excludes those of us who live with long term mental ill-health where ‘recovery’ can feel like a distant concept. Over the past two years, we have been talking to grassroots groups and individuals who live with long term distress about their experiences at the intersection of mental ill-health and experiences of precarity and access. We have been looking into issues like social security, transport and accessibility, and grassroots responses to the rise in the cost of living. We have been asking ‘what are people living with mental ill-health experiencing and what needs to change?’. When looking at social determinants, there can be an undercurrent of understanding the causes to focus efforts and resources on prevention. Whilst prevention is important, conversations about prevention often exclude those who live with long term mental ill-health, which can be lifelong and whose wellbeing and conditions remain critically important. People who live with long term mental ill-health may live up to 20 years less than those who don’t have this experience. Government data from 2018-2020 shows that adults described as having so-called serious mental illness (SMI) were from 2.5 to 7.2 times more likely to die before the age of 75 than adults without. Factors that are at play here include being more likely to be worse off (described by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute as the ‘mental health income gap’) and to have experiences of multiple different forms of ill-health that are less likely to be appropriately treated or taken seriously. In these briefings, we are looking at the experiences of Londoners experiencing multiple forms of marginalisation. We cover issues including the cost of living crisis, accessibility and transport, and the social security system. This is not an exhaustive list of issues, but we hope it is a contribution to the current conversation with an explicit emphasis on lived realities and often marginalised voices. One thing is clear to us: we need to understand what is going on in order to remake the systems that have so much impact over the lives of people experiencing multiple forms of marginalisation. Read the briefings and their recommendations
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Post by Admin on Feb 5, 2024 13:30:15 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2024 11:45:41 GMT
DWP’s ‘shocking and shameful’ duty of care refusal must be addressed, MPs are toldBy John Pring on 15th February 2024 Category: Benefits and Poverty www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwps-shocking-and-shameful-duty-of-care-refusal-must-be-addressed-mps-are-told/More than 20 disability and welfare rights organisations and charities have told MPs that a new legal duty must be introduced to force the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to safeguard the wellbeing of “vulnerable” claimants of benefits. Every non-government organisation that answered a question on whether a statutory duty should be imposed supported such a move, as part of an ongoing inquiry by the Commons work and pensions committee. Disability Rights UK said the department’s refusal to accept that it had a statutory safeguarding responsibility to claimants in vulnerable situations was “shocking and shameful” and also “dangerous”. It told the committee in its written response: “It means that the safety of claimants is not at the forefront of DWP policy and procedures and that any damage caused to claimants by DWP, falls to other services such as the NHS and social care to mop up.” The mental health of asylum seekers and refugees in the UKwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/publications/mental-health-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-ukThis report presents evidence on the circumstances which asylum seekers and refugees in the UK can face, and how these experiences can harm their mental health and even lead to suicidal feelings and actions. Asylum seekers and refugees are at particular risk of mental health problems. These may develop because of their experiences in their countries of origin, during their journeys, or after they arrive in the UK. Read our report to understand why asylum seekers and refugees are at particular risk and what we, as a society, can do to protect their mental health once they arrive in the UK. DPAC returns to the streets for ‘active resistance’ to DWP cutsBy John Pring on 22nd February 2024 Category: Activism and Campaigning www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dpac-returns-to-the-streets-for-active-resistance-to-dwp-cuts/Disabled activists have announced a fightback against a series of “horrific” government social security reforms and have called for “active resistance” to the plans, starting with a national day of action and a protest in London early next month. A meeting in parliament this week heard that disabled people could not wait for the general election, because there was no guarantee that a Labour government would reverse the government’s proposals. Instead, they called for a return to street protest, led by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), to resist Conservative plans to cut out-of-work disability benefits and introduce other harmful social security reforms. “This patient had no idea that, not only were staff watching her, but I could see her clearly too”stopoxevision.com/2024/02/15/this-patient-had-no-idea-that-not-only-were-staff-watching-her-but-i-could-see-her-clearly-too/When I was admitted to the ward, I didn’t know I was visible to staff on a camera. After a couple of days I read the ward information pack in my bedroom and it had a leaflet about Oxevision. There was an Oxevision device on the ceiling in the corner of the room that I hadn’t noticed. I felt humiliated to realise staff had been watching me. Had I been picking my nose? Had I masturbated? Had I got undressed within sight of the camera? I couldn’t remember and didn’t know what they might have seen. It was so humiliating. Mad Supremacycriticalneurodiversity.com/2024/02/19/mad-supremacy/People involved in the neurodiversity movement have long used the concept of “aspie supremacy” (coined by Mel Baggs) to denote a certain ideology that may superficially look like neurodivergent liberation politics but is in fact anathema to our liberation. As I understand it, the aspie supremacist is defined by the way in which they reclaim what they often call ‘Asperger’s syndrome’, ‘high-functioning autism’, or being an ‘aspie’. (It is important to note that these terms are now outdated, but we will use ‘aspie’ here because we are describing people who often self-identify as such.) At base, Fergus Murray sums aspie supremacy up well when they write that it is based on the idea that ‘aspies’ somehow “have extraordinary powers which not only make their existence worthwhile, but make them better than other people.” Most often, this project is based on them showing that their form of autistic cognition is superior to that of autistic people who also have cognitive or intellectual disabilities. Sometimes, they go so far as suggesting aspie cognition is superior to neurotypical cognition. Aspie supremacists also often draw on evolutionary logics to justify their position and to naturalise their purported superiority, with certain autistic “strengths” framed as evolutionary adaptions. This mirrors eugenic theory and social Darwinism more generally, which precisely draws on the theory of evolution by natural selection to rank people, and as often as not, races, into hierarchies based on their purported natural traits and abilities. Hence we call it is aspie “supremacy” in the sense that it mirrors the eugenicist logics of white supremacy; and it is also “aspie” (rather than “autistic”) supremacy, since it actively excludes many other autistic people, including any perceived as having below average intelligence. There are many problems with aspie supremacy. The most central is that rather than aiming at collective liberation by fighting the logics of racial capitalism – and thus ableism and fascism – it aims at showing that a small number of autistic people fit its norms better than has been recognised so far. Their autistic pride is thus of a hyper individualistic and competitive sort, based on comparing themselves to the purportedly lower abilities of others, to justify their superiority. This then reinforces the Social Darwinist logics of racial capitalism rather than challenging that system, helping a select few (almost always male, cishet, white, able-bodied middle class) autistics gain more respectability at the expense of other disabled people, especially those who are multiply marginalised. A useful way to spot the difference between neurodivergent liberation politics and aspie supremacism is often to look at the formula for pride proponents of each have in mind. As a neurodivergent liberation proponent, when I talk of disability (or neurodivergent or autistic) pride I am talking about pride in a collective sense: pride in our shared disabled and autistic culture, in our forms of care, in our histories of resistance, and so on. This kind of collective pride is not the same as being proud of, say, my individual abilities or strengths, understood as superior to those of other people. In short, neurodivergent pride is a collective tool for fighting systemically imposed shame, not a reinforcement of the cultural logics of ableism then used to shift our shame onto others. As a Mad person I likewise understand my sense of Mad pride as something collective and cultural. The Mad pride events I’ve attended have precisely been forms of collective action, celebrations of collective resistance, and so on, not declarations of our superiority. More broadly, the Mad Pride movement, as I understand it, fits more with this kind of understanding than the hyper individualistic logics of aspie supremacy. For the most part it has been like this since the beginning. There are of course complex debates about the exact meaning and implications of Mad pride (see, e.g. this excellent article) and these are important to have. But by and large the collective approach to Mad Pride is the kind I associate with the politics of Mad liberation. My interest here is something hitherto unnamed, which I name as Mad supremacy. I call it this because it is roughly the same as aspie supremacy, except it is focused on Madness rather than autism. Mad supremacy thus tries to base Mad pride on showing that Madness is not really insanity, disability, or illness, but is instead a positive set of traits that are fundamentally adaptive, functional, or rational – and, vitally, fundamentally unlike, indeed superior to, other kinds of disability. To avoid misunderstanding, I am not suggesting that all, or even most, positive reclamations of Madness are forms of Mad supremacy. They are certainly not. Neither are all or most challenges to purely deficit based or pathologising framings of Madness. To the contrary, with both Neurodivergence and Madness it is vital to challenge the ways we have been constructed as purely deficient or pathological, especially when these constructs are used to dehaumise, control and incarcerate us. I have thus often defended the reclamation of Madness and Neurodivergent diagnoses, even while I critique overly individualistic approaches. When it comes to Mad supremacy, it is the specific logic with which we work that is important, not the claim that pathologisation should be rejected or that Madness can be positive. To understand logics of Mad supremacy, it is worth considering that to some extent, it finds a base in what I’ve called the ‘comparativist critique’ of mental illness found primarily in the libertarian Szaszian strand of anti-psychiatry and critical psychiatry. As I have detailed at length, this is ‘comparativist’ because it is based on comparing what are usually called mental disorders with bodily illnesses, in order to show that the former are not ‘real’ disorders and are in fact forms of comparatively normal functioning. While challenging pathologisation is itself not a problem, and while comparisons are of course sometimes useful, this argument is distinguished by invoking a naturalised conception of bodily illness or disability as inherently deficient, to claim that mental illness is actually comparatively normal, meaningful, or so on. It is a way of saying: we are not like them, we are normal while they are not. It is by trying to show that mental disorder is comparatively superior in its functioning, that the comparativist critique tends to reinforce ableist logics (not to mention it’s commitment to the kind of bodily essentialism associated with transphobia and so on). Mad supremacy likely dates back at least to efforts to associate (white) Madness with ‘genius’ in 18th century Europe. But today the Mad supremacist is most often encountered on social media or in chat rooms. While there is no perfect archetype, the Mad supremacist in the wild usually has several related tenancies. First, like the aspie supremacist they are typically (both socially and epistemically) male, middle class, white, cishet, and able-bodied, or as close to this as possible. They will typically adamantly deny that their favoured form of Madness is illness, disability, or insanity by comparing it to people whose bodies or minds they consider naturally and objectively dysfunctional, suggesting that their favoured form of Madness is comparatively superior in terms of being more meaningful, functional or rational. Like proponents of the comparativist critique, they also tend to share other similar political commitments (such as to a naturalised conception of the sex binary) that are based on closely related logics. And vitally, like the aspie supremacists, the pride of the Mad supremacist is not about collective history, culture, and resistance; it is, rather, about their cognitive superiority to one group or another. While Mad supremacy has generally remained on the fringes of Mad activism, I now see it more often than even just a few years ago. Indeed, something approaching this kind of argument recently made its way into an academic journal. In his article Madness and Idiocy, philosophy professor Justin Garson – who, in line with the aspie supremacist approach, has previously spent much time arguing that Madness and certain forms of neurodivergence are really evolutionary adaptions – precisely proposes that Mad Pride could be based on a comparison between Madness and ‘idiocy’ (an old term roughly denoting people with developmental or cognitive disabilities) that he explores in late modern philosophy. To establish this, Garson quotes a variety of related late modern views, such as an 1818 text by Heinroth, that distinguished Madness as “disturbances of soul life” from idiocy, whereby “soul lives […] have never begun to exist” (1818). But what is most important for Garson is that in this period, idiocy increasingly became associated with below “average” intellect and the absence of reason, while Madness was increasingly associated with average or above intelligence and merely disrupted (but not absent) rationality. With such views in mind, Garson’s own argument is that instead of being contrasted with sanity, as it commonly is today, Madness can instead be contrasted with idiocy, as it was in the late modern period. For Garson, looked at this way we can see that Madness, unlike idiocy, is really a specific form of reason (and thus sanity) rather than a lack of it. Based on this – and this is his key point – Garson suggests this may provide a philosophical foundation for Mad Pride. That is, he associates the basis of Mad Pride with showing that Madness can really be a form of rationality, rather than being, like idiocy, as his division frames it, an absence of reason or intellect. As a Mad person, according to this logic, I should (or can) ground my individual pride in my being rational (or, it seems, of above average intelligence), in contrast to how those called idiots were understood in the late modern period. For anyone familiar with aspie supremacy, it will be hard to not see this as closely resembling the arguments aspie supremacists make in relation to autism and intelligence. Many of us, I hope, will be particularly wary of arguments that uncritically rely on dehumanising depictions of cognitively disabled people, such as the Heinroth text cited above. Many of us will also reject an equation for Mad pride that rules out including people with cognitive disability by definition. That said, while Garson refers to this as a “superior, refined definition of madness”, he stops short of fully endorsing the utility of this formula for Mad Pride (as justifying that would go beyond the scope of the article). Moreover, he also suggests that he doesn’t mean to imply anything about the value of people with cognitive disability today (although it is not at all clear why this wouldn’t follow, since that is precisely the logic he draws on and reproduces). To what extent Garson actually endorses the implications of the logics he proposes is thus left as something of a mystery. In the same journal, Awais Aftab has already replied to Garson that Mad pride need not focus on proving one’s rationality and in practice is often more about politics and resistance. In response, Garson writes that he “cannot see how any form of mad activism can proceed without adopting a vantage point on madness which recognizes it as partly constituted by rationality”. And yet here lies the issue. It is not that I deny that Madness can be infused with reason (I don’t). It is also not just that this is simply not the issue that defines whether pride can be found. The deeper issue is that any logic that requires throwing others under the (eugenic) bus to establish pride in our purported superiority should be rejected, at least for those of us concerned with collective liberation. In fact I do not think Mad pride needs justification. It is something we do, not something we ask permission for. Certainly for me – although perhaps not for everyone – the cultures of Madness I belong to and find pride in are defined not by superiority of intelligence or comparative rationality, but rather by our shared resistance to the very systems and apparatuses that ideologically produce rationality in the first place. And as rationality itself is part of what is oppressive, it is not an elite club I would like to join before kicking away the ladder. It is unclear how widespread Mad supremacy is. From my experience, it seems largely restricted to the imperial core. But we live in an age of rising fascism and everything that comes with that. What I am certain about is that far from liberating us, supremacy-based logics, even if they did help a small number of Mad people gain more respectability, will only reproduce the ideology and systems of domination that keep sanism and ableism in place.
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Post by Admin on Mar 5, 2024 0:38:21 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2024 14:13:09 GMT
Joint letter: financial surveillance powers in Data Protection and Digital Information Bill Posted on 5 March 2024 NSUN has signed a joint letter alongside over 40 other civil society organisations to Michelle Donelan MP (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology) expressing our concerns regarding financial surveillance powers in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. The proposed measures involve the use of mass algorithmic surveillance to scan bank and other third party accounts, ostensibly to detect potential flags for fraud and error in the welfare system. The powers are disproportionate and raise significant concerns in the context of privacy, surveillance, data protection, and equalities. These powers are specifically aimed at people who receive state benefits, which is about 40% of the population, as well as individuals’ accounts linked with benefit claims, such as partners, parents, and landlords. There are no restrictions on the type of information that can be requested. Some financial data may constitute information designated as special category data under GDPR. The extensive sharing of such data poses significant risks to data security, especially given the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) history of data security issues. The Information Commissioner has stated that he does not currently view these powers as proportionate. As such, they may be unlawful and a breach of individuals’ right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. www.nsun.org.uk/news/joint-letter-financial-surveillance-powers-in-data-protection-and-digital-information-bill/
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2024 14:16:20 GMT
DPAC are BACK: mass protest causes chaos in Westminster as disabled people block roads www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2024/03/04/dwp-protests-westminster/Campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) has launched a new offensive against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – and the group is back with a bang. Dozens of chronically ill and disabled activists and their allies targeted the DWP’s head office – before blocking a main road into Westminster. Things got ugly as the authoritarian cops tried to shut down the demo – but DPAC held firm, despite police even kettling wheelchair users at one point. Yet more benefit ‘reforms’ As the Canary previously reported, DPAC has launched a new campaign against the DWP and the government. In last autumn’s budget, chancellor Jeremy Hunt already announced a further clampdown on chronically ill and disabled people. Specifically: Changing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to force more chronically ill and disabled people to work from home. This could lead to the DWP stopping hundreds of thousands of people’s benefits. More people the DWP says are fit for work but who it doesn’t think are doing enough to find work will face tougher sanctions and lose things like free prescriptions. The DWP will eventually scrap the WCA altogether, and make the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) health assessment the only judge of people’s illness and impairments. this could lead to over 600,000 people losing their benefits. All this is on top of whatever Hunt announces in the Spring Budget on Wednesday 6 March. Moreover, all this comes after years of freezes and real-term cuts to benefit rates since 2016. So, on Monday 4 March DPAC took the fight direct to the DWP’s door. DPAC: fighting for their rights – right outside the DWP It started off with chronically ill and disabled people holding office around Caxton House, where the department’s HQ is: There were speakers from various groups, like Winvisible which campaigns for chronically ill and disabled women’s rights: Chants of ‘no more deaths from benefit cuts’ rung out through central London. Placards people held included accusations of “democide” against the government. This is where the state murders its own citizens – either directly, or through policies: There were also stark reminders that DWP policies have changed very little over the years: Do you remember when Sainsbury's was working in cahoots with the DWP and handing over its CCTV so the department could spy on claimants while they did their shopping? Nothing has changed #NoMoreBenefitDeaths pic.twitter.com/JF04BNPnHO — @thechroniccollaboration (@thechroniccolab) March 4, 2024 Crucially, Gill Thompson was there. She is the sister of David Clapson, who died at the hands of the DWP after it stopped his benefits. David’s death was one of the earlier, high-profile cases where the DWP catastrophically neglected a claimant. It left David with no food and no electricity – therefore, he could not chill his insulin for his diabetes. David died on 20 July 2013. Paula Peters from DPAC led the charge against the DWP at the protest. She said that activists were: representing the… millions of disabled people who couldn’t be here today. Police: kettling disabled people = complicity with the government However, they were not just making some noise outside the DWP. Around 30 people then blocked the main road into parliament from the west: rest in link.
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Post by Admin on Mar 18, 2024 12:42:28 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 27, 2024 21:52:31 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 12:08:36 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2024 10:42:28 GMT
Words Matter: Vulnerability Posted on 10 April 2024 by NSUN & The Migrants' Rights Network www.nsun.org.uk/words-matter-vulnerability/This piece was written by The Migrants’ Rights Network in collaboration with NSUN as a contribution to MRN’s Words Matter campaign, which aims to explore the ramifications of certain language, and to show solidarity to migratised communities by standing up against harmful narratives. The language of vulnerability is often used in conjunction with migrants and other marginalised groups. While many migrants are made vulnerable by the structures they interact with (e.g. immigration systems) or as a result of traumatic experiences which can result in ill health or disability, they are often generalised as being an inherently vulnerable group. Migrants, including refugees, are given the blanket label of ‘vulnerable’. While it’s sometimes important to ‘prove’ vulnerability, so that migrants who have been made vulnerable can access support services, such as mental health services or gender-affirming care for trans+ migrants, the term ‘vulnerability’ has become something of a buzzword. This word is applied very individualistically, rather than interrogating the harmful systems or conditions that create vulnerability. ‘Vulnerability’ manifests in very different ways depending on the group or person in question, and we must apply an intersectional approach when exploring how vulnerability is created. Under oppressive systems, gender, sexuality, disability, race, ethnicity, religion or age can all intersect, which defines how vulnerability is constructed , and who has access to the support they need. As part of our Words Matter campaign, we’re exploring the concept of ‘vulnerability’, in relation to disability and migration, with our friends at the National Survivor User Network (NSUN). Should we think of and describe people on the move as ‘vulnerable’? While the concept of vulnerability is commonly referred to in conversations around migration, it is often incredibly malleable and poorly defined. Vulnerability most often presents itself as a vague state of passive, apolitical victimhood imposed by Western organisations and governments onto racialised groups. Even a 2018 report from the Independent Chief Inspector for Borders and Immigration into the Home Office’s approach to safeguarding ‘vulnerable’ adults highlighted how using the word risks ‘locat[ing] the cause of abuse with the victim’. The idea of the inherently vulnerable individual also enables the ‘White Saviour’ complex. The predominantly White-led charity and aid sector can dictate who is constructed as ‘vulnerable’ and therefore what is needed to support that person. This reinforces the problematic power dynamic in support services and charities because it takes away the agency or decision-making abilities for marginalised groups to dictate what resources they want or need. There are no inherently ‘vulnerable’ migrants, only those who are made vulnerable and kept in precarious situations by oppressive systems. We reject the labelling of people on the move as ‘vulnerable’ as this implies an inherent lack of agency and control over their own lives. Describing people as such obscures the structures that keep migratised communities precarious, such as the lack of safe routes to seek asylum in the UK, prohibitively expensive visa application processes and the encroachment of border enforcement into our schools, hospitals and workplaces. People seeking sanctuary from across the Global South may also be constructed as ‘vulnerable’ because of political or economic instability in their home countries. Once again, this obscures that vast areas of the world have been destabilised by centuries of colonialism and military intervention by the Global North. These processes are not apolitical, but the direct results of policy decisions made by Western governments past and present. What else does ‘vulnerability’ imply? The passiveness that ‘vulnerability’ tends to denote when it is applied to migrants lends it a distinctly gendered quality. Often, meek, ‘vulnerable’ women and girls on the move are constructed in opposition to hostile, ‘fighting age’ men in similar situations. Both of these categories are reductive and harmful; one denying people’s agency and the other playing on discriminatory tropes to justify inhumane migration policies. There have been efforts within some humanitarian organisations to expand understandings of ‘vulnerability’ to acknowledge specific challenges faced by men seeking safety. While beginning to deconstruct ‘vulnerability’ is a step in the right direction, this does not go far enough. Who decides who is ‘vulnerable’? Even when it is made more inclusive, the concept of ‘vulnerability’ remains an artificial one that is imposed on racialised migrants from the Global South. Instead of allowing people on the move to define their own needs, it only serves to justify more oppressive Western humanitarianism. This means that people from the Global North continue to make decisions about migrants’ lives. We also know that members of migratised communities that are dependent on humanitarian aid are well aware of Western conceptions of ‘vulnerability’. This can lead people in these situations to ‘perform powerlessness’ at the expense of expressing their actual opinions and needs. Vulnerability is complex, and looks different for everyone. Passively applying the term ‘vulnerable’ to entire groups can both dismiss and infantilise them. Instead, we should look at the systemic issues that create and exacerbate vulnerability so that we can collectively tackle the root causes that expose people to risk or harm. We are exploring the relationship between migration status, immigration systems and disability through our Who is Welcome: Disability and Migration campaign.
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Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2024 22:42:09 GMT
‘Like a puppet on a string’: The ‘sick note’ culture, from those who live it Posted on 22 April 2024 by Nima Cas Hunt www.nsun.org.uk/like-a-puppet-on-a-string-the-sick-note-culture-from-those-who-live-it/Since the appointment of PM Rishi Sunak in October 2022, claimants of disability benefits and those who are unable to work due to mental ill-health, physical health difficulties or neurodivergence have been increasingly targeted as the cause of the UK’s economic issues. Benefits, fitness for work, and long-term sickness – what’s happening? Last year, the PM argued that providing for the number of people who are not working and claiming disability benefits was ‘not fair on taxpayers’ and ‘not good for our economy’. The following month, he emphasised his belief in the ‘inherent dignity’ of a good job, and described the number of people of working age who are not currently working as a ‘national scandal’ and an ‘enormous waste of human potential’. Detailing his plans to prohibit GPs from issuing sick notes in order to reduce the number of people signed off work, Rishi Sunak, in a speech made last Friday, expressed concerns about the UK’s ‘economically inactive’ population, claiming that the increase in people off work due to mental health issues was the result of ‘over-medicalising’ the ‘everyday challenges and worries of life’. It’s becoming harder for benefit claimants to receive the support they so desperately need, too. Earlier this month, Resolution Foundation, an ‘independent think-tank focused on improving the living standards of those on low-to-middle incomes’ published research into the impact of the Universal Credit system roll-out, which has been replacing legacy benefits since its introduction in 2013. According to the research, disabled people – and in particular those who are single, do not have a full-time carer and are unable to work due to their disability – can be ‘around £2,800 per year worse off on Universal Credit in 2024-25 than on legacy benefits’. This places people unable to work due to a disability or health condition at an increased risk of poverty, especially at a time when the majority of those applying for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) do not receive the benefit, and planned changes to Universal Credit will prevent claimants from receiving additional income to support their disability or health condition unless they are also in receipt of PIP. It’s a frightening time to be someone claiming benefits, and a frightening time to be someone who cannot work. We’re watching the prime minister of the UK drip feed a nation with an extremely ableist rhetoric intended to radicalise, scapegoat and ostracise. We are being demonised for our suffering – and for those of us who experience mental ill-health and distress, our suffering has been openly ridiculed and minimised. The narrative that disability benefit claimants are lazy, fraudulent or ‘leeching’ from taxpayers is louder and more unashamedly public than ever. Who is affected, and what’s the effect? The real depth and scale of the impact of the Government’s torrent of criticism towards disabled people is difficult to measure, and may not become apparent for many years, but for people like me and those whose words are collated in this blog – people who rely, or have relied on benefits to live – the impact is both immediate and immense. I started receiving PIP aged 18 whilst living in a therapeutic community for people with eating disorders, having spent the last five years of my life surviving incapacitating mental illness and the last two years of my life detained in psychiatric hospitals. I hadn’t been able to work before this point and was still not well enough to work, so PIP helped me to engage with the world in ways I couldn’t have done otherwise, for instance, by enabling me to study at college. After COVID-19 lockdowns had ended in 2021, I applied for Universal Credit, which provided me with the means to start a degree with the Open University and live independently of the therapeutic community. Over the next two years, I tried (and struggled) to hold down work – benefits kept me financially secure whilst I attempted to find a job that I could do, and that would employ me despite my patchy employment history, lack of experience and lack of qualifications at GCSE level and above. My PIP claim was reviewed last year and, after a brief phone conversation with a medical professional I had never met, it was decided that I was no longer eligible for PIP. At the time I was a part-time student, which meant I was only entitled to Universal Credit if I was in receipt of PIP – without PIP, I was not eligible for Universal Credit, and all the income I had was gone. Just like that. Without any notice, without any warning, without any support. A complete stranger had decided that I didn’t deserve money to live on. Unfortunately, I’m not alone in being unexpectedly removed from benefits. I connected with five current or previous claimants through social media, each with a story to share about their experience of claiming benefits, like Katie* – Katie isn’t sure why she was taken off her PIP a few years ago, because she was never given an ‘official reason’. She believes they decided, without speaking to her, that she was no longer in need of it. At the time, PIP was Katie’s only income, and having it removed left her in ‘great financial difficulty’. Katie says being taken off PIP made the issues that had meant she had to apply for PIP in the first place worse: ‘I did feel awful. It was like my issues were being minimised even though they affected me day to day significantly’. Paula also stopped receiving benefits several years ago, but this took place at her own request. Despite experiencing significant mental ill-health leading to hospital admissions and a placement in a therapeutic community (where she was receiving treatment at the time she applied for Universal Credit), Paula felt guilty about being in receipt of benefits as a result of negative external perceptions of benefits, particularly revealed in posts and comments on social media. And it’s not hard to see why – scrolling through the comments on a recent BBC article into Universal Credit (UC) and long-term sickness, perceptions of those receiving benefits can be extremely dismissive and cruel, with many commenters particularly targeting those who are out of work due to mental ill-health: After just five months of receiving UC, Paula wrote that she felt she ‘didn’t deserve’ benefits in her online journal; without any further assessment of her needs, her claim was immediately cancelled. Universal Credit “journals” are a part of the online UC system where claimants can make contact with their work coach. The journal isn’t computer operated; messages are seen and received by real people working for the DWP. This means that a human being read Paula’s message, and, rather than instigating a welfare check or reassuring her that the benefits system was created to support people in her position, they decided that her claim should be cancelled. The lack of compassion, empathy or understanding in this decision is horrifying and reflective of a government that, in the words of our prime minister, aims to prevent ‘economic inactivity’ and stop young people getting ‘parked on welfare’. For those who are ‘parked on welfare’, the threat of having benefits removed is real and constant. Phoenix, who is unable to work because of his disability, recently had his benefits taken away from him because of a prolonged hospital stay. This is standard practice for PIP recipients – if a claimant is admitted to hospital for a period of four weeks or more, their claim stops until they are discharged (see here for more info). When Phoenix started receiving PIP in 2020, he received no other help or additional support – but as soon as they wanted to remove his benefits, Phoenix described receiving pressuring letters ‘every other day’. Phoenix believes his health deteriorated because of both the toll of having his PIP taken away from him, and the stress of being a benefit claimant: ‘My mental health got worse because of PIP for a while, because of just the way that I was treated – they treated me like shit. The whole process made me feel like I was begging. It was awful. I hated it. And I have to go back on it when I leave – I’m dreading it. I honestly feel like the PIP process made me more sick.” Phoenix wasn’t the only person I spoke to who found the process of claiming for PIP or other disability benefits distressing in itself. Katie explained that although she could have appealed the DWP’s decision to remove her benefits, she ‘didn’t want to have to go through the process of being degraded all over again’. Mae, who has been a Disability Living Allowance and PIP claimant since she was 15, described the process of applying for and being on benefits as ‘horrible’, ‘invasive’, and ‘not easy at all’. She also feels aware of the threat of having her benefits removed: ‘My PIP was reassessed only a couple of months ago. The stress and terror of having it taken away was awful. Because it’s not just “money” (it’s really not even that much) – I rely on it to keep myself as well as I can whilst being at uni. As an autistic person who also has mental and physical health problems, working whilst being at uni just isn’t possible for me, and without my PIP, I wouldn’t be able to afford to be at uni.’ It’s no surprise, then – considering the humiliation, terror and disempowerment that the DWP puts disability claimants through – that some people choose to take themselves off benefits, despite being in desperate need of them. Lucy, who was a PIP claimant for 8 years, chose to come off benefits recently when the DWP informed her that her PIP was due for a review. She felt that, despite the complexity of her needs and experiences, the DWP would now view her as ‘fit for work’, and her entitlement would end: ‘When I left inpatient care, I ended up with no adult mental health or social care team, which I knew meant I wouldn’t be able to get the evidence that [the] DWP would ask for at my review. My experiences have led me to need a different kind of employment – when you apply for benefits, nobody tells you that 9-5 office hours might not work for you because of how complex your needs are, nobody suggests self-employment or running a small business; nor do the DWP or care teams really actively support and help people to do so. Now I’m in a position where I’ve got no employability skills and no experience because I’ve been institutionalised and out of work and education for 10+ years, but I know my needs don’t fit the parameters of what PIP would assess – so in some ways I’m not eligible, but I should be. If I turned around and said to PIP, you’re lucky if I can get a full night’s sleep once a week, you’re lucky if I can go shopping for basics or take the dog for a walk, I’d still be seen as ‘fit for work’.’ Lucy feels that the benefits system as a whole is unable to meet the needs of those who are relying on it for income, and fails to adequately assess people’s needs in the first place: ‘It feels like you’re a puppet on a string. If the DWP were really trying to support people, they’d be helping people into meaningful occupations that actually meet claimants’ needs on an individualised basis. They’re not looking at the person as a whole, who needs support and time to find something meaningful that may also generate income for themselves. That’s what getting people ‘back to work’ should be about. Instead, they just give you the money and then you’re waiting year after year for when the next review will happen. It’s like dealing with an abusive partner – knowing that they’re out there, watching, and could contact you at any minute to turn your world upside down and take away everything you’ve got.” One of the most abhorrent things that has come out of our government’s latest deluge of abuse directed at the disabled and those who experience mental ill-health and distress is the pigeonholed image of young people out of work due to long-term sickness depicted by Rishi Sunak at his speech last Friday, who were described as ‘a generation of young people [sat] alone in the dark before a flickering screen watching as their dreams slip further from reach every passing day’. It’s the typical Conservative ‘snowflake’ insult, intended to generate a combination of hatred, pity, disgust and shame. It’s language that portrays those of us who cannot work as lazy, self-absorbed, and responsible for our own “imagined” illnesses; if only we’d just turn off the telly, turn on the lights, and start providing for ourselves. Once again, we’re viewed as synonymous with frauds and parasites; not content with sucking the light out of our own lives, we must make it the problem of the good old tax-paying British population. The reality for those of us who claim benefits and/or who are unemployed due to disability or ill-health could not be further from the prime minister’s words. For most of us, like Mae, whose benefits currently enable her to study at university, being on benefits creates a platform from which we can build or rebuild our lives – whilst I was receiving PIP, I had the capacity, energy and finances to co-establish an organisation for young people who have experienced iatrogenic harm. I was an organiser for a vigil to commemorate the closure of an abusive inpatient unit. I co-wrote and illustrated a book which amplified the voices of ex-inpatients at children’s psychiatric hospitals. I worked different jobs, studied academic courses, started my own novel, and generally – using Rishi Sunak’s words – was as “economically active” as I have ever been, far more so than I am now that my benefits have been taken from me. Nobody wants to be the victim of an oppressive system that makes those who rely on it believe they are a burden to the society we live in. People don’t claim benefits because they want to – disability claimants need the income they receive from benefits to survive. Pushing people off benefits isn’t going to fix a broken economy, and it certainly won’t help the country “level up”; the only way the welfare system can be effective is if the systems that surround it – social care and the NHS – are effective, too. A growing population of people who are unemployed due to long-term sickness doesn’t reflect a growing population of layabouts and cowards. It reflects a government that has failed to protect, improve and expand its national healthcare to meet the needs of a suffering population. *Some of the names of those whose words are included in this blog have been changed to protect their identities. Nima Cas Hunt (she/her) is a writer and co-founder of non-profit group First Do No Harm. She is committed to ensuring the voices of those with lived-experience of mental ill health and distress are actively involved in the design of mental healthcare, and a firm believer in the power of services that move away from the pathologising of distress. Her Twitter/X is @nimacashunt.
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Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2024 22:43:09 GMT
Mental Health Cultures by VERONICA HENEY Apr 17, 2024 www.cost-ofliving.net/mental-health-cultures/“Mental health culture has gone too far, says Mel Stride”. This was the title of an article published in The Telegraph towards the end of March, that certainly generated a fair amount of attention on my Twitter feed, at least. The article recounted comments made by Stride, who is the Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary, at an in-person event, where he outlined his plans to reduce benefits spending through reforms to welfare payments. His statements mostly echoed a column he himself had written in The Telegraph the previous month; there was little new of note, but perhaps The Telegraph just felt like giving their mate Mel some good exposure, or using him to gain some clicks of their own. The argument was familiar to anyone who has followed Conservative politics in the UK over the last decade – the “benefits bill” is too high, there are people receiving benefits who should be working (the word ‘malingerer’ is usually unsaid but strongly implied), there need to be cuts, penalties, and more restrictions. What Stride failed to mention, is why he thinks this approach, which has been the Tory policy since their arrival in power in 2010, will suddenly work now, when it seems to have had little success before. It’s a tried and tested policy – blame sick people for being lazy, and draw attention away from a decade of Tory mismanagement. It’s good to know that nothing ever changes. The piece drew a significant amount of reproval or even ire – many of the major mental health charities made statements outlining their work in encouraging people to seek help, and the detrimental effect Stride’s comments might have. They also noted that in both his written article and his comments he somewhat simplified the statistics, ignoring the frequent occurrence of mental health as a co-morbidity alongside other health conditions. Interestingly, many of the statements took at face value the headline that “mental health culture has gone too far”, responding to this as Stride’s key claim. Yet when I read through the article those words didn’t seem to be a direct quote – rather they seemed to be the work of a very effective sub-editor at The Telegraph, who knew just how to pull eyes to the story. But nonetheless, I think it’s interesting to look at the use of the word ‘culture’ in the headline – what does it mean to take the different parts of Strides comments and suggest that they add up to a comment on ‘culture’? The phrase slickly encapsulates Stride’s derision for any approach that grants validity, weight, or heaven forbid care and attention to mental illness, a derision which he hides under supposed concern that we are “labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions”. (The ease with which a central branch of the sociology of mental health, and its critique of the power of medical institutions and discourses, was integrated within Tory rhetoric might certainly give us pause for thought.) Stride seems to be talking partly about a general social understanding of what mental health is, and also about a set of institutional practices from DWP assessments to GP’s sick notes. (The irony of a Conservative minister criticising the care patients receive from the NHS which his party underfunded is almost too much to bear). These might all certainly have cultural components, but there’s more to culture than this. In particular, there’s more to the culture around mental health in the UK than this. Stride seems desperate to suggest that we have become too soft, too lenient, too indulgent when it comes to mental health. Yet he conveniently ignores all the ways in which this is self-evidently not the case. He is manifestly uninterested in the fact that for all its supposed over-indulgence, we have a ‘Mental Health Culture’ that in many inpatient wards uses dubiously-legal video technology to surveil patients against their will rather than offering them care and kindness. He ignores the way that healthcare and social services staff often treat patients labelled with ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’, dismissing patients as annoying and manipulative to justify the withdrawal of support. He seems completely unaware of the ways that welfare processes themselves contribute to, exacerbate, or cause mental illness through their manifest cruelty. This, too, is mental health culture – it’s a cruelty culture, a cut-costs-at-all-costs- culture, a dismissed-as-attention-seeking culture, a squeeze-the-use-and-the-joy-out-of-people-and-then-discard-them culture. But there’s also more to culture than attitudes, or even treatment. Culture refers to the intangible meaning and relation that exists between us and around us. Culture refers not just to processes and paperwork, nor even just to discourses and discussions – it also refers to our dreams, our fears, our imaginations, our stories, our art. I was reminded of this when a recent trip to Stockholm took me to their Moderna Museet, home to a truly enviable collection of modern art. As I wandered around I was struck by how often mental illness was mentioned, referenced, or implied – from the biographies of authors to the words of the art itself. I was left reminded of the inextricable relation between mental illness and culture – not because madness is in some way a ‘gift’ of creativity or insight, but because mad people are humans, because we’re part of society. I was struck by the wonderful work of Rashid Johnson, whose drawing Anxious Men is so deeply moving, and whose work Bruise Painting invoked wounds, and loss, and despair, and healing. I was interested Horizon of Me(aning)installation by Carola Grahn, which features many logs piled together in the centre of a room, and is accompanied by an instruction that those putting the longs in place should discuss mental health. I felt almost overcome by Louise Bourgeois’ woven artwork I Am Afraid; I stood for a long time staring at the pale rectangle, and thinking about emptiness and imperfection. I was so touched by these artists’ work, which seemed to envelop and surround me, even as I stood still. Mel Stride imagines Mental Health Culture as weak and as grasping, and so often the Mental Health Culture we encounter as mad people is one of disregard and ignorance. But these artworks reminded me of the Mental Health Culture that I’ve found in community with other mad people, in the activism and art we’ve created together. Here, Mental Health Culture is what connects us to one another, what binds us together and brings us forward in our shared aims, ideals and commitments. It is a Mental Health Culture that allows for both frailty and for strength, that can hold both the ways we fall and the ways we get back up again. Mel Stride thinks we’ve gone too far, but just wait till he sees how far we’ll go.
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