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List of those for whom Welfare Reform and cuts were too much to bear

Though this should get crossposted from the poverty campaign thread, though there's no name so this case could already have been mentioned here, but I don't think so as Ian Lavery MP says he doesn't want to identify the family.

MP Ian Lavery blames constituent's suicide on benefits cuts

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/nort...n-benefits-cuts-72703-32463397/#ixzz2FZpsNyQx

A MAN’S suicide has been blamed on the Government’s harsh disability benefits cuts.

MP Ian Lavery has told the Prime Minister to stop rushing into cuts for the vulnerable after the Wansbeck MP found a copy of a suicide note in his post.

Mr Lavery said he did not wish to identify the family of the 54-year-old man, but said the house-bound had taken his life after been told he would be pushed off disabled benefits and left to fend for himself.

In an emotional question to the Prime Minister, Mr Lavery called for those losing disability benefits as a result of Government cuts to at least be allowed to undergo an impact assessment to see how the withdrawal of financial support will effect them.

The Labour MP said: “I have in my hand a genuine suicide note from a constituent of mine who, sadly, took his own life after he was informed that he was no longer entitled to employment and support allowance and disability benefits."
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video here: http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/update/2012-12-19/local-mp-challenges-cameron-disability-benefits/
 
http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/news/fears-over-benefits-led-to-tragedy-1.1024319?referrerPath=home

Fears over benefits led to tragedy

A “VULNERABLE’’ disabled man who took his own life felt pressurised by changes to the benefits system, says his partner.

Christine Graham discovered Peter Hodgson dead at his home just a day after he received a text telling him to attend the Job Centre.

“After the text, he just said: ‘I give up’,” said Christine, who was with Peter for 13 years. “I didn’t realise then just what he meant.”

Mr Hodgson, 49, of Cleator Moor,was unable to work after he suffered a brain haemorrhage and a stroke and had his leg fused following a football injury. He had previous worked as a life-guard and at Brannan’s Thermometers.

“He was very vulnerable,’’ Christine said. “After the stroke he was not the same person and I would help to keep him going.’’

Last July, Peter was called into Whitehaven Job Centre to see whether he would be suitable for volunteer work. “I went with him as he was very worried,’’ Christine said. “Physically, his leg was fused and he struggled to move around. He couldn’t properly grip with his hand and was due to have a calliper fitted to his foot. You only had to look at Peter to realise he couldn’t work.

“He was terrified they would stop his money as he had four loans. He couldn’t handle stress and would worry.’’

Peter received the text on the afternoon of November 26. The message didn’t state a date but a subsequent letter was sent days after Peter’s death with an appointment for December 17.

Christine said Peter rang her the day he received the text. He sounded low and told her he was going to bed early. “I didn’t think anything of it,’’ she said. But the next day when she couldn’t contact him, Christine went to his home when she discovered his body.

“He didn’t plan to kill himself,’’ she said. “I believe the text triggered him. It was the fear of what would happen to him. I’ve been unemployed, and he would support me when I felt down.

“The government need to stop picking on the wrong people. Peter was not well enough to look after himself and I did his cooking and shopping. Now his life is over and it is too late.’’

Christine herself currently does three jobs because she does not want to claim benefits. “I understand they have to look into claimants, but not everyone is the same,’’ she said. “Some people are stronger than others. People need to understand just how vulnerable others are and treat them with respect. They are not just a number.’’

After Peter died, Christine was clearing his house when she found the Christmas presents he had bought her, including a ring which she now wears.

“I love Christmas and we always used to have a great time,’’ she added. “At the moment I just feel numb but I will have to keep going.’’
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:(
 
Greebo said:
Thank you for adding this - it makes me so bloody angry that the system now treats even the most obviously vulnerable claimants as undeserving.
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I was reading that story this morning and was going to post it here...I had to step away for a bit though because, well... :(

The 'undeserving poor' rhetoric is rife atm and rage-invokingly Victorian/conservative/privileged in perspective.
 
Falcon said:
But I'm not. I seem to be the only one who is actually interested in understanding what it is about our system that causes people to choose to end their lives rather than carry on living. I've been advised that this is an inappropriate question to ask in a thread which is intended to passively record the fact of their deaths. All that is left for me to do is to correct the most obvious misdirections.
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I am always very suspicious when people refer to people who attempt suicide as "choos[ing] to end their lives": it betrays a complete failure to understand the mindset that leads to suicide.

Only in the most vanishingly smallest proportion of suicide attempts is a "choice" being made in the sense we would usually think of as being a choice. Most people who attempt suicide, regardless of whether they die in the process, are not making a "choice" to do so - they feel that they have no choice BUT to kill themselves.

Given your other posts on the subject, I find it hard to believe that your ignorance is purely innocent, and I suspect you're probably using the phrase you used as a way of implying that these people are opting for suicide as one of a range of possibilities - especially given your nice little sting in the tail of "...rather than carry on living", as if that is the noble goal we should all aspire to.

I work daily with suicidal people in extremis, some of whom are benefits claimants, some of those themselves subject to the whole ATOS/DWP review process. To generalise massively, these are people who have watched their options narrow thanks to their illnesses (physical and/or mental), and are watching them still narrow as more and more support is removed from them. The lucky ones are those without the imagination to look ahead and speculate where that narrowing of their options leads them; those with a little more insight fear a point being arrived at where there will be nothing to support them, and where they, and often their families, will be left with nothing. To those people, "carrying on living" does not look like a realistic option, and the fact that many of them do is more because that's the default case, and that suicide would require some kind of proactive action.

That more people haven't died by their own hand (yet), is in my view, testament to the inertia and powerlessness many of them feel. Push them hard enough, though - or make them angry enough - and you give a huge swathe of the population both the rationale and the motivation to demonstrate that anger in the most self-destructive way possible.

Sometimes, in my work, it is hard to listen to someone who is making the most cogent case for killing themselves (or just giving up, which will be how a lot of the more severely disabled die - stopping medication, not going out to appointments, and just withdrawing) without wanting to agree: why would ANYONE want to carry on living when their daily life is a battle with Kafkaesque bureaucracy on top of physical illness, maybe constant pain, and anxiety about the future, especially when all that is conducted against a background of sneeringly negative propaganda about "strivers", "benefits cheats", "burden on society", etc?
 
Existentialist, is anyone tracking the suicide rate and the numbers attributable to the reforms? I'd like to know how much blood the reformers have on their hands.
 
Frumious B. said:
Existentialist, is anyone tracking the suicide rate and the numbers attributable to the reforms? I'd like to know how much blood the reformers have on their hands.
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Professionally speaking, I don't think so: it is notoriously hard to legally determine whether a death is due to suicide, far less attribute a specific cause to it. And, fortunately, my profession is one in which my focus is on the living, not the dead, and I am yet to lose one yet (perhaps that's what exercises me - that my "record" might be blemished by such a loss?).

All I can offer is my own anecdotal experience that people who would otherwise be "merely" suffering are now "grievously" suffering, not only from their own health difficulties and their own guilt/stress at having to rely on State handouts, but from the evident disdain society in general tends to show them for their need, and in particular the sense that so many of them have of being misunderstood.

If I am honest, it is highly unlikely that I will professionally encounter the kind of person the Government is clearly targeting - those who have set out to deliberately and cynically defraud the system. After all, those people aren't going through the self-doubt and pain of feeling judged by society, as they have already decided to transcend that by making their own decision to "game" the system. But even Government figures say that the losses due to general benefit fraud are only 0.5%, so I am assuming that this "invisible" (to me) group represents only the tiniest minority of claimants; for me, the fact that the rest of them - including the people I see - are suffering so terribly for the alleged sins of that minority is very, very telling. What I think I am seeing is an innocent majority being made, purely for the purposes of political propaganda, to pay a very heavy price for the sins of the unrepresentative minority.

That offends me, especially where such political cynicism can be so clearly, if not demonstrably, linked to suicidality.
 
Even among those who admit to trying to graft the system, it's still not black & white IMO - Few (if any) would like to be thought of or pitied as victims & most people put on a bit of a front to the world, so it's far from inconcievable that someone would loudly proclaim their lack of intention of ever doing a days work in their lives and instead claiming whatever benefits they can when the reality is they (due to whatever circumstances, could be geographical location, lack of marketable skills, childcare hassles, health issues- mental or physical, criminal record etc ad infinitum) don't stand much chance of ever obtaining meaningful work & so try to portray themselves as people who've rejected work and chosen to remain on benefit coz that's better for their self esteem. Dunno if I've explained that very well though.

E2a though, yeah another superb post existentialist.
 
kittyP said:
So for 0.5% of claimants, all are made to feel fraudulent?
Guilty before proven innocent?
:(
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That is how it is - You used to always see people (probably still do, now more than ever) at Albert Bridge House turning up for their medicals in their best clothes an such, thinking coz they'd paid their stamp then now they'd hit hard times they'd be provided for and finding out different but fast.
 
Seems to me that one of the key failures built in to the reformed system is that it's not designed with the mentally ill in mind. Presumably civil servants and ministers are assuming that those who can't deal with the paperwork will be helped with it. But helped by whom? Is there an assumption that care workers or relatives or charities will fill the gap? What is the 'official' theory?
 
existentialist said:
I really don't think there is one. I think that, in line with the idea that if the disabled and jobless just tried a bit harder they'd find work, these people are operating on the premise that if the mentals just pulled themselves together and snapped out of it, they'd be fine.
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I think you're right :(
 
existentialist said:
I really don't think there is one. I think that, in line with the idea that if the disabled and jobless just tried a bit harder they'd find work, these people are operating on the premise that if the mentals just pulled themselves together and snapped out of it, they'd be fine.
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This is very much evident/mirrored in the attempts at 'standardisation' of/within mental health services, making targets and abstract measures the basis for funding and review etc... :(
 
Rutita1 said:
This is very much evident/mirrored in the attempts at 'standardisation' of/within mental health services, making targets and abstract measures the basis for funding and review etc... :(
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From my clients' experience at both ATOS medicals and interactions with DWP types, there is a clear sense, at least from their point of view, that their mental health issues are regarded as rather irrelevant to the whole business.

So far as I can tell, non-psychotic illness is irrelevant, and then psychotic illness - if they can be persuaded to take notice of it - is simply terrifying, to the point that a couple of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia whom I have known have not even been called for assessment.
 
I'm helping someone with paranoid schizophrenia and acute psychosis. After 17 years on IB he was called for an ATOS assessment and declared fit for work. He thinks it was because he walked to the assessment centre. The ATOS person didn't ask why he'd walked, despite constant pain from back and hip injuries - it's because he's claustrophobic and can't get on a bus. His IB was stopped, then his housing benefit, then he got an eviction notice from the Council (he lives in a council flat), then he ran out of money for food, then he got very concerned that he shouldn't be taking his Codeine on an empty stomach. Then I offered help and got a crisis loan and put in an ESA appeal etc. He's much improved, but he was pretty close to killing himself. Who should really be helping him? Does anyone have a duty of care? The council know something of his circumstances, as they put him in the flat after he was unsectioned and discharged from a psych ward 17 years ago. Is there a council mechanism which should have kicked in to at least stop him being evicted? Or is his GP supposed to raise the alarm?

He didn't have a regular GP - he would see the duty one or a locum or whatever. I've since registered him with my GP and am getting him a full MoT and referrals to multiple specialists. I accompany him to his medical appointments. He can be very 'challenging' to talk to - he really needs someone to manage his care, benefits, finances etc. He's not in contact with any relatives, so who's supposed to help him, if anyone?
 
Frumious B. said:
Seems to me that one of the key failures built in to the reformed system is that it's not designed with the mentally ill in mind. Presumably civil servants and ministers are assuming that those who can't deal with the paperwork will be helped with it. But helped by whom? Is there an assumption that care workers or relatives or charities will fill the gap? What is the 'official' theory?
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Well, there is the rub. There isn't one, just a set of assumptions, often (as you suggest) rooted around parts of "the third sector" (i.e. charities) picking up the slack for those people who fall through the ever-enlarging mesh of the "welfare safety net".
The problem with such assumptions is that they're predicated on charities having a reasonable, sustained and sustainable income. Given that a majority of the larger relevant charities chose to take government support as part of a Faustian pact to act as service providers to people with physical and mental health issues, and that that support was cut along with every other supposedly non-essential cost to the Treasury, the assumptions are metaphorical castles built on sand - they're without foundation.

So what we actually have are massively-stretched and often voluntary services being stretched to breaking point by their attempts to fill the gap left by the state and the money-chasing charities, and with each extra month of "austerity" more of those hard-pressed services fail, either because demand is too heavy to manage, or because volunteers burn out under the caseload.
 
existentialist said:
I really don't think there is one. I think that, in line with the idea that if the disabled and jobless just tried a bit harder they'd find work, these people are operating on the premise that if the mentals just pulled themselves together and snapped out of it, they'd be fine.
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Putting on my Delphic oracle hat, I'm just wondering how long it will be before some poor bastard with physical or mental health issues decides that enough is enough, and goes out to bag themselves a politician's head for the mantlepiece.
 
Rutita1 said:
This is very much evident/mirrored in the attempts at 'standardisation' of/within mental health services, making targets and abstract measures the basis for funding and review etc... :(
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Wow. I remember how well that worked back in the '80s and '90s with "Care in the Community". :( Loads of local authorities didn't have the budgetary slack to absorb the extra people at the degree of service provision required, so the government basing its' criteria on "arses parked" rather than any form of health or lifestyle outcome for the ex-patients/inmates was a gift to them, although not for the ex-patients/inmates.
 
Frumious B. said:
He's not in contact with any relatives, so who's supposed to help him, if anyone?
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I have a client in a similar situation. Typically, people with schizophrenia are notoriously non-compliant, but I get the impression that all of the public agencies (from mental health teams to housing departments) are very happy, when a service user announces, say, that they aren't ill, or doesn't need help, to take those claims at face value despite evidence to the contrary. I've seen it frequently with CMHTs, and I have heard of it going on elsewhere, too. Plus, as you point out, people with schizophrenia can be quite challenging/frightening to deal with, and it is often easier for staff to find excuses not to have anything to do with them than go the extra 9 yards, perhaps in the face of the service user's stated wishes.

We often get disasters - it is not at all unknown for people with serious mental health issues to recognise that they are becoming dangerous, to themselves or others, and quite a few of the serious killings or suicides that have happened over the last few decades were not without their warnings. I fear that an increasingly stretched and demoralised support system is going to make fragile and ill people more likely to go off the rails, and the system less likely to be capable of spotting the signs and averting yet another disaster.

I don't want to come over all Cassandra about this, but I think this withdrawal of support from society's most vulnerable is going to reap the whirlwind, and it may well be that dramatic increases in rates of suicide are not the worst problem we shall see.
 
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