This is my life! I am absolutely terrified that my benefits will be cut off, especially now that the Govt have paid off my CMHT and they've taken my diagnoses away. The assessments are undertaken by people who have no mental health training whatsoever. I am deeply ashamed when I have to fill in the booklet listing my numerous difficulties, because usually I try to live in denial and desperately try to pass off as normal. In the past I've had a supportive pdoc (at Uni) and he managed to save me from a few of their interviews, which are deeply stressful. When I first left medschool, I had no income whatsoever as I kept being denied benefits, yet had to keep paying the rent for my Uni place as I still had almost a full year left on the contract. Luckily my parents had some savings so I didn't get into credit card debt or something serious like that, but we were penniless before someone at Citizens Advice found a loophole and my benefits claim was successful. It took me many months to pay my parents back all they had spent.

The Govt tell people that most people on benefits are claiming fraudulently when this accounts for only a tiny percentage (I think it's under 1%!) and because MI is invisible I don't tell anyone I'm on benefits in case I'm seen as a scrounger who's too lazy to work. People on benefits are seen as scum in this country now, yet most people don't realise that our biggest amount goes to pensioners who've worked all their lives, and that most people getting benefits are actually working, but their wages are too crap to live on. Yet the stereotypical person on benefits is a criminal chav who's too lazy to work and has lots of children so they can claim more money, and so-called 'documentaries' like Benefits Street add to this stigma!

I feel completely persecuted! The Govt would much rather I, and others like the man in this article, died so their spending would go down. They don't care about our quality of life. They'd rather waste money paying ATOS to find everyone fit for work and paying people to stalk people like me looking for 'evidence' that we're fit for work and claiming disability fraudulently. Then they plaster the papers with articles about the minuscule minority who are caught being fraudulent to poison the people against the rest of us, so they can continue making ill people penniless and homeless.

I could rant about this for ages, but I will stop now. The whole thing makes me ashamed to be British!

*Willow*