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Originally Posted by ThunderGoddess
Yep, the way people with mental disabilities are treated compared to physical is mind boggling. I feel like mental health awareness month is such a joke right now because the stigma is still going very strong!
I did file a complaint with the department of education and they responded one time that they'll look at the emails I sent them. But I've never heard back.
The form was not for disability. I had moved back to my hometown in 2020 and did not work from that point forward but I did work full-time in 2019. So when I applied for financial aid in Aug 2021, they went by 2019 income and said I made too much money for the aid.
I informed them I haven't worked since Dec of 2019. So they said I had to fill out this special circumstances form explaining my loss of income. This form is for anyone who had a loss of income during the reporting periods so that you can get financial aid prior to the next fiscal year basically.
The form only had 3 options to pick from to explain why your income was reduced. I forget all of them but the one I choose was "loss of employment" because the other 2 didn't fit at all. So under loss of employment you have to supply certain documents such as proof of being laid off, proof of reduced hours, or proof of unemployment benefits.
I didn't have any of this because I quit my last job because of mental health issues. When I started to explain this, that is when they demanded I go back to the employer I quit and get a letter from them, they asked me to file for unemployment benefits even though I wouldn't qualify since I quit, they asked me for the letter stating I'm unable to work because of a disability. And they were really mean about each one they acted as if I was trying to pull one over on them and get a hand out. The woman even asked me 3 times if I thought I could handle going to school, the 3rd time she asked I told her not to ask me that again. And this was all the financial aid department.
I asked to speak with the accessibility department about the documents they were requesting and the way the financial aid office was questing my ability to go to school I felt it was discriminatory. The accessibility office never responded!!
So this is just typical of mental health though we're treated as if we're less than human a lot of times.
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You should never have to disclose to a former employer that you quit for mental health reasons. You can quit for whatever reason you wish, without stating that. You can, however, fill out the financial aid information over again and indicate that you had extenuating circumstances with your mental health, but you were unable to receive disability payments or unemployment at that time. There should be some other form you could fill out without having to disclose anything to your former employer just for a form update or something.
People in such positions can be mean, especially when their own biases and politics disagree with some of us who need financial aid to upwardly mobilize. They do make it especially hard on the disabled, especially older disabled persons (i.e., ageism and ableism combined).
I'm so sorry you went through all of that.
You could also take a break until you are able to show something the following year, which should allow you to get financial aid one year later.