I recently had a diagnosis of bipolar and anxiety. It all got too much during my bachelors degree. now I keep being told that if I want to retrain as anything, I will have to pay for the course myself, and often the courses are thousands of pounds! it just seems so unfair to me that if you have a mental breakdown then you cant get any help yet if you just left school and went on the dole, or got into trouble, you get everything hand to you for free.

What do u think?

[Vossie42]

I think that's horrible. Have you asked a legal professional if you really can't get your retraining paid for? Who has been saying that you can't get retraining paid for because of your mental health diagnosis? Perhaps they don't know themselves. People in all occupations can be willfully ignorant. I've found that sometimes people say I'm not eligible because it makes more work for them and they don't want to bother with me. Nasty experiences like that get me on the phone with their supervisor, lol.

I take it that you're not in the U.S. where I am, so the laws where you are may be different. But it hardly seems civilized or logical that someone who wants to work cannot receive financial assistance for retraining due to a mental health diagnosis. Here in the States, the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation helps people with any documented disability get the equipment, job training and support they need to get a job. They paid for my (very expensive) hearing aids a couple of times. Perhaps there is a similar government agency where you are?

Are you looking at other undergraduate degrees? Student Finance will only fund the length of your course, plus one additional year. So most degrees are 3 years, so you get allowed 4 years of funding in case you have to repeat a year or you start the course at one Uni and hate it so start the course at another Uni the following year. Unfortunately those are the rules, and they don't care if you dropped out due to illness or death in the family or whatever.

The reason I know this is because my brother dropped out of his first year at one Uni with depression. Then went to second Uni, passed first year, but got depressed again second year and dropped out again. After a few years he decided to retrain with a different degree, but Student Finance won't pay cos he's already had 3 years of funding, so they said they'd only pay his fees and maintenance loan for his final year, but there was no way he could pay £9k a year fees with nothing to live on, so he feared all was lost. Then he found a loop hole at the Uni he wanted to go to - if he went part-time, he just had to pay for the individual courses, which comes to about £1500 a year for 6 years (so those students paying £9000/yr for 3 years are getting ripped off!!) and he's entitled to grants being part time (you don't have to pay back), plus is working part time.

Anyway the point of my rambling is to say that there are loopholes out there, bursaries available, Disabled Students Allowance to help with course related costs like computers & printers & ink & software etc (if your MH problems are ongoing and severe enough). I studied with the Open University for a year and they were very helpful & accommodating of my MH probs, and there's financial help available if you don't have a first degree. So there's still options, don't despair!

All the best!

*Willow*

[Perna]

How was your bachelors degree paid for? I'd look into scholarships, take jobs that might help pay for continuing ed courses, decide on a course I'd really like to take and save from "now" to when I could afford it (I just applied to a year-long course that starts in September, for example, so I'm going to start paying now so I have a longer time to pay, for less amount each payment; it's in the UK and I'm in the States so I have to pay the non-UK/EU amount which is "thousands of pounds" more :-)

Why should someone else pay because you got ill? Everyone gets ill at some time or another or has another difficulty. That is part of what makes life interesting, working to master our personal challenges in life? Most people on the dole didn't get the initial opportunity for a bachelors? It's an effort to get those people up and working and paying taxes in the first place that the dole is for; presumably you are clever and were successful (got into university for your bachelors in the first place) and have that going for you and can figure out a way to start again in something else you might want to do if you don't want to go back to working on/completing your bachelors. I got a useless bachelors in 1972 but then went back to school in 2001, the next time I could afford it mentally and financially, etc. It took until 2007 to get that degree.