Is sleep Apnoea a disability?

RSISolutions

Is sleep Apnoea a disability? Can it qualify for a disability Benefit? If the person who has it has to use a machine because it's so bad. 

janer1967

Hi and welcome to the community, I dont have an answer but the disability benefits are all about how your condition affects your daily living

Things like, eating, preparing food, washing, bathing, toileting , finances , communication etc

I dont know if they take sleep time into account maybe others have an answer for you

Have a look through the PIP descriptors and see if you think you would score any points 

I presume ity is PIP you were referring to

Ross_Alumni

Hi @RSISolutions, how are you today? 

Qualification for disability related benefits isn't so much about a diagnosis, it's more about how your condition impacts your daily living and mobility. 

If it's Employment and Support Allowance you're asking about, you can find information about qualifying for that benefit here, if it's Personal Independence Payment you're wondering about, you can find information about that here.

poppy123456

HI,

Using a machine at night will not score any points in any of the PIP descriptors if the person using it doesn't need any assistance.

Whether the person will score any points for any of the descriptors will totally depend on how their conditions affect them against the PIP descriptors.

RSISolutions

If the person cannot sleep well and ends up being lethargic and has irregualar sleeping pattern then surley this affects their ability to do day to day tasks. 

poppy123456

It depends on whether they are affected against the PIP descriptors. No one can tell you that on an internet forum.

RSISolutions

This person stopped working a few months ago. Before that the person held a professional well paid job paying lots of NI contributions. This person has less than 6,000 pounds in savings. 

RSISolutions

During the day this person who has sleep Apnoea

• feels very tired
• finds it hard to concentrate
• has mood swings
• has a headache when they wake up. 

Since the have paid plenty of NI contributions, surley this must make them qualify for a type of disability benefit? 

poppy123456

It's starting to get very confusing because you have 2 different threads with the same questions..

RSISolutions

Can people with disabilities claim Universal Credit? 

poppy123456

Can you please keep to the one thread rather than going back and for between the 2 because it's very difficult to keep up with the questions between 2 threads. Other thread here. https://community.scope.org.uk/discussion/73927/is-sleep-apnoea-a-disability#latest

Ross_Alumni

Morning all.

Just to let you know I have closed this discussion because it is a duplicate thread. I would merge it with the other but to avoid confusion I will just close this one. 

Link to to other thread - https://community.scope.org.uk/discussion/73927/is-sleep-apnoea-a-disability#latest