Rejected pip because of schizophrenia

Hello and welcome, as you now well know the two benefits DLA and PIP are awarded using different criteria’s. Whereas DLA was about your illnesses and disabilities, PIP is about your abilities to cope and manage activities in your daily life in relation to the PIP descriptors. It is not about disability, diagnosis or the volume of medications you take. . PIP the benefit is was designed to help those who need help with their daily living activities and with mobility hence the descriptors used in the F2F acessments.

I started hearing voices in 1998.  I was sectioned twice, in 2000 and 2001.  I carried on working.  I was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2002.  I lost my skilled, long-term and well-paid work in 2005, due to redundancy, though I carried on doing *some* sort of work.  I was awarded DLA for the rest of my life in 2012 and was allowed to do permitted work for up to 15 hours a week from 2014, earning no more than £105, without loss of benefits. I was comfortably off and eligible.

I don't see any way I can get PIP.  I am high-functioning, in-recovery and unmedicated because whatever causes me to hear voices, drugs don't stop them so there's no point in prescribing them to me. PIP isn't for people like us, people who call themselves targeted individuals and who attribute hearing manipulative voices constantly to the abuse of V2K technology, unless we fail spectacularly to learn to cope with this disadvantage.

I'll lose my home and my marriage and my mobility and my social inclusion if I suddenly lose DLA, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Legal Aid and Court Fees Remission ((for a pending family matter) and free dental treatment etcetera.  My children and grandchildren will lose a dad/granddad who remains able to maintain contact with them and who pays his way when he visits, or who can be visited at home, because he still has a home.

As far as I can see, PIP was *designed* to exclude all the high-functioning, in-recovery people with historic psychotic diagnoses who had been awarded DLA for life, because there was no cure for what was thought to be wrong with them, and whatever it was, it was pretty ghastly.  I have come into contact with scores of people like me, and have helped a few to appeal to the tribunal against interruptions in their benefits.

I'm only 66, so I am applying for jobs furiously, to postpone the crisis.  But if I live to such an age that I no longer have the stamina to work for a living, I dread to think how I'm likely to end up.  If I have as much difficulty getting job interviews now that I am desperate as I have had when I've had enough to live on without working, the crisis could come very soon.

Hi Cloe

Sorry for the delay in replying today to your reply to my initial post almost a year-and-a-half ago. Thank you for replying.  If you wish to (and can) move our conversation to a new thread, please feel free to do so.  Mr Singh seems to have dropped out of the thread he started.  It's up to you.

When I first posted, I think I had already applied for PIP, but I hadn't yet completed by then the form describing how my disability affected me.  I have returned to this thread, noticing your reply, because I received the letter today refusing me PIP. 

My DLA will stop on 9th February even if I ask for a reconsideration before then, and will remain stopped even if I appeal and even if I later apply for judicial review of the decision.  This mere interruption of my DLA or PIP entitlement, whereby my DLA stopped without any PIP starting the very next day, will have the knock-on effects I mentioned in 2019, effects which won't legally be able to be undone even if (after several years of litigation) I am awarded PIP backdated to the date after my DLA stops.  Unless (that is) you can reassure me otherwise.

To clear up a couple of misunderstandings, back in August 2019, I wasn't trying to express any feelings (as you put it) about the fact that the benefit didn't "cater" to my needs (although it plainly is designed not to cater to needs like mine), or any feelings at all for that matter.  Nor was anything causing me any "strain" at the time, or is anything now for that matter.  However, my finances will come under considerable strain in less than 4 weeks time, to the tune of more than £100 a week.

I have to make an informed decision soon as to whether (1) to get a full-time, demanding but well-paid job at the age of 68, with a schizoprenia diagnosis since 2002 and symptoms (e.g. hearing annoying voices I attribute to V2K harassment) with which I cope too well for my own good; this after dependence upon health-related benefits since 2007 or thereabouts, including DLA awarded for an indefinite period or (2) to economise rather a lot, to search for somewhere cheaper to live (a tall order) and to document my likely unsuccessful attempts to get help, in order to guard against the possible future accusation that I have made myself homeless voluntarily, when my savings run out and my rent arrears become intolerable to my private landlord.

There isn't a middle way option, of getting a part-time job or one that only pays minimum wage, because 20% of any wages I earn will disappear in tax, and 65% of whatever is left will be deducted from whatever Housing Benefit I remain entitled to, when my Pension Credit Guarantee Credit gateway benefit stops.

You asked me to let me know whether there was anything "else" you could do to help.  I don't think there is anything you can do to help, but, if you think of anything, please feel free to offer.

Empoverishing the survivors of career-ending mental illness who cannot reinstate themselves into the job market as self-sufficient seems to be a deliberate design feature of the migration of claimants with disabilities from DLA to PIP.  Is this a good place to have a political moan about that?  Schizophrenic people aren't all good at saving up during years of plenty, for the lean years of the present austerity.  I was awarded DLA for life, unless my condition improved.  I planned around that.  People like us are the casualties of the migration.

Kind regards,

(real name withheld out of embarrassment)