PIP Mental Health Success (How to Claim PIP for Mental Health)
By
PsychReel
In this brief guide, we will discuss PIP mental health success rate as well as look at some success stories about PIP in mental health. We will also look at some other details about PIP.
PIP Mental Health Success
To receive PIP for mental health successfully you need to ensure that you have all the right documents and that you have been checked out adequately by your psychiatrist and psychologist, so that there is no doubt during your PIP assessment stage.
PIP claims can help a great deal when someone is suffering from a mental health condition that keeps them from working, and the caretaker of the person suffering from a mental health condition can also receive a caretaker’s allowance if they are able to provide the necessary evidence that they are spending a lot of time taking care of the person.
PIP for mental health may depend on the following eligibility criteria:
- You are between 16 years of age and retirement age
- You have lived in the UK for two of the past three years
- You have difficulty with getting around or daily tasks for the last three months
- You expect these conditions to last for at least nine months more
Additionally, before you go about claiming a PIP for mental health conditions, you need to know there are two kinds of PIP you can get in this case, a Daily Living Allowance and a Mobility Allowance.
The Daily Living Allowance may be given if the person has the following problems that are happening because of their mental health condition:
- Managing medicines and treatment
- Reading and communication
- Making decisions about money
- Preparing or eating food
- Engaging with other people
- Washing bathing and using toilet
- Dressing and undressing
How to Apply for PIP in Mental Health Successfully?
To apply for a PIP claim for mental health you need to be mentally prepared to devote some time to the process, as it can take a long time, even up to 4 months, from starting the application to getting your money.
If you have been receiving the daily living allowance, moving from that to PIP, your payments won’t stop while you’re waiting for your PIP claim to be processed, but for this to happen you need to make sure that you claim for PIP within 28 days of being told by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that you should do so.
In most cases, the PIP payments start the day after your DLA payment stops, and if you have not been receiving DLA, your first payment for PIP will start from the date you make your claim.
The PIP a person receives usually covers the time it takes for the DWP to make the decision about providing it.
PIP cannot be backdated, unless there is an assessment at a later point or the case goes to a tribunal, in which case if the person wins, the tribunal may decide to award the backdated PIP that was supposed to have been paid so far.
If you want to claim PIP for mental health you need to ensure that you’re prepared and have all the relevant information to help you make your claim, which may include the following:
- your full name, address and phone number
- your National Insurance number
- your bank or building society account details
- contact details of your GP or other health professionals you deal with
- the dates and details of any stays in hospital or residential care
- your nationality or immigration status
- if you’ve been abroad for more than 4 weeks at a time in the last 3 years (you’ll need the dates and details)
PIP for Mental Health Assessment
To claim any PIP, whether for physical or mental health, requires an assessment, and PIP assessments have often been called into question for their reliability and their fairness, which apparently they are not.
PIP for mental health assessment may include questions about the person’s ability to do the following things:
- communicating with other people
- reading and understanding written information
- planning a journey or following a route
- preparing and cooking food
- eating and drinking
- moving around
- managing your treatments
- washing and bathing
- managing toilet needs or incontinence
- dressing and undressing
- mixing with others
- making decisions about money
However, PIP assessments can sometimes be very draining and horrible, take for instance, these horror stories that are definitely not part of the PIP mental health success stories:
“The assessor also asked my mother if she were suicidal. As I recall, that went like this:
“Assessor: ‘Are you suicidal?’
“K: Yes
“Assessor: How often are you suicidal?
“K: Every day
Assessor: Have you tried?
“K: Yes
“Assessor: And why didn’t you succeed? Why did you fail?
“K: My family would miss me.
“Each of K’s answers was slow and ashamed.
“She had not yet told me these things, but she had been trying to bring them up at therapy to work through these feelings safely.”
“I was attacked with a deadly tool only a short time before my assessment.
“The man threatened my life, on a walk with my dog.
“So the assessor wrote that I like to talk to people on my walk.”
“The assessment was done by a general nurse with no mental health training.
“He concluded that, since I did not appear to be stressed, anxious or show any mental health issues during the assessment, it was ‘unreasonable to believe’ I had mental health issues [ … ] The stress of the interview actually got me admitted to hospital the next day.”
“The woman laughed when I told her I’d ran away to visit Julian Assange during my first psychotic episode and looked at me funny.
“Because of the woman’s behaviour and disrespect, I don’t think she knew about the difficulties and health problems people have.
“I got the impression she didn’t know about schizophrenia or psychosis.”
“We reached a point where we were discussing my personal care and I pointed out that I hadn’t taken a shower in months.
“The nurse reacted strongly to this and said, ‘So how does your OCD affect you then?’.
“She gave me a look as if to suggest I had been caught out lying, claiming to have OCD while making statements to the contrary.
“The community mental health team support worker and I exchanged glances, both thinking that this nurse didn’t know very much about OCD. “
“She wrote I arose from the chair without any difficulty.
“I was in bed the whole time (she let herself in) and I only have the one chair in the room and she was sitting in it.
“She said that I had no difficulty reading with my glasses, yet I do not wear glasses to read.”
Can I change how my PIP mental health assessment happens?
Yes, you can make adjustments to the way your mental health is assessed successfully for PIP, and you can get things adjusted if your mental health condition does not allow for the usual ways.
If you have significant issues you can ask your assessment provider about the facilities at the assessment centre to ensure that it has everything you need and be informed that if it doesn’t, you can ask for it.
The goal is to minimise any problems you may face, and to ensure that you feel more comfortable on the day and examples of these changes or queries may include:
- Finding out if if you’ll have to go upstairs, and if a lift is available that can accommodate a wheelchair should you need one
- You can also ask about how roomy or ventilated the centre is if you suffer from severe anxiety or tend to get more anxious in enclosed spaces, and if the rooms or corridors are small, you can request them this could make you anxious and see what they can offer you.
- You can also ask for an interpreter or signer if you need one, just make sure that you do this at least 2 working days before your assessment so they have time to organise it
- You can also ask for the person carrying out the assessment to be the same gender as you if you anticipate questions that may be somewhat intimate, or even if that’s important to you
- You can also make a request to make an audio recording of the assessment but this is also something that needs to be done in advance, at least 3 days before your assessment and ask your provider about the rules for using recording equipment.
Conclusion
In this brief guide, we discussed PIP mental health success rate as well as look at some success stories about PIP in mental health. We also looked at some other details about PIP.
Many people find claiming a PIP intimidating and if they are suffering from any mental health conditions they may get further discouraged because they may not anticipate success in a PIP claim.
However, there are many cases where PIP claims for mental health have been successful and if you know how to prepare and you have the support of loved ones, you can claim this benefit easily.
If you have any more questions or comments about PIP mental health success please feel free to reach out to us.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): PIP Mental Health Success
Can you claim PIP for mental health?
Yes, you can claim PIP for mental health, because PIP covers any condition where you need extra help because of your illness, disability or mental health condition.
Personal Independence Payment (PIP) can be provided regardless of whether the person has worked or paid National Insurance and it also does not matter what their income is, or if they have any savings.
How much PIP do you get for mental health?
You can get about £59.70 a week as PIP for mental health if you score between 8 to 11 on the Daily Living Allowance and if you score over 12, you can get about £89.15 per week.
Pat Lewis, tax department manager at Intellect Tax, says, “The point score for each task dictates the level of PIP which a claimant receives. The allowance is paid four weekly into a bank account.”
Has anyone got PIP for depression?
Yes, you can get PIP for depression, if the condition is bad enough that you are not able to take care of things, and not able to do things or hold down a job.
One becomes eligible to claim PIP, or personal independence payment pip, if they are suffering from a mental health condition such as depression or anxiety but no matter what the problem is, it depends more on how the mental illness affects them.
What mental health conditions qualify for disability UK?
The mental health conditions that qualify for disability in the UK are problems that affect the ability of the individual to perform their daily functions and that keep them from holding down a job and are not able to earn a living, and these mental health conditions may include dementia, depression or bipolar disorder, to name a few.
