BENEFITS CULTURE: life from the margins

What is life really like for people who are part of Britain’s “Benefits Culture”?

Being on benefits is looked down on in today’s world, by the politicians, the media, and large numbers of people we encounter in our day to day lives. According to papers like The Daily Mail, the majority of us who are on incapacity benefit, or income support on grounds of incapacity, are really just lazy scroungers who should be forced in to work.

We’ve become frustrated with how people take up the media on their assault on people with disabilities, and particularly invisible disabilities like mental health problems, chronic pain, and ME. Most people who haven’t experienced those problems, or have perhaps experienced them for short periods and then got better, can have little idea what it’s like. We hope to help overcome that barrier by writing about our lives, what we can and can’t do and why, what it’s like to be us, and why the press and politicians (of both leading parties) are actively harming people who already struggle to survive.

Please share your comments, or see the About Us page for more info.

 

Christmas Time, mistletoe and whine

Yes, we’ve been crap about blogging lately. This is because we’re just, well, crap. Or maybe I should cut myself some slack and say it’s because I’m mentally ill… which often makes me feel like crap.

I love snow. I love looking at beautiful snowy landscape. I love the crunch of snow underfoot in the brief minute I spend outdoors before giving up from the freezing cold and running back inside to huddle under my bedcovers again. As you can imagine, this makes shopping for the holidays difficult, and this makes having enough food in stock difficult, and this makes getting out of bed difficult. Should I pay for a taxi to the supermarket and back, or should I spend the money putting my heating on? Choices, choices.

Still I’m lucky, I have a family to go to for Christmas, and on top of that a family who’ll have the heating on and probably even a log fire burning. Some of the other people I know who live on benefits for mental health problems aren’t so lucky. One of them is in the psychiatric ward, unlikely to get out by Christmas because it’s taking weeks for him even to see a psychiatrist. Another’s family have gone to be with a very ill relative, and she can’t afford to travel to be with them. Others just have shit families. So I may be feeling crap, but at least I have some blessings I can count.

It’s an especially tough time of year for people who are socially isolated, who don’t have supportive families or any family around, and who have many inner demons to fight with at the best of times. I hope we can all spare them some thoughts, and some love and support to the ones we know personally, whether we celebrate any religious festival around now or not.

Today’s the winter solstice, the longest shortest day of the year. Happy solstice to any pagans out there, and to everyone else, remember the days are now getting longer and the sun will be with us for a little longer for the next six months!

 

Welfare Reform: penalizing claimants and carers

Ah, winter, with its combined joys of dark afternoons, SAD, and plummeting temperatures. Hands up if you wear a hat and gloves indoors in the evenings, so you don’t have to turn the heating on!

Today I’m getting my links from the excellent Carer Watch blog, which I highly recommend you add to your reading lists.

Employment Benefit Reforms “Forcing” Disabled People into Jobseeking.

The Parkinson’s Disease Society revealed that two-thirds of people under the age of 65 with Parkinson’s disease who had responded to its survey, believed they had been wrongly forced into job seeking, despite being physically unable.

The charity said the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) tick-box style medical test, used to determine whether a person is capable of work, did not allow for fluctuating conditions such as Parkinson’s, in which people can be capable one minute, but severely disabled the next.

It believes decisions are based on the opinion of the assessors, who in many cases, do not refer to a person’s medical history, and are untrained in Parkinson’s.

The same goes, of course, for people with a variety of conditions and disabilities, particularly the “invisible” kind like ME and mental illness.

Carer Watch also points to the damage the Welfare Reform Act will do to people on benefits because they’re out of work, and single parents:

On 12 November, it became legal to force unemployed people to work for their benefits – to do 40-hour-weeks for under a third of the minimum wage. The Government’s Welfare Reform Act introduced ‘Work for your Benefit’ pilot schemes, which once completed can be rolled out without any further debate. It also attacked single parents – who face sanctions if they fail to prepare for work outside the home as soon as their child turns three – and people with impairments, disabilities or severe and enduring illnesses.

I strongly agree with their call for solidarity amongst people on benefits, of whatever sort.

The Act seeks to make our worth dependent on work; work defined in the really narrow terms of waged work for someone else’s profit. By making us compete with those in waged work for non-existent jobs, it helps drive down wages and conditions. We all take the brunt as the rich make even more money out of us.

We want solidarity with and from people in low-income, temporary and insecure work. These are the jobs that ‘work-for-your-benefit’ would replace.

We want caring to be recognised as important work in society. Single parents are already working and benefits are their entitlement to a social wage.

We want justice for people with severe or enduring illnesses. The drive to get people off incapacity benefits and Employment and Support Allowance and into work is making people more ill with stress. Only we know what we are capable of and it is wrong for conditions and sanctions to be imposed on us to force us into unsuitable work, unwanted “work-related activity” or “motivation sessions” which press us into their programmes of treatment for addictions and other conditions.

Forcing people to work for under minimum wage is outrageous. If these jobs are available, people seeking work should be given them at the wages they deserve.

And what about carers in particular, and David Cameron’s call for “big society” to take care of those who cannot work, rather than “big government”? Big Society would demand many more carers, yet if removing “big government” means taking away benefits, how are carers to survive? You cannot attack those who are not working for profit as “economically inactive” and at the same time insist they take on more of the workload – not unless you don’t mind being an intellectually bankrupt hypocrite, at any rate.

Carers need strong and reliable support services. They need allowances and benefits. They need recognition and appreciation for the vital work they do. And they need us to speak up for them, just as they so often speak up for us.

 

Welfare reform, and speaking up for the mentally ill

Welcome coverage from The Guardian today: Benefits conundrum fuels the cash-in-hand economy “Welfare reform should recognise that harnessing people's desire to work is more effective than the threat of jail or poverty"

Living on benefits is tough. Tony McNulty, former employment minister, admitted to Radio 5 Live earlier this year that he couldn’t survive on the money his department gives out to people. The minimum income standards for Britain estimates that a person needs £158 a week in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate in society. A single adult receives £60.50

As the article points out, most benefit fraud is committed by people who are trying to earn that extra £100 they need to cover their basic needs. As Oxfam asked, could YOU live on £60 a week? (People on disability benefits get a little more, almost £90 a week, but that’s still a far cry from £158 and current government reforms have made it ridiculously difficult for people with mental illness or chronic fatigue to qualify.)

Oxfam also points out how the system penalizes people with mental health problems:

It is never unpopular for politicians to say they will be tough on people on benefits; but in our experience, people on benefits are often not lazy and milking the system, but claiming because they are in genuine need. By being tougher these people, some of the 40% of those on incapacity benefits because of mental health problems will fall through the cracks as their illnesses are less easy to prove.

The Labour government’s ESA “work capability test” focuses on physical abilities like reaching and bending. However it ignores questions about energy, stamina, illness, or mental state, making it far more difficult for people with mental health problems or illnesses like ME to get enough points to pass. The people failing this test aren’t faking an illness, they have an illness which the test does not even attempt to measure. Disability organizations say the ESA tests penalize many who are genuinely ill.

In other news, last night the Mind Mental Health awards celebrated positive contributions from the media on breaking the stigma about mental illness – congratulations to all the winners! Former Labour party Director of Communications and Press Secretary Alastair Campbell was amongst them, for broadcasting his own personal story of mental illness. Wonder if he’d care to broaden the scope of his admirable work with mental health charities, and stand up for the people being harmed by Labour’s Employment Support Allowance tests?

 

Who deserves to be on benefits – and how would you know?

Something I hear a lot from people who complain about others being on benefits is that they have no problem with people who truly can’t work getting them, it’s all those other people they’re pissed off about.

The trouble is, they imagine they are a good judge of who really can’t work.

What I’d like to say to these people is this. Every time you attack benefits, every time you call for them to be cut, every time you sit in the pub and have a rant about how benefits claimants are stealing from you, you perpetuate the myth that lots of people on incapacity benefit could work if they really wanted to and you’re increasing the stigma that makes it even harder for us to live our lives.

I’ve had people I know do this to my face. “Oh, but I don’t mean you“, they say when I speak up. Well, that’s the nice ones, I know very well that some of them do mean me because they have no idea about mental illness, no idea about depression, and generally no idea about other people’s lives. But even if they don’t mean me, they still mean some other person they don’t know, who they look at and think doesn’t look disabled so must be a cheat.

A friend with schizophrenia does voluntary work in a charity shop, and every week another volunteer, a retired man, says to him “haven’t you found a job yet?”, swiftly turning something that should be helping boost his sense of self into something that destroys it. Robin wrote eloquently about how the stigma of being on benefits prevents recovery from depression, and I see and experience that all the time – even from mental health workers.

There are many barriers to employment for people on benefits, and increasing people’s misery and lack of self-esteem by haranguing them for not having a job does nothing to reduce any of them. People on incapacity have been assessed by doctors and continue to be assessed (how often varies according to the severity of the disability – for someone with suicidal depression for instance, it’s about once every three years).

Politicians on both sides, pompous newspaper columnists working for tax-avoiding companies, bloggers, tweeters, and guys down the pub, all harp on about cutting benefits with little to say about how we can really get people out of poverty, apparently blind to the fact that cuts in benefits will only make poverty even worse. They might occasionally say “but I don’t mean you“, but in reality it’s exactly people like me who schemes to cut benefits end up hurting.

 

What costs us more, benefit fraud or corporate tax avoidance?

I was surprised and pleased to see we got a link from a Benefit Fraud blog, which says of us:

This is not because I agree with everything there. But too often the blogosphere is a dialogue of the deaf, with no conversation between people of different views. It’s no good just staying in our boxes.

So thank you to them!

In this post I want to address a comment left by Eve, who said “I’m astounded how much rage people feel towards benefits cheats who make an illegal fifty quid cash in hand, or get a year’s housing benefit when they shouldn’t, yet DON’T express rage towards billionaires like Sir Philip Green who get away with avoiding £300 MILLION tax bills by being resident outside the UK (but still getting knighthoods).”

According to the DWP, intentional benefit fraud costs the UK taxpayer £1.1bn a year. It’s rather more difficult to get an accurate figure on how much business fraud and tax avoidance of the very rich costs.

Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK estimates that abolishing the domicile rule (as used by Sir Philip Green) would raise £4 billion a year. When we turn to corporations, rather than individuals, the figures get even more enormous.

According to the Guardian,

A leading accountancy expert, Professor Prem Sikka, estimates that £25bn is lost to the Treasury each year through multinationals basing themselves in low-tax environments. ‘The precise figure is impossible to work out. Some say it could be as much as £80bn. We don’t know because the Treasury refuses to undertake detailed research to get accurate estimates. It is dodging the issue.’

Rupert Murdoch’s main British holding firm paid no net corporation tax in the UK throughout the Nineties. Some companies are based off shore to avoid paying tax, yet still get subsidies from the British government – “Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is based in the Caribbean, yet Virgin Rail has had £500m in public subsidy over the past year.”

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that need, not greed, motivates most cases of benefits fraud. This certainly can’t be said of the mega rich. We could cut taxes for the average working person AND increase the level of benefits if these tax loopholes were closed, but with business interests firmly in control of our politicians this isn’t likely to happen any time soon.

As to why there’s not more rage about the issue, well, it’s not very surprising that the mainstream press doesn’t spend a lot of headlines on it when the companies who own the papers are benefiting to the tune of millions of pounds a year.

 

Fraud, Error, statistics, and benefits

Community Links is an excellent resource and their post on Fraud and Error in the benefits system is brief but essential reading.

They point out that giving out statistics that lump fraud and error together is misleading, and causes everyone to focus on the fraud and ignore the error.

Secondly underpayment of benefits (this year running at £1.2bn), is arguably an even bigger problem, because it leaves vulnerable people in a desperate situation, evicted or unable to buy food. They often end up seeking advice at Community Links, because the system has let them down so badly. And don’t forget this is just people claiming a particular benefit but getting less than they’re entitled to. It doesn’t include people who aren’t aware they’re entitled to a benefit at all.

Thirdly, ‘customer error’ is not the fault of the claimant. The report separates out intentional fraud (£1.1bn), unintentional ‘customer error’ (£1.1bn), and ‘official error’ (£0.8bn). Our experience at Community Links shows that claimants make errors because they are left to navigate a hugely complicated system with very little guidance, bombarded with unintelligible forms, and offered very little support. It’s a stressful experience, made worse when DWP tries to claw back money they’ve overpaid. The high level of customer error is an indictment of the DWP (if a business was losing £1bn a year because customers couldn’t work out how to use the payment system, they’d sort it out pretty quickly).

Thank you, Community Links. And don’t forget the evidence that the DWP routinely overestimates the amount it overpays, and lack of proper representation results in hundreds of benefits claimants being falsely imprisoned every year!

And what about that benefit fraud? Community Links has launched the Need, not Greed campaign, to highlight the fact that a number of people on benefits do cash in hand work not because they wish to cheat the system, but because benefits pay below poverty level and people feel forced into being a “cheat” in order to survive.

As they tell us,

With the economic recession, rising living costs and increasing unemployment, more and more people will be on benefits.A life on benefits, even for a short period of time, is tough. Benefits are not enough to live on (benefit levels are paid below the poverty line) There are many traps when on benefits and many barriers to taking up employment. This means that people may turn to cash-in-hand work to provide an income, as well as retain a degree of control and financial independence in their lives. There is no way to gradually move off benefits and there is very little support on offer to remain financially secure when doing so. People quickly hit a brick wall and are left with little choice but to turn to cash-in-hand work.

To take just one circumstance that pushes people into doing cash-in-hand work, consider the fact that most private landlords do not accept housing benefit. You may qualify for housing benefit, but it’s no good to you if you don’t live in council or housing association accommodation (of which there is a major shortage, and for which waiting lists can last for years). My £70 a week housing benefit wouldn’t come close to covering the cost of renting a single room in my area, but more to the point there’s not one single rental agency here who’d even agree to rent to someone on benefits, or private landlord who’d accept housing benefit as payment.

Why refusing to rent to people on benefits for disability doesn’t count as discrimination against the disabled is beyond me, but that’s the situation we find ourselves in. Meanwhile, the number of empty houses in the UK could house the homeless population, but no one seems to be willing to do anything about it.

 

In today’s news

Congratulations to Dave Allen for winning his landmark Disability Discrimination Act case against the Royal Bank of Scotland – and, I’d add, shame on some of the commenters on the Times article, for displaying the backward attitudes towards disability that are sadly still too common in the UK.

I often notice that a large number of shops and businesses in my town are completely inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs, in spite of laws telling them to build ramps. For some small businesses who rent space in old buildings this is understandable, and the law allows them other ways to make accommodations to serve customers with disabilities, but it seems that many who could make better efforts don’t bother, and they’ll continue not to unless cases like this continue to be brought and won (and I think it’s a pity that the burden is on people with disabilities to take the legal action against them).

Mr Allen said: “I’m glad the bank finally had to apologise in court and acknowledge they treated me badly.

“But I am still very disappointed that RBS, whom I have banked with since I was 10, when I was still able to walk, would not willingly comply with the Disability Discrimination Act and provide wheelchair access which not only I, but many of their other customers with disabilities need.

“They just failed to understand anything about the need for privacy and dignity.”

It’s a pity that many of the commenters on the article also fail to understand anything about dignity.

Elsewhere in the press, Liz Jones of the Daily Mail was distressed to discover she couldn’t afford her usual £800 monthly grooming routine when she tried to spend a week living on £64.30, the standard payment for Job Seeker’s Allowance.

It would be very, very easy to mock this article, in which the highly paid Jones discovers that in spite of being £150,000 in debt she isn’t really poor. Instead I’ll highlight just a few of her comments.

I am exhausted. I cannot move or think. I look terrible, ugly. I feel completely humiliated. The reason? I have just spent a week trying to live on benefits.

and

All your energy is consumed by getting through the day.

She’s not disabled, she’s not suffering from mental illness, she doesn’t have chronic fatigue, so imagine for a minute how much more exhausting the experience of living on benefits is for those who do. On income support for incapacity I get more than someone on JSA, but the difference between £65 a week and £90 a week isn’t huge when it’s all you have to live on for years, especially when unlike Liz, walking four miles to the shops is simply impossible for you.

Let’s hope that this piece will help at least some Daily Mail readers realize that being on benefits does not in fact mean an easy life lazing around enjoying yourself, and in itself can make you exhausted and depressed.

 

What would the Tories do? “Big Society” vs “Big Government”

Given David Cameron’s remarks about the “economically inactive” and his wish to retest everyone on incapacity benefits to catch an imaginary 5% of frauds, it’s easy to see the Conservative’s launch of a campaign to protect disability benefits for pensioners as an opportunistic grab for some headlines.

In his Hugo Young Memorial Lecture, Cameron told us that ‘Big society’ is the solution to poverty, as opposed to big government. He wants to move the power from the state to communities, charities, and families.

In theory the idea of of big society over big government is one I strongly agree with. In my utopia, we wouldn’t have governments bossing us around and telling us what to do, or encouraging us to snoop on our neighbours if we think they might be benefit cheats because we see them unload a van. In my utopia, families and communities would care about each other and support each other, and human beings would be valued for more than their ability to be “economically productive”. In my utopia, we’d all work less and do more that has real value to the world. So you might think I’d strongly support David Cameron on this issue.

In the real world, alas, the Conservatives do as little to foster these human values as the Labour Party has done. You cannot shift the responsibility from government to communities and charities without first changing the negative attitudes people hold towards the disabled, the mentally ill, and people on benefits. A society that sees us as scroungers who contribute nothing is not going to be a supportive society. Many families want nothing to do with their mentally ill relatives, and workplaces remain hostile environments.

Charities do a great job, but they are hugely reliant on public funding, so this hardly shifts the burden from the taxpayer. Additionally, and crucially, no one has a RIGHT to be helped by a charity. While society is arranged in a way that overwhelmingly benefits the well, the working, the extroverted, the person with business skills, it is vital that a welfare system exists to help the people who cannot function in it. “Big Society” won’t be achieved by stripping away benefits, and making the poor and sick even worse off.

I’d like to point you towards an excellent blog post by Richard Exell, which examines some of the facts and figures: David Cameron’s Big Society Speech. As he says, “restrictions in access to benefits and reductions in their value will hit the poor hard.”

Cameron’s position is full of contradictions. For instance, he claims “no wonder that ‘society is broken’ when people are paid more not to work than work and are better off leaving their children than nurturing them.” Wait, hold on a minute, does he want people to be paid so they can stay at home and nurture their children, or does he want them to leave their kids in childcare (if they can find any they can afford) and go out to work? We see this double standard in the press all the time of course – women who work are bad for not staying at home with the kids, but damn those dreadful single mothers who live on welfare so they don’t have to go out to work!

“Big Society” will depends on volunteering. How are people going to find the time to volunteer when work hours are rising rather than falling? Why don’t the Tories and others recognize that a great deal of voluntary work is done by those who aren’t employed, who are on benefits? “Big Society” requires a move away from the values of consumer capitalism and big business, away from profits above people, away from the isolation and stigmatization of disability, mental illness, and the “benefits culture”. This is not something any of the major parties really has any interest in delivering.

I would love to live in a world where big society can take the place of big government, but in spite of the rhetoric, the Conservatives offer nothing to truly move us towards that utopian vision.

 

Deadly depression and inequality based on disability

Two links for today:

Inequality based on disability is widespread, according to research.

The survey identifies a stark pay gap between disabled and non-disabled staff – the non-disabled being more than three times more likely to earn £80,000 or above – as well as far less access to the mentoring and support that many disabled people crave. In addition, while staff with mental-health conditions are far less likely to be top earners or board directors than those with more visible, physical impairments, they are also significantly less willing to disclose details of their condition for fear of being stereotyped or sidelined.

Interesting piece, though more about people towards the top of the career ladder than those struggling to get by on benefits.

And, Depression as deadly as smoking… “A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.”

Also many thanks to cdaae for tweeting our posts, and to Mark Brown, who said of us “On the ground experience becomes interesting and combative citizen journalism”. All your links and comments are very much appreciated!

 

Schizo: The Sun, PCC, and negative stereotypes

“Fury at escape of schizo killer!” blares The Sun, showing their usual degree of sensitivity and caring towards people with mental health problems.

I think it’s best to quote Time to Change and Rethink’s words on this. “Whilst this is a news story and The Sun can legitimately report the event and the comments of those involved Rethink does not think using the word schizo is acceptable.”

The Press Complaints Commission Code of Practice, point 12 i) states; The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability. However, they do not seem to think that using the derogatory term “schizo” to refer to schizophrenia is “prejudicial or pejorative”.

Rethink suggests we let the PCC and The Sun know what we think about this, and makes the following points.

• Whilst I understand that The Sun serves to inform readers of news events using the word schizo in the headline is unacceptable. It does nothing to add to the information and simply reduces a complex condition to a derogatory taunt

• There are over 600 thousand people with schizophrenia in the UK, the vast majority are law-abiding citizens. Using the word schizo in the headline only serves to increase the fear and prejudice that exists towards people with schizophrenia and their families

• I do not accept that “schizo” is an acceptable shortening of schizophrenia or schizophrenic, these are medical terms whilst “schizo” is nothing more than an ugly taunt

• It would not be acceptable to shorten lesbian to “lesbo” or refer to gay men as “homos”, nor would it be acceptable to refer to quadriplegics as “cripples”.

Please see their post for addresses to write to and further tips.

This has nothing to do with benefits, but it’s about the way the media constantly reinforces damaging stereotypes about the mentally ill. The Press Complaints Commission seems to think that “schizo” is acceptable language, but charities and professionals who work with people with mental illness, and of course those with the conditions themselves, strongly disagree.

Schizophrenia is a serious condition, and a nightmare to suffer from. Shame on the PCC for letting the tabloids get away with making the stigma and prejudice about it even worse.

 

Snippets on work, stress, and suicide

Violet writes below about how the stress of work can make depression worse, and I thought I should back that up with a few figures and examples.

For instance:

Just ask France Telecom. Since the beginning of 2008, 24 employees at the company have committed suicide and an additional 13 have attempted suicide. Many of these victims left suicide notes implying the company’s working environment was a key factor in their decisions — one even explicitly cited “overwork, stress, absence of training and the total disorganization in the company.” Some of the attempts occurred on France Telecom premises.

Working hours in the UK have increased steadily since the 1970s, and with them working stress.

In January 2004, a marketing director at Prudential was reported as saying: “Our research shows that an alarming number of people appear to be unhappy in their employment and unfulfilled by their work”. BBC News has quoted the International Stress Management Association saying: “Each year we conduct research into stress and each year the figure just keeps on getting worse.”

According to UN figures, approximately two million workers die annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses. This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare. Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together.

Less than a month after attacking the depressed and stressed for whining instead of working, the Daily Express has reported that work-related mental illness leaves “employers with a total bill for lost productivity of £28.3 billion a year”. Even the measures which concentrate purely on the economic impact on depression for businesses and ignore the suffering of the individuals admit workplace stress and misery a major problem.

This may all sound like I’m saying work sucks and you’d be a sucker to do it, the kind of attitude often attributed to the ‘benefits culture’.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that any policy that tries to get people off benefits by focusing purely on making them apply for jobs, and ignores the real harm the work culture can do, does considerably more harm than it does good.

PS: On LiveJournal? You can now follow our syndicated feed through your friends page.

 

Catch 22: benefits, depression, and work

Now I would like to add some more to my post about a day in the life of depression (and thank you for the comments!).

Not every day is like that. I tried to describe one that was a balance between the absolute worst times, the times I spend all day in bed, all day either unconscious or wishing to die, the times I can’t believe in any future that isn’t hell on earth; and the times I feel relatively okay for a few weeks, the times when I can get engaged with something and feel lighter.

Yes, there are times when I feel energized, passionate about something, more positive. I try to get everything out of those moments that I can, because I know I can achieve a lot when I’m in that kind of a flow state. Also, because I know from experience that they’re not going to last. Some outside stress will find its way in, panic me, and down I’ll go.

I live in a Catch 22 situation on benefits, because in theory not having to work should allow me the time and space to get better, and sometimes it does. The constant stress of not having enough money often cuts in to that of course, and so does the constant pressure to be working towards getting a job, not because I’m a lazy scrounger but because in my long experience of myself and my struggle with depression, I’ve found that when I’ve started part-time work there’s been an initial high of “I can do it!” that after a few months turns into a fearful spiral of worsening depression, until I’m back in the pit of suicidal feelings and utter despair.

I can be on benefits and go between times of relative wellness and times of fear and depression, or I can do part-time work (which isn’t nearly enough to live on), and be suicidal and end up hospitalized. What good does that do me, or the taxpayer who funds the NHS?

The trap of the “benefits culture” we so often hear about should be seen as equally a trap of the work culture. At the moment I do some voluntary work, and that means that when I hit a slump I can phone them and say I won’t be in for a couple of weeks, and that’s okay. Can you find me an employer who’d be okay with that? Since it’s only one day a week sometimes I can drag myself in even when I’m not feeling at all good, because it’s low pressure, it’s doing something I feel is worthwhile, and the other people are open and friendly and share some of my views and interests. I feel I can at least partially be myself, and I feel appreciated for who I am.

Contrast that with the average modern work place. To start with I couldn’t get any very great job, I’ve been out of work too long and lack any great formal qualifications. The kind of jobs the employment people have suggested for me have all been service industry, working in shops, on my feet all day and dealing with people. These set off all my major stresses, all my trigger points for depression, and believe me I’ve had years of therapy figuring out what those are. I’ve tried these jobs, and it has never taken me more than a few weeks to become severely suicidal.

What, aside from the degree of social phobia I have, is the problem with them? They are the opposite of my voluntary work. They are inflexible, high pressure, I am surrounded by people I have little in common with, I cannot remotely be myself, I have to put all my energy in to maintaining a false “cheerful” face, and the only way I can get through them even for a day is to completely deaden myself. Then there is the stigma of depression or mental health problems, and of having been on benefits in the first place. People notice you’re different and make cracks that constantly remind you how poorly you fit in. Managers hassle you to smile more. An ill-tempered customer can crash your self-esteem for a week.

My first suicide attempt came after 3 weeks being a waitress in a hotel restaurant. My boyfriend stabbed himself after 4 months working in a pub. My best friend’s brother committed suicide not long after being fired from a cart collecting position with a supermarket for looking too glum.

I’m not saying our jobs caused these things. We all had (and have) many issues contributing to our states of mind. Our working experiences just reinforced our feelings that things were hopeless, that life wasn’t going to and could never get any better, that the pain we were in from whatever variety of causes simply couldn’t be borne. It told us we were always going to be misfits, we’d never be able to support ourselves, and no one really wanted us anyway. It was the worst thing possible for our sense of self-esteem.

Of course work doesn’t do this to everyone. If you can find work that you feel is rewarding, if you get on with your colleagues, if people are accepting of your limitations, if you can work enough hours to make enough money to survive, work may boost your self-esteem and give you a reason to get up in the morning, rather than make you dread it even more. Whether you can find such work depends on what’s available in your area, and also on your personality, your skills and abilities, and what you find worthwhile.

It’s often said that creative people are more prone to depression. I wonder if that’s partly because, in today’s world, it’s much harder for us to find fulfilling employment unless we also have good business skills, or the energy and drive to get on a higher rung of the ladder in a creative career. Our world also rewards extroversion, and depression is a very introverted kind of problem.

If you’re well paid and can afford to take a sabbatical, if you’re far up enough in a stable career with a good company, you may be able to take time off or be given the leeway you need to recover. If, on the other hand, your mental health problems strike early, disrupting your education and your chance at even starting a career, you face a very different picture. Poverty and hostility do not help anyone’s mental health.

So there is my Catch 22. If I get better, I will be forced into a job that will make me a hell of a lot worse again. If society or the government wants to get me out of the “benefits culture” they should start making more workplaces less hostile towards people with disabilities, in my case particularly towards mental illness. They need to offer more than depressing low-wage work, not because we think we’re too good for certain jobs but because forcing us into jobs that we cannot cope with just makes us ill again, and puts us back on benefits (if it doesn’t cause us to kill ourselves first).

I don’t think this culture change is ever going to happen while we have constant headlines generated by politicians and well-fed, second-home-owning columnists telling everyone that people on incapacity benefits are mostly liars and scroungers who “moan” about stress and depression. These politicians, and their pals in the tabloid and right-wing press, are part of the problem, not part of the solution.