Tag Archives: mental health

As sickness benefit cuts take effect, thousands face hard times

April 29, 2012   Cancer, Carers, Depression, disability, mental health

Fears those too ill to work will be unable to meet basic living costs as government limits contributory allowance to 365 days

 

Jenny Wheatley who was made redundant due to her anxiety and depression will lose her ESA as her husband earns £18,000.
Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

It all began with a telephone call. Earlier this month, Malcolm Parker, who has not worked since his spine collapsed three years ago, was rung out of the blue by an official from the Department of Work and Pensions. There was only one question: did his wife work more than 24 hours a week? Yes, said Parker, reasoning honesty was the best policy.

A fortnight later a letter dropped on the Parkers’ doormat. The department wrote bluntly to say his contributory employment and support allowance (ESA) would disappear on Monday.

Parker was taken aback. Having worked for 44 years in the construction trade and diligently paid his national insurance, he had expected to be protected should the worst happen. His wife Ruth was at first perplexed and then increasingly angry. Although her husband can visit the toilet by himself, with some difficulty, she comes home every lunchtime to feed and check on him.

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Royal Wedding grants for carers

April 26, 2012   autism, Carers, mental health

GROUPS supporting carers will receive grants from the Royal Wedding Fund.

Published 26 Apr 2012 12:30

 

Bracknell Forest Voluntary Action (BFVA) will receive £4,000 and Wokingham, Bracknell and District Mencap will receive £2,000.

The money has been distributed by Berkshire Community Foundation, a grant-making charity, which was one of 26 organisations chosen by Prince William and Catherine Middleton to benefit from a charitable gift fund set up to mark their wedding in April last year. Staff and trustees met on Friday to choose 13 voluntary groups.

Chris Bounds, care services manager at BFVA, said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded money from the Royal Wedding Fund! Our £4,000 grant will supplement the services that we provide to unpaid, informal adult carers in Bracknell Forest borough. We will be setting up regular events to allow carers to socialise and benefit from the peer support that they get from each other.”

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Anxiety: a very modern malaise

April 15, 2012   Carers, mental health

With 7 million tranquilliser prescriptions on the NHS, the nation is at the end of its tether. What’s to blame?

Feeling the strain: economic woes and job worries have contributed to a growth in the number of people being treated for anxiety disorders

7:00AM BST 15 Apr 2012

Life was flying along for Zoe Brook. At 23, she had a fast-paced job she loved, in public relations, and had just moved into her first home with her then-partner. It was, she says, all that she had dreamt of.

That was until the night she sank to the floor, paralysed by fear, her own voice sounding muffled and as though on a time delay, while her view of the room darkened into the narrowest tunnel vision.

She thought she was dying. In fact, it was the start of an anxiety disorder that was to become her new reality, and to dominate her twenties. After finally sleeping, she awoke disorientated and petrified – a state that continued for more than three years, in which waves of panic attacks were “punctuated with glimpses of the real world”.

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