It's Medication time!

Well, a week from now I will be back, or just arriving back, from my medical to see if I still qualify for my Incapacity Benefit. I think I do but sadly there are 3 big reasons why I beleive I am going to fail:

1) I don't sound mad: I honestly believe that the people they bring in for these tests have no idea what a clinically depressed person looks like (not that there is an actual type) or worse has a pre-supposition of what one is. I sadly rarely come across as that supposition. I am coherent, eloquent, capable of stringing a whole sentence together without using phrases like "You ken" or "ken what I mean" (to my non-Scottish readers, ken is a Scots version of the word know) and I don't sound unintelligent. This I think counts against me as I think these adjudicators see Clinically Depressed, and for that matter the mentally ill in general, as incoherent dullards, incapable of basic English. It is a reverse snobbery and it really gets my goat.

2) Friend of mine, who is disabled, failed her assessment. Now she is right to point out that they seem a little more cagey about the mentally ill but her denial of benefits, when she is such an obvious case, doesn't exactly fill me with confidence cos I figure if they can do that to her they could do it to me as well.

3) The Government are on a cull: This sort of ties up the other 2 points really. The Government have set a target of getting 1 million people of sickness benefits and back to work. laudible, even commendable, but sadly it has now become a case of "1 million any way they can". I am painfully aware of how some people use and abuse the benefits system and I agree wholeheartedly with them being found out but what scares me, given the problems I've mentioned above, is that I'm on a hitlist. I know that this is feeding into my paranoia and is aggravating my sleep to the point where I can barely think straight.

So where does this leave me? Terrified to put it bluntly. I am not ready yet to return to the field of work as I still find people much too scary to work with full time and whilst I ahve considered a college course, I've not really found one yet. But if I lose my benefits I will have to work and that will leave me even more isolated and terrified and I am scared, rightly or wrongly, of having a relapse and doing harm to myself again.

So I am a nervous wreck and there is still a week to go.