Insultation

Government harassment continues unabated. There's this, apparently.

It is a strategy called, ironically, Improving Lives. It seems to be another effort by, ostensibly, the capitalist class, to prod and poke at the sick. It will, it seems, never end. I don't see any input from those it affects - as per usual. What does that tell us about these people? They can talk about us, over us and speak for us. But not once do they deem it necessary to actual ask us or even listen.

It sets out the steps government will take to transform disability employment over the next decade and progress so far as we build a country fit for the future. 

Steps that will of course not include any compulsion to employ people and treat them properly since that would immediately be shouted down as threatening profit. What does a country fit for the future look like? Is it built on the frozen corpses of the homeless, whose number has exploded in recent years? Is it built on the single mothers who starve to feed their kids? Is it built on foodbanks that are now running out of food while Tories claim prestige for opening them?

Is it built on the fucking stolen valour of soldiers who earned medals in war that now end up as baubles to adorn the fetishes of rich tax dodging Tory peers; to be bandied about on televised auction house game shows in an effort to bolster ego and image?

Let's try and find out.

Extending fit note certification beyond GPs to a wider group of healthcare professionals, including physiotherapists, psychiatrists and senior nurses, to better identify health conditions and treatments to help workers go back into their jobs faster. Fit notes are designed to help patients develop a return to work plan tailored to their individual needs.

Immediately I ask: what is the point of this? What does it matter how many more people are empowered to write 'fit' notes? They only lead the individual to the same point: the waiting area of the Work Capability Assessment office. At that point the note is irrelevant since the test doesn't look at what you can do and grade you accordingly, like some kind of medical GCSE (and just as pointless). Either you score the arbitrary 15 points, at which point you might make it into the support group, or you might as well score nothing (and likely will).

This makes a complete mockery of the notion of a fit note since, without ESA, you will need to sign for unemployment benefit (Universal Credit) and be treated as though you are in no way limited in what you can do. If you claim you are limited, well it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the consequence will be.

Even if you were to find a Work Coach, on Universal Credit in such circumstances, who accepted your limited conditionality, what difference would it make? Sooner or later you will still come up against the hurdle of conditionality: you will still be compelled to 'broaden your parameters'. This looks likely to be the remit of the DWP's infamous 'nudge' unit; the department tasked with managing your attitude to work. In other words you will be sent to Room 101 wherein Dr Psychobabble, some shamed therapist having given up on being an actual professional and thrown all scruples at the window, will tell you that you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and take some responsibility. All the usual victim blaming crap I've spoken about before. Magic thinking self help guru bullshit. All designed to carefully distract from an imploding capitalist economy you, the claimant, have no control over.

2,000 work coaches have received training since 2015 to help them work with benefit claimants with mental health conditions. The government is committed to building on this with the introduction of an enhanced training offer developed with a national mental health charity.

This just trivialises mental health. How much training does a Work Coach receive? It takes longer than two years to learn to be a doctor, never mind this is the time they claim it's taken to get everyone up to speed. I guess it amounts to some vague notion of "don't mention suicide!" as if they were Basil Fawlty neurotic about some German guests.

The only thing this government is committed to is maximising the profits and minimising the support. If someone has a meltdown in front of their Work Coach what will happen? Will they be sanctioned or allowed to go home un-financially-molested? We know where this leads by looking at how the WCA works: if you have to attend on of those godforsaken offices as a sufferer of anxiety/depression (like yours truly, to pick a cloud out the sky :D), no allowances are made for your needs - even though there must be implicit acceptance of your condition - otherwise you wouldn't be there. But if you can't attend, or do and have to leave beforehand because you can't cope, that acceptance will do a complete volte face and you will be deemed to be a piss taker and...no more money for you. This is the very definition of doublethink: we accept you are ill, but if you act like it we will treat you as a malingerer or, worse, a conman.

£39 million investment to more than double the number of employment advisors in an existing NHS programme treating people with depression and anxiety disorders.

Um, what NHS programme? Does anyone know? I need to find out because no NHS source has ever told me about such a programme. At all. I may have to edit this if I find out.

Or is this referring to some co-DWP nudge unit bullshit, the sort I've just alluded to.

Responding in full to the 40 recommendations of the Stevenson/Farmer Review of mental health and employers – including reforming Statutory Sick Pay, improving advice and support for employers and encouraging transparency. The government is also encouraging other employers to take forward these recommendations.

This would be Paul Farmer, the compromised head of Mind who chose the DWP over his own service users and the mental health community. Only the other day he was bemoaning the lack of support for mental health from the budget. Quelle surprise Paul!

Over 5,000 companies have signed up to the Disability Confident scheme to promote disability inclusion and government is encouraging more companies to sign up.

Great, won't mean a thing. What power will a disabled individual have against an unscrupulous or exploitative employer - especially given the Tories have done their level best to diminish workers rights across the board, including access to tribunals?

Appointing an Expert Working Group on Occupational Health to champion, shape and drive a programme of work to take an in-depth look at the sector.

See what I just wrote about Paul Farmer. That's what this will be; another group of delusional third sector heroes who are either ignorant or arrogant enough to believe the DWP actually cares and won't screw over those they claim to represent.

It's all just the usual nonsense. They know people are angry, so let's get the great and the good to talk about and around those whose lives their decisions will impact, as if they were sitting up on Mount Olympus. Nothing will change because fundamentally what needs to change will be forever off the table. This is why we are the only people who can effect change. Even Labour are too scared to call for the utter abolition, the scrapping, of Universal Credit. It cannot be saved, must not be paused, and won't ever be fixed. Certainly not without further devastation. It should never have been born;destroy it and salt the earth from which it grew.

But the system does not work as well as it should, and employment outcomes for those on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) are very low. We want to improve the contact we have with disabled people and those with health conditions, join up with health services, and achieve better outcomes and the right support for those who cannot work.

That's from the report itself (Page 16). Listen to this shit: the system doesn't work well - they claim (just not the way they think it should) - because only 4% are finding work (that's the figure referenced in the footnotes). That's because these are people that can't work! Why are they expected to secure work at all when they are ill? In other words, their aim isn't to support people who are ill, primarily at least in dealing with that reality, but pushing, nudging and compelling them into work. One way or another until eventually they either find work, dsiappear down a deep dark hole, or give up on their claim altogether.

What did I say above about training Work Coaches?

44. Work coaches currently undergo a three-week learning process and accreditation. This includes training on health conditions and disabilities, and how to tailor service delivery according to needs. Since the Green Paper we have rolled out new training for work coaches as part of the Health and Work Conversation (HWC). This new training builds skills of empathy, active listening, and helping people respond resiliently to challenges and overcome fixed beliefs about their abilities.

Three weeks to learn about, what would appear, not just mental health, but disability as a whole. Three fucking weeks! As if you were training to referee your local Saturday league soccer team. Here's your cards, here's your whistle, that's the offside rule, good luck!

And it includes training on health conditions and disabilities - almost mentioned that as a footnote!

Apparently these people have to learn how to be human beings, skilled in such foreign concepts as empathy, active listening, and helping people.

But what's that? Helping people respond resiliently: that's the nudge unit talking. That's the self help victim blaming crap. So nothing changes.

We will also look to further improve the quality of working relationships between work coaches and customers by exploring the use of a ‘Working Alliance’ measure, adapted from mental health services, to examine what factors improve or inhibit positive relationships, and how work coaches can be supported to foster them.

Now what on earth is a 'Working Alliance' measure? This is nothing I have ever seen that I'm aware of from any mental health service I know of.

However, there were differing views on what the core elements of employment support should be, including support for provision such as Individual Placement and Support (IPS), Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Peer Support. 

IAPT is basically the mindfulness/wellness advisor stuff I dealt with earlier this year. I know this because that is the phrase the 'wellness advisor' used to describe it. Needless to say it was no help at all. No support was offered, no diagnosis was undertaken, and all they were interested in was having me fill in a form each week to record my mood, deciding that, even a 1 point incremental shift in one category was enough to claim success, despite not actually doing anything.

IPS just sounds like nudgespeak for work related activity - in other words, having your Work Coach bully you into unpaid work at the likes of the Salvation Army or some other self aggrandising outfit.

The report is a lot longer and I'm not going through it piece by piece. The last part worth mentioning here is:

Supporting those furthest from the labour market (Support Group)

Our vision

70. We want everyone in the Support Group to have the opportunity to access personalised, tailored and practical employment support on a voluntary basis - when they want or need it.

People in the support group are those that can't work. They aren't 'farthest from the labour market'. Just listen to this language. They can't let it go. Sooner or later, no matter if you're dead or dying, you will be graded by this system in terms of your distance from the labour market under the assumption that distance can be closed; that some form of 'work related activity' can be performed.

You aren't worth anything to these people unless they can wrong a mote of profit from your withered ailing corpse it seems.

Wonderful.

So That, Too, Just Happened

And so another DWP letter comes through. Again, I knew it as soon as I saw it from across the floor. I just fucking knew.

So they've given me another appointment, this time a week before Xmas - because nothing says festive spirit like being made to wait in a hostile environment for god knows how long before someone, hopefully qualified, sees you.

Ridiculous. I was told I would get a home visit, but that obviously hasn't happened. I suspect that, if I try and ask for one, they will just say tough shit.

Because that's how it is isn't it. Tough shit if you're struggling. Tough shit if you've already turned up, in good faith doing what was asked of you. Tough shit all round. Now the stress begins again.

This is our world. A system that can't and won't care. If you get screwed up because of some 'adminsistrative error' oh dear how sad. Do was we say and if you can't then tough bloody shit.

Well fuck this. I'm seriously tempted not to go. I can't face sitting in that place for hours on end.

So That Just Happened

Or didn't.

Woke up stressed because I was supposed to be haveing my WCA today.

Yes, you heard that right. Supposed.

So what actually happened: turned up at quarter past nine for a 9:25am appointment. During the subsequent 35 minute wait (because they refuse to book accurate appointments), a guy with crutches has to beg to be seen and not sent away because of some confusion regarding his ability to safely exit the building. Two other people leave for a time because they realise they are going to be waiting for ages.

It's not a happy place. The guy with crutches says his appointment was the same time as mine, so I guess they are double booking people as well. They know how long the appointments take (on balance, of course there are always exceptions), yet they still adopt a completely unworkable structure: without thought for the fact people attending do have problems, particularly with mental health and the stress of appointments and waiting rooms.

So when I'm seen, the assessor introduces herself as a registered nurse (presumably not actually practising). Says it all that people who could be serving in a real capacity within the NHS proper would rather take Mrs May's silver coin to bother the sick.

She then mentions that I can't be seen because, due to having an eye condition called a Nystagmus (involuntary eye movement and difficulty focussing, had it all my life), I need to be seen by an actual doctor. By which she means an assessor who is registered as a doctor (again, Mrs May's shiny silver).

I could go on about how this is bullshit, as these are not properly diagnostic appointments and it' snot the job of Maximus or the WCA to actually diagnose conditions. Apparently it's a rules thing: the DWP guidelines (so I'm told) require this. Nystagmuses (nystagmi?) are on a list of conditions that require the individual be assessed by a doctor. She didn't say optician, which makses the whole thing suspect. What does 'doctor' mean? We have specialisation for a reason; if you go to a GP and report the symptoms of such a condition you'll be told to see an optician.

In the end it makes (and made) no difference. I had to leave pending a new appointment, and a big fat reset on the stress-O-meter. There is the possibility of a home appointment, although I'm not sure that would be workable; however I suspect that was mooted just to appease me. I doubt they have any intention of honouring that. Apparently my case was initially examined by a doctor, but then incorrectly assigned. So well done.

It's a shit show. They don't care for the consequences they inflict on people. This is not just a simple clerical error to those of us who have to endure this process. I spent two weeks stressing about it from the moment the letter arrived. I never stopped thinking about it and now I have to go through that again. They have no answer for this and no intention, I suspect, of mitigating their process accordingly - or offering anything else. Maybe they will offer a home appointment, but that doesn't make the waiting game any less sharp. I have no idea when they will contact me again or what they will offer. It's entirely possible I will have no choice but to reattend the stressful assessment centre. Even though I had to wait 35 minutes an earlier appointment is all the more preferable, now there is no guarantee my next time will be thus.

Welcome to the circus where the dancing elephants of tory ineptitude trample over your life for the amusement of the rich.

Into the Mirror

So tomorrow morning is my WCA. Needless to say I am not looking forward to it, and that would be an understatement. It's currently sitting in my mind, refusing to leave, cooking up a stultifying negativity. That's the thing with depression; it's a presence that, even if you manage to distract yourself for a time, it returns with hammer-like vengeance. That feeling alone is enough to make the problem of depression the horrible reality it is. Sucker punched by your own thoughts.

Logically - as if we live in a logical society - I should pass. My situation is unchanged from last year. However that is exactly why I won't pass. You might think it reasonable to simply report that fact, but the simplicity of doing so, the ease of process, is exactly why you can't. Instead I will be seen, likely by someone different, and asked the same questions; some of which will not be relevant but part of the deceptive nature of the process. For example, being asked 'how did you get here today' in an effort to prove that you can function independently because you can handle half an hour on a bus when it's not too busy.

It's a test, but unlike determining if I'm a replicant, it's to determine whether I'm human. Which, on reflection, is sort of the same thing.

Honestly the questions they ask are meaningless anyway; diagnosing mental health requires trust. This is why gaslighting is such a big issue: if you are doing to assume people with invisible incommunicable problems are faking it then you are already failing them. But then this process is not one of diagnosis. It isn't even really interested in that; instead it's to establish - no matter how marginal - that you are capable of work: some kind, any kind. Even for one hour a week. This is why it is important to relay your symptoms and difficulties at their most serious (and they may try and persuade you otherwise).

I know this. I might even seem like someone who has 'cracked' the system and thus certain to succeed. But that couldn't be further from the truth. This is not a problem that can be solved because it is based on an adversarial structure. The 'healthcare professional' (ie not a doctor) isn't there to help you, they are there to catch you out. One slip, that's all it takes. Does this really seem a good way to run a welfare system? If you fail, that's it. You can expect the letter to come through telling you that you failed; by the time you'll be reading it you'll have already lost your income. There is no transition period, no support during it, nothing. We wouldn't expect a hospital to treat people that way, but a welfare state seems to be a different matter.

So in theory my chance of succeeding should be the same as last time. But I cannot believe lightning will positively strike twice. I can't assume that outcome, although there is very little other than steeling myself mentally, that I can do anyway. I will have to hope that, whoever sees me tomorrow, will report what I say, believe what I say, and that the DWP bureaucrat they pass their report on to, will draw the same conclusion as last year.

Unfortunately I have no supporting evidence; it is impossible to be seen or diagnosed by a mental health specialist here, because (like everywhere it seems) there aren't any. There are 'wellness advisors', because we don't like to label people as 'depressed' etc: a statement of intent that does more harm than these people can possibly imagine. By not giving people a diagnosis you are depriving them of the truth of their situation - and without a diagnosis you deprive them of chips to bargain with against the DWP. Against; that's the problem.

GP's are no better. They will claim they don't like the 'medicalise' mental health. They will point toward positive thinking outcomes, like mindfulness, where they believe that if you just adopted a positive attitude problems would melt away, like a lovely butter. Again this is depriving the patient of vital support. It's also a sign of the ignorance of the medical profession and their unwillingness to stand by patients. They have been brainwashed into thinking the WCA is a diagnostic affair, thereby relieving them of any responsibility. They will believe it delivers appropriate outcomes.

It's also a form of gaslighting.

Fundamentally, regardless, this is the composition of our society right now. This is what welfare looks like. A hall of mirrors that hides its true nature behind misguided and beguiling forms. Everywhere you turn you are shown a potential outcome that is an ugly reflection of your own life constructed from deprivation and judgement. It is a system based on harsh principles: we don't help people, we don't trust people, and we don't want them to survive.

That Word That Begins With S

This isn't an easy topic, and so given the nature I'm giving a trigger warning for discussing suicide. It is not my intention to make people uncomfortable, god knows there's enough of that in the world already; but I'm not one of these right wing blowhards who thinks 'triggering' people is funny either. Please be careful.

Essentially what I want to say is as follows, and it is not based on direct experience. It comes from what I have observed about how mental health support works in this country, plus the role of the police in dealing with the collapse of support structures.

It seems to me that, if you present with what I believe is termed 'suicidal ideation' then you run the risk of having your problems ignored in favour of preventing harm - ostensibly to yourself. Conventional wisdom posits this is a favourable outcome - generally speaking we don't want people doing themselves in. But in the context of an authoritarian society that thinks it knows what's best for people while simultaneously offering no real solutions what does this mean? 

I think it means people are afraid that, if they so present, they will be betrayed. Instead of really listening to a potential cry for help, they assume that sectioning them, sending the police around (potentially jailing them in unfit facilities for an undisclosed period of time), or otherwise taking control of their lives - perhaps even forcibly medicating them, is the right thing to do. 

I cannot say whether it is or it isn't in any given case. But my fear is that in scaring people off you are forcing people to downplay their symptoms. This is because, IMHO, our system is locked in a state of triage. Due to budget cuts it's in crisis mode; this means if you present feeling 'down' you will be asked about suicidal intention and one of two things happens:

Either you say yes (assuming this is the case of course) and hope the healthcare professional you are seeing chooses to deal with this appropriately (and that is entirely subjective). 

Or you say no, in which case a state of mind that might be very serious indeed is dismissed. They don't have the resources, so you'll be sent away with very little to help you. This just feeds the problem of isolation and abandonment and depression etc even more. 

If it takes the threat of suicide to get help, something is very wrong.

The point I am making, and likely very clumsily (precisely because we have to dance around this issue), is about trust. 

If someone is suicidal it's not hard to see why (in the main): look at the material conditions in our society. People like this aren't even guaranteed an income, yet denied any access to positive opportunities without one. But unfortunately medical orthodoxy seems to assert that 'being a risk to oneself or others' overrides the need to change our approach.

And of course those are important considerations, but I cannot tell you how many times I've spoken to healthcare professionals who read that boilerplate script out before even addressing the reality of the situation. That tells me that, while they care, they do so in a perfunctory impersonal way. That is not what people need.

If people can't trust their support professionals, how can they ever get help? What we need is a society that cares; compassion must be the bedrock to any healing approach. If people feel they cannot be honest it cannot be right that they don't get the support they need just because, by not being suicidal, they are not serious.

I hope this makes sense. Once again: it is of course important to take safety of self/patient and others seriously. But something seems wrong in our approach to me; the aforementioned binary seems inevitably to set patient against support in a way that cannot be positive. Consequently suicide - specifically feelings of suicide - are not properly discussed and people are not helped. 

No More

Today on the TV you can watch a live performance around the Cenotaph, because it's that time of the year. You will watch, as if it were spectacle, the current elderly representative of a monarchy hopelessly entwined with the fascists of Europe. You will see politicians, who claim to represent us, lay wreaths of plants at the foot of a statue before returning to the business of depriving the heirs to the legacy of those they just 'remembered' and selling arms to other despots because profit.

So watching this morally bankrupt spectacle serves what purpose? Are we so far gone that we cannot see the rampant hypocrisy on display?

This spectacle will be, as it has been for decades now, repeated up and down the country. The great and the good, who otherwise care little for the lives of people around them, will participate in this process. For the most part they will be throwing their weight behind a moral ritual rather than living out any lesson one might learn from the sordid business of war. That lesson being: no more.

A simple lesson that is quietly ignored because the moral ritual absolves one of doing more. It's a process. It's also a process that is deeply embedded into the structure of our society: the ruling class demands it of us while dressing up kids in 'future soldier' t shits and having 'armed forces day' events where bouncy castles sit next to howitzers.

This is no longer a day to memorialise and educate people on the only lesson the survivors of the first world war wanted us to learn - "never again" - it is a tawdry festival designed to shore up support for the ruling class and its agenda. The British army - as an institution - isn't a heroic bastion of freedom, it is a reflection of the racism, self important superiority, and thuggery embedded in the establishment. When we conscript children - for that is what the 'recruitment' of a 16 year old is - we do not represent anything positive.

And you'll note that the same ruling class suppressed, through filibuster, an attempt to allow those same people the right to vote. This is so emblematic of the reality: they want your blood, they don't want you to vote with it. A nation can bleed all so the ruling elite can dine in luxury another day. A ruling elite that supported and endorsed men like Hitler when it suited them.

Never is the brutality of the ruling elite more apparent than in the casual threat that one must not discuss these issues at the time most apposite to do so. The message of the poppy is buried in the trite cliché trotted out by our masters that "now isn't the time". Just like every time there is a horrific mass shooting (using weapons of war) in the US and NRA apologists decry any attempt to speak out, right there and then, as being disrespectful. It is alleged to be disrespectful to the 'fallen', or those who 'gave their lives', to question how remembrance is now conducted.

That is disrespectful.

What are we remembering? Again the 'fallen' - nobody fell, they were butchered; their lives tossed aside callously and quickly. Again they 'gave their lives'; I'm sure they didn't! This is propaganda. It is an attempt to both pretty up the brutality of armed conflict, and to show the place the soldiery has in the eyes of the ruling class. Their lot is to lay down their lives, only it's sold as 'in the name of freedom'. What freedom: poppy fascism has risen to absurd levels as to render the poppy itself vacuous.

Or perhaps they mean the freedom for people to live under economic tyranny such that economic conscription is a reality. Now we have armed forces days and the presence of the military in schools. A creeping normalisation of war.

These are not the realities we are to remember. Instead we are taught to 'remember' as a nebulous concept. For some there will be a terrible reality; a loved on who never came home from a theatre that should never have existed. A child deprived of a parent. Such a waste. For most of us it will simply be the notion itself; we 'remember' because we are taught to. Giving thanks to some notion in the name of a freedom that doesn't exist because we are still oppressed by a ruling class that created the mess to begin with.

Al enshrined in a small plastic poppy that will be tossed in a trash can a week later. Joining the detritus of life that is slowly choking the world. Meanwhile the institution of the army - despite the best, misguided, intentions of some who join up - will continue to be a force for destruction in the world.

For me, the poppy is lost. The sentiment is real. No more war. But by wearing it that sentiment and my autonomy to voice it will be stolen to give succour to causes I abhor. Well, no more. Do not trivialise the sacrifice of those who genuinely fought for honourable intention against those no worse than our ruling class by giving in to their propaganda.

The Frame (edited)

I spent much of the other day refreshing the stupid news sites in the hope that a pro-torture, pro-murder politician had been sacked by a useless PM. Said politician also went on record calling the British workforce, by default the entire cohort, "lazy". A statement so egregious that it is as offensive as it is stupid. A statement that could only come from a cosy member of the ruling elite.

How do we live in this world? These people are our gods, if not by choice. Certainly by their incessant demand for fealty. The rest of them seem to have their own private foibles and scandals; whether economic or due to some weird repressive trait. When they aren't putting it away in a tax haven nowhere British, they seem to be putting it away...well you get my drift.

However, the rest of us have to slouch along only to be told we shouldn't slouch. Shoulders back stand up straight and look the world in the eye. Big boys don't cry, they just shoulder the increased burden of the master while thanking them with glass eyed innocense for any scrap from the table - ignorant of who built the table and prepared the food.

How many people in Parliament serve with mental health conditions? How many of them can honestly speak to the lived experience of such conditions? Maybe a great many; people secretly filled with self loathing desperate to stuff their conscience into a bureacratic box. In this way they become the suited and booted intellectual sausage meat that remains from the Westminster soul grinder. Puour that substance into a box marked 'political party' and let ideology do the rest. A receipe from hell for human misery and the assertion of unjustifiable authority. All dressed up in the facade of a thousand year legislature.

Everyday it's like there's a frame around my mind. A frame filled with snakes and arrows; the demons of my thoughts. They aren't so much seen as heard; a hissing noise that always sets the parameters of my mood. Sometimes the frame gets bigger, and sometimes it stays the same. Sometimes it's hard to tell the frame from reality, and those are the worst days. Listening to the monsters in Westminster reminds me how difficult life is; when people who might genuinely want to do a good thing are given no power and are shut down by those who want to keep things as they are. Yet even the status quo is a lie; things don't remain the same they seem to be getting steadily worse.

Every moment life is as good as its ever going to get because every subsequent moment things seem to get worse. I joined a Facebook group for people 'surviving' on Universal Credit; I joined because I'm likely to soon be joining them. Surviving; that's what it's come to. A fight for existence amid the jungle vines of boarded up shops and humans abandoned to sleep in their doorways on beds of anti-vagrant spikes.

The posts are a patchwork of misery and fear. This is what has become of the social safety net. Instead of a comfortable reassuring bedrock of support, it's as hard as crazy paving and just as lunatic. The bureacracy equally unyeilding, seemingly implacable in the face of an unfolding disaster. This is the new normal: this is as good as it's going to get because in the next moment you're going to be skint.

Somehow through all this fog I have to live. I don't have a navigator nor a chart. There is no map nor a compass. Whatever assistance there is, a sometime lighthouse, never seems to live up to expectations, but I cling to it because I have to. Mental health is a slippery phrase so even communicating these problems becomes difficult: what does mental health mean when really we mean mental unhealth; and what flavour of unhealth? What is the acceptable illness de jour? Is it depression? Schizophrenia? What will the papers accept today: will they be sympathetic to the former because an ex-SAS 'hero' took his own life? Or will they think "pull your socks up" while commenting from their editorial tax haven. Where do you even begin to explain a pain as old as life itself; an anguish that goes beyond words when only words will do?

Nobody who doesn't experience this can understand it; this is the curse of mental health. It is a language that cannot be learnt only experienced and if you speak it, you too are cursed. The people in power do not speak it, but they try and control it. They try to change the meaning of its words to fit their broken agenda. Then they use it against you.

This is what will happen next Thursday when I have to negotiate their world and dance at their pleasure, like a monkey selling teabags, to continue to exist, even if I am not currently existing very well. It is a grotesque truth that, despite the poor quality of the lives of the poor (fashioned by the elite), that they have to jump so many hoops just to continue to enjoy that poor quality. The alternative is so much worse.

How did it come to this? What did I do that led to this point? I do not know. You're taught to have aspirations but never how to achieve them. You aren't meant to; it is enough to have them because that is what the ruling elite believes is enough to keep you functional. Should you achieve them you would likely no longer be trapped within their system, and so you are kept compliant to the capitalist system by aspiring to be in the capitalist system but never achieving enough (by design) to succeed in the capitalist system. This is not your (or my) fault; it is by design.

I have come to realise that mental health, for some, is also a horrible legacy. We inherit a propensity or a tendency for a state of mind, just as we are also socialised to it. My parents, I believe, were sick people. They may have married in love, I will never know, but they ended in bitterness and dispute, yet never truly a resolution. A cold war fought between two damaged people, touched by neuroses and obsession. I cannot diagnose them, but on reflection I recognise behaviours. Unfortunately society around them did not. They would never agree that is what they were (are), but to me it is so clear. If there is one thing depression can provide it is a clarity about what constitutes a healthy state of mind.

So we are where we are. Broken and lost. Around us the systems that we depend on are falling to pieces, like watching scenes from an earthquake. Only this isn't some far away fault-stricken country, it's our society and it's disappearing down a very deep sinkhole. There is no money to cushion its fall, only the spectacle of the great and the good as they themselves dissemble revealing the truth of their culture and their own behaviour; a product of a world gone mad.

But don't worry, there's the Brexit soap opera to keep us all distracted!

After the Trust Has Gone

I feel I should play something sickly-sweet by Peter Cetera to underline so melodramatic a title.

Maybe not, I don't think my psyche could cope with that level of schmaltz.

Why has the trust gone?

It's about a relationship with the people who support you. So far the people I'd been seeing at Team North Somerset had actually turned out to be pretty helpful - certainly compared to the dismal experiences with other agencies and social enterprises (or however they identify themselves). This must be understood of course within the context of the prevailing systems that dominate our society (insert standard reference to capitalism). In other words, they can do something, but not really enough because they can't change the government, it's ideology and it's policies to that end.

Initially I was told they (the North Somerset people, not the bloody government) were hoping to get a 'wellbeing' programme of some kind in place. I was told this a few times since I started. However it was only last Friday, after my advisor returned from being sick, that I found out that programme had been running for eight weeks, had only a couple more weeks left before starting again in the new year. Nobody saw fit to tell me this and I was told that the group that had started there were already pretty close (in other words, no point joining at this late stage).

Now I have no doubts this programme will be the usual ineffectual 'feel good' bullshit that ultimately permeated the mindfulness course. It's cut from the same cloth: focus on the subject, not the cause. I don't blame the tutor, who seemed friendly enough (and I've no reason to assume otherwise). But it's better than doing nothing, and, at this time of year, the black dog of depression is even closer to the door than the rest of the time. This is not a positive period and I could use all the help I can get - who knows the group might well comprise good people. We're all in it together of course.

So that's a thing that didn't happen.

Another thing that didn't happen is that I didn't get a letter from the Jobcentre telling me I have a work focussed interview on the day after my WCA. Fortunately it will be by phone (if I can be bothered, because honestly right now...), and doubly fortunately it's in the morning. I'm off to a writing class in the afternoon and the JC can fuck off if they think I'm missing that just to have a conversation that will prove completely pointless given the timing.

You might think that they, when booking this, might use a system that shares information such as when the 'customer' (I'm buying nothing) is having a WCA. What's the point of discussing anything work focussed when I might not even be on ESA any longer? It's not as if they can help anyway, what can some random advisor do over the phone? Can he magic up some paid work that's suitable for someone with depression?

I think we know the answer to that.

Meanwhile over the weekend a bunch of people in town protested the closure of Weston super Mare's accident and emergency department. Yes, from July, you'd better not be sick ill or dying between the hours of 10pm and 8am because you'll need an extra 45 minutes and an entirely different hospital to help you not die. Well done to our useless pillock of an MP, John Penrose, who just so happens to be married to Baroness (oh my!) Dido Harding, another revolting strand of Tory DNA.

She's the newly appointed chair of NHS Improvement. We live in times that look at irony in the rear view mirror.