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      Only Making Things Worse: A Qualitative Study of the Impact of Wrongly Removing Disability Benefits from People with Mental Illness

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          Abstract

          Many countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have seen a considerable increase in the number of disability benefits recipients (DBRs), in addition to an increase in the proportion of people with mental illness. As in other countries, changes to the welfare benefits system in England were made in order to reduce the number of DBRs. Many people lost their benefit payments, although a considerable number had them reinstated after appeal. Our aim was to investigate the impact of the process on DBRs whose disability was related to mental health and who won their appeal. Seventeen DBRs were interviewed. The participants reported three main types of impact. Beyond the practical reduction of income and the related anxiety, interviewees reported considerable stress when coping with the ‘never-ending’ cycle of bureaucracy. They also expressed anger, frustration and demoralisation at mistrust on the part of the authorities partly due to the ‘invisibility’ of their disability.

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          Fear of the Brown Envelope: Exploring Welfare Reform with Long-Term Sickness Benefits Recipients

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            Working on Welfare: Findings from a Qualitative Longitudinal Study Into the Lived Experiences of Welfare Reform in the UK

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              Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers: A Synthesis of Findings across OECD Countries

              (2010)
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                guy.shefer@kcl.ac.uk
                Journal
                Community Ment Health J
                Community Ment Health J
                Community Mental Health Journal
                Springer US (New York )
                0010-3853
                1573-2789
                19 May 2016
                19 May 2016
                2016
                : 52
                : 7
                : 834-841
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Health Service and Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF UK
                [2 ]Mind in Croydon, 26 Pampisford Road, Purley, Surrey, CR8 2NE UK
                Article
                12
                10.1007/s10597-016-0012-8
                5018256
                27193297
                65dcb335-dd31-41f1-8d9e-1b86e04cc194
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

                History
                : 23 June 2015
                : 28 April 2016
                Categories
                Original Paper
                Custom metadata
                © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

                Health & Social care
                benefits,disability,disempowerment,mental health,welfare policy,wellbeing
                Health & Social care
                benefits, disability, disempowerment, mental health, welfare policy, wellbeing

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