- Joined
- Jul 8, 2017
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Hi, I live in Australia. Over the past year my functional capacity has firmly deteriorated. Last year start of the gear my mental health started going significantly down hill, then second half of the year I got some pretty savage autistic burnout. That's like regular burnout. But you aren't really sure when you'll get better if at all.
I got access to the NDIS which Australia has called the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Participants get individual funding packages of certain amounts of money scaled to their circumstances. It has its flaws (the current right win government is trying to gut it) but it's going strong.
I've been given access on level 3 autism, complex ptsd, and bipolar type 1. My funding package is $185,000 a year.
This money goes to paying support workers for around 4 hours each day (give or take)
It pays for a complex support coordinator/psychosocial recovery coach
It plays for plan management (bookkeeping)
It pays for respite care (weekend or overnight stays if I have a bipolar episode to avoid hospitals due to how I'm treated for being trans - not well.
It pays for a positive behaviour support plan, and time with a postive behaviour support practitioner 1-1 as well as training my team in the strategies that will be used in phasing out self-destructive behaviour over the next 2 heads.
It pays for individual social skills training
It pays for Assistive Technology - noise cancelling headphones, ear putty, sensory compression clothing, GPS nuttags. Anything that is related to my disability that I can use I can buy. I've been loving waterless body wash so I can be clean, without a shower.
It pays for therapy. And this is where my life gets more complex.
NDIS THERAPIES
- personal training (twice a week)
- psychologist (weekly)
- speech therapist (fortnightly)
- occupational therapist (fortnightly)
-,social skills group (fortnightly)
- Psychosocial recovery coach peer mentoring (once a fortnight)
- dietician (once a month)
- physio (once a month)
- podiatrist (once every 3-4 months)
NON NDIS THERAPIES
- SMART Recovery (once to twice a week)
- Mental health pscyhologist (fortnightly)
- Drug and Alcohol Counselling (fortnightly)
- GP (fortnightly)
- Psychiatrist (monthly)
- DASSA ( monthly)
- RA trauma counselling (monthly)
- SAMSN trauma peer group (monthly)
- Specialist 1 (once every 9 weeks)
- Specialist 2 (once every 3 months)
- Specialist 3 (once every 6 months)
OCCASIONAL:
- Dentist (once every 4-6 months)
- Optometrist (once every 6 months)
I'm pretty sure that's an exhaustive list of every appointment I go to, thanks to both the NDIS and much of my pre-existing supports.
I work casually, also as a support worker. Calling it work is pretty generous though. Last Monday me and my client played animal crossing for an hour and I helped him read. On Wednesday I played a pattern recognition game for 1.5 hours. For my other shifts I painted something with my non-verbal client. I'd do this all for free with them. They not only accept my autistic behaviour, it's actually why I was hired. It's the best (and only) job I am able to do. Even so, I can cope with 10 hours.
So 10 hours work, plus 30 hours support, plus 4-6 hours of therapy in a week. That's over full time hours worth of commitment. Damn being disabled takes effort and shit. Basically, I decided late last year I would try to get the Disability Support Pension because it would be amazing to be able to take sick days off work (instead of having to drag my sorry ass to work the days after my attempted suicide last year, or be able to take time off work to be properly medicated while manic instead of behaving erratically at work and just having to explain you're having an episode). Like I could take time off and my income wouldn't take the hit. For once I'd be something approaching financially secure with both my ten hours a week plus the DSP. I already satisfy the hardest requirement for the DSP anyway ''fully diagnosed, treated and stabilised' and my bipolar, complex trauma and substance use definitely fit that. The autism has only been fully diagnosed but I'll throw that report in too just to test my luck.
The thing is I've put all the work in. I've done every single trauma therapy known to man. I've been in therapy offically since 15, but regularly since 16. I have even done muliple extra groups and gotten free trauma counselling to work on it. I've bought heaps of self help books, stuff on complex trauma and a lot of Brene Brown my social worker showed me. Like I don't reckon you could find as many people as me who have put in such a substantial amount of effort into recovering from a debilitating condition. I got loads better, truthfully I did. But when you're coming from almost dead to something better, improvement doesn't look all that great. My complex trauma is precariously balancing in an unstable family situation which is liable to go tits up at any time. It isn't resolved by any means, it's just a reprieve.
So I also look through the impairment tables and I can identify that for mental health I have 3 or so in the highest ranking which is extreme, and the rest which fall into severe. All I need is severe to qualify so it looks all good from there.
I ask my clinical psychologist to write a report and he does. It's appalling. He basically wrote about everything I can do, not everything I can't do - he even included that I play social sport, which is just information that makes me look good and doesn't include that I have a panic attack in the car before every game but this club was the best thing for my transition and the guys have never let me down so I as the goalie cannot let them down and I must play despite how I feel like I'm about to die. Doesn't include anything about self harm and suicide attempts. Basically wrote about me on my best day ever and that isn't how these assessments work.
I show the report to my psychiatrist. She can't believe what he wrote and hopes I didn't have to pay for it. I didn't. She uses the treatment information to write a new report. She puts me in extreme/severe and based off her reading of his report he put me in moderate/severe.
But wait, there's more. I was originally somehow assessed as being able to work 15-22 hours a week, despite the ridiculous amounts of therapies and appointments I do plus support staff. I think this happened because if they assess me as lower I'm supposed to really be on disability. I get put with a Disability Employment Service where they attempt to get me working my benchmark assessed hours of 15-22. My current hours at work are 9.5 and 11. But my job is special. Autistic mentor to other autistic people and sometimes I just bring my nintendo switch to work and play animal crossing in silence. It cannot be considered normal work. The Job Coach I got has no idea what the hell level 3 Autism even means. Most people with level 3 never work a day in their lives. Plus he knows I have complex ptsd, which is fucked on its own. And Bipolar which thankfully currently is reasonably well managed. I (obviously) have a substance use disorder, and narcolepsy. But no one considers a debilitating sleep disorder a disability lol. Anyway he sets my hours to 24 a fortnight. Over what I'm doing and he fucked up the maths. But he says it's fine. The thing is I only need to stick the DES out another 6 months to complete an 18 month programme of support I started in 2020 and then it will help with the disability payments. So I just have to pretend I'm trying. He puts me looking for new clients in the job plan I need to agree to with some other stuff but it's pointless. Why would I organise to meet a potential client only to tell them I can work every third thursday between 10am and 11am. It's a fucking waste of everyones time. I try to explain that to him but its like talking to a brick wall.
The dude lays off me for the first couple fortnights and just lets me work whatever hours I do. Then I get stuck in a psych ward. He calls me the day after I'm let out and asks me to start looking for work. I tell him I just got out of a psych ward and he tells me I still have to search. I tell him I was suicidal and I still am but he says I need to because I'm getting payments and I need to meet my mutual obligation requirements. I remind him that looking for work was optional in my job plan and he backs off. Then I tell him I have to take a full week off work while my medication adjustment kicks in as I'm far too tired to drive. He grudgingly agrees.
A few weeks later I take my support worker to the appointment with me because the Job Coach has been starting to bully me and get aggressive. I keep pointing out I have so many therapies to go to and he just isn't listening. He has a go at me for a while then asks to speak with my support worker. He says his job, AND my support workers job, is to get me being a more contributory member of society by raising my work hours and that my support worker should consider using his shift so I can work more. My worker is pretty peeved at this because he takes his job seriously. He stares at the Job Coach and tells him that his job certainly is not getting me to work more hours, it's assisting me in any way that I require. Transport to appointments, errands, collecting medication, doing dishes as I can't do them, reminding me to shower, telling me to eat lunch, taking me to meet my recovery coach, unhanging the laundry, checking I've taken my medication, emptying fridge of old food, tidying apartment, other chores. You name it. He does it. I'm that low functioning I need someone to tell me to eat. The Job Coach gets frustrated at this and points out I need to be reaching my benchmark hours and he asks my support worker how many hours he thinks I could do. The support worker says on my best week, whatever my maximum is now and on my worst, none at all. And it's impossible to say when that switch might happen. He also points out I have to cancel work if I have appointments back to back to back throughout the day because it's exhausting so I am already on the brink of burning out working lower hours than I've been assessed. Job Coach is really not happy with this and says if I want my welfare payments I have to start hitting the hours. Support Worker breaks in and asks whether or not there is a way to have the hours dropped, because he's heard of that happening before and it would be more than reasonable to do it in my case, plus we are putting my Disability Support Pension claim in after this appointment anyway. The Job Coach ums and uhs about this and he says it's technically possible but it would take a lot of organization on his end and he doesn't think they will drop the hours because I can clearly work more. At this point my support worker gets mad and asks what the job coach thinks I spend all my time at home doing. He points out I have zero days off, I either have work, therapy or support or a combination of the two, I barely see friends, and I sometimes have up to 4 appointments in a day. He again points out if all of this stuff counted at work I'd be past full time so the Job Coach is now effectively punishing me for being disabled by giving me less free time than a non disabled person. We finish the appointment at a stalemate. Hours aren't dropped, but I am not increasing them.
Put DSP application in and add all the extra reports. Submit it on 10/1. Says it will be assessed by mid April. I get a one month mutual obligations exemption so the Job Coach needs to fuck off. Eventually I start ruminating on what people in the DSP advice online group I'm in said about getting the DSP for mental health and they were adamant that if you have any job, you cannot meet the 20 point severe table rating you need to qualify. I call the welfare agency in anxiety and speak on the phone with a lady who chats to me for 1.5 hours and I explain I have literally no clue what I'm doing, I just put every single relevant report I had from the NDIS in plus the hospital discharge summaries for all overdoses, self harm or suicide attempts since 2016. All up it's around 150 pages of medical evidence. She takes a glance through it and says that it's more than extensive. I ask about working being an issue. She says it really is case by case and it really does depend on the work and the person. I explain my job and she says they shouldn't even count that as work. I tell her I don't want to reduce my hours because then my recent relapse will get worse and I don't want to increase past my capacity because I'll just end up in a psych unit again. She asks if I would like me to connect me to one of their secret social workers they only tell you about if you are particularly vulnerable or isolated and I say yes gratefully.
A couple of weeks later the social worker calls me. Introduces herself and we have a chat. She commends me on the quality of the evidence I've provided and says she has rarely seen a mental health application this thorough. She also says I'm almost at the last stage and they're actually trying to push my application through extra fast. I ask if that means it didn't qualify and she says to her it actually looks the opposite. Says I have only the Job Capacity Assessment to do then it goes back to the assessment team and they make a decision. She says the team already did a file assessment and they marked it as 'DSP Recommended Pending JCA; so from what she can tell it really looks positive. She gives me some hints and advice for the appointment and says she will call me after I have it.
The Job Coach calls me on Tuesday morning when the JCA is Wednesday. He tells me my mutual obligations are now over and I have to start looking for work. I tell him I will not agree to increase my working hours while I have an active DSP application in and they have a strict cut off at 14. I'm not sabotaging what is sounding promising. He tells me (on Tuesday) that I have to come in Wednesday. I tell him I can't because of prior engagements. He says Thursday then. I say I have multiple appointments. He demands Friday. I say my answer is the same as the other days this week and these appointments have been booked weeks in advance so they're not being moved because he called me too late. He says I'll lose my payments if I don't meet my mutual obligations and I cut him off and tell him that I didn't say I wouldn't come in, I just said I can't be this week as he already knows by now I have two dozen therapies to attend and asking me to come in a day after you call is never going to happen.
I call the welfare agency to complain about him because he doesn't know what the NDIS is nor the commitment it requires, nor the fact that if he just allowed me to use the fucking funding I've been giving for the next 4-5 years I may actually be able to practice as a lawyer with just a bit less support than now. Like he just doesn't seem to be understanding that I'm thinking long-term benefit to society and he's stuck in short term. It's fair enough he's stuck in short term though. He gets a bonus for a specific amount of hours he spends with me, plus a bonus and money for the company for each fortnight I make benchmark hours. So I'm sort of dead weight right now. She tells me to call the company and cite fit issues. I call the company and explain the Job Coach doesn't understand the NDIS, doesn't understand I have a pending DSP claim, does not understand the profound impact of my combined disabilities, and doesn't seem interested in listening when I repeatedly explain either. She gets her boss, the state manager of three of my countries state and territories and he gets on the phone to me. I had sent the Job Coach a copy of my entire timetable and a list of my therapies and it is truly fucked. The state manager is stunned. He can't comprehend how I'm actually managing to work at all and thinks it's a miracle. He tells me the DES programme is the wrong programme and I need to be on the DSP yesterday. He is angry the Job Coach didn't action my file up to management the second I walked in and told him the size of my NDIS package because it should have been obvious based off that that I would have a substantial therapy load. The manager tells me to call him back after the appointment tomorrow and tell him how it goes and says if I don't get the DSP he will personally do whatever he can on his end to ensure I'm either left alone by the Job Coach and viewed as lost cause, or he will exit me early from the programme stating that there is nothing they can do to raise my capacity and therefore another DSP assessment will be triggered, with a lower work capacity this time.
The assessment goes well. The assessor says that from where she's looking at it, it is entirely cut and dried to her. Absolutely straightforward and she knows which choice she would make if she could, but she can't. She also did count my autism as an impairment even though I didn't think they would as she says legally it is fully diagnosed treated and stabilised as the only therapy I have not yet done is occupational therapy and that's not really going to change much, it isn't like I'll drop from level 3 to 1 in two years. So as far as she's concerned, it counts because I'm an adult and whatever my autism is now, it's likely to be in the future. I asked her if this was the SONIC assessment and she asked where I knew about that. I told her the online advice group. She groaned and told me not to listen to everything in the group. She said SONIC are doctors contracted who are used in cases where the evidence could reasonably go either way. They don't get called in for manifest or super obvious cases. She told me that I probably wouldn't get a sonic and it was basically up to going back to the original assessments team for them the make the final choice. Before she hung up she said my evidence was extensive, supportive, and extremely positive for my application and told me good luck.
The social worker called me back again and I filled her in with what the assessor said - the social worker was extremely pleased and said that even though she can't read the report yet that this sounded very positive and that given it was going back to the team who already recommended it be granted, she doesn't see a single reason why I shouldn't get it. She would be utterly astounded if I weren't given it and would urge me to appeal. She said good luck again and told me I'd find out in a couple of weeks.
Called the state manager back and filled him in, he said it sounded really positive too and that once I found out to call him back so he could fix anything up on his end.
Honestly I put in all the work over years and I achieved so much. I have an arts degree in German and History, and an actual law degree I managed to complete while homeless during my first year, and struggling with IV meth and heroin in my second year. Also my first year I mixed xanax vodka and heroin together for around 6 months and didn't die. I used a lot of disability support to get through uni. I managed because all the exams were open book and I got given replacements to study more and all my assignments were extended. I got a $5000 scholarship for merit and for being queer and disadvantaged and a $3000 scholarship for merit, financial disadvantage and having a disability. Both scholarships I did the applications on the night they were due, crammed them together, and was the prime and only candidate they were giving it too. I maintained a GPA of 5.5 for law which was a credit/distinction average (basically straight distinctions from 2018 onwards after I stopped my heavy drug use. A worse (4.5 GPA in arts but I did do a difficult language and to be fair I did most of that degree without an access plan. I received 6 incredible work references from law school lectures after I finished their courses, including the man who was the dean of the law school my first year and who gave me a free copy of his textbook when I was too poor to afford one. He wrote me an absolutely glowing personal reference and it's something that honestly makes me feel good reading to this day. He told me when I contacted him that he wasn't sure I was going to be able to cope with homelessness and a serious drug addiction and finish my studies and he is absolutely ecstatic to have seen me accomplish everything I set out to do against odds that barely any other student could comprehend. I continued to attend university and maintain distinctions while doing intensive outpatient rehab 2.5 hours a day, 3 days a week for 2 years.
So for me, I deserve this break. I just want to have the breakdown I promised myself I'd have every single year at university and just kept pushing on through until I couldn't anymore. This breakdown was 5 years in the making. I know I can qualify and I have all the evidence. It's not like I haven't put in the time and energy with endless treatment and still not had substantial changes.
The odd thing is though I was told that the DSP was notoriously difficult to qualify for, especially mental health. But my file literally got rushed through the process. I don't know now whether I am actually significantly more fucked than I think I realised, or that a bunch of people are applying for the DSP who don't and won't actually qualify, but because they have zero metric to compare what 'mild' or 'severe' mental illness is, they perhaps think that they are substantially more impaired than they are.
I've seen some applications in the group recently that were just obvious rejections for multiple reasons. Someone put a letter from a GP (not a psychiatrist or even clinical psychologist) rating the impairment at 30 points. For context, I wouldn't get 30 points all up. 30 points is like your untreatable schizophrenic guy drooling because of haldol and living in supervised accomodation with round the clock care. That is 30 points.
The thing is, in Australia ANY psychotic mental illness gets you send straight to the specialist. Ditto severe versions of more common mental illnesses. Both of these groups would also automictically get a clinical psychologist through a mental health care plan for 20 free sessions per year. For rich patients, they go private. For poor, public community mental health.
Thing is, anyone who sits in 30 points would have a veritable mental health treatment community team and and basically almost always be on the NDIS. They would have reports from both the clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist.
The 20 point category given the question on psychiatric medication would also be seeing a prescriber psychiatrist at least, plus the clinical psychologist.
The 10 point rating is where sort of depression and anxiety would kind of fit, and even then like this would sort of be long term clinical type thing. Still would be seeing a clinical psychologist at the very least for psychotherapy.
The last rating is 5 points. This is where the case would be handled by the GP and the GP alone. Mental health impairment is so mild that even therapy may not be needed.
The person who put the application in hadn't ever engaged in treatment with a clinical psychologist because they said they'd never been referred and their GP handled it. Plus they have a part time job at kmart.
So like, the thing I notice is that there's not way the welfare agency will assess this as being a truthful report. Because the GP has clearly just filled it in how she asked to get the rating. She would not be alive without a full treatment team at that rating and the 30 point rating really is reserved for psychosocial NDIS participants fully supervised living as that's the only way you can meet that criteria.
I just can't believe I let the fact that everyone's mental health application was getting rejected on that page as a reason not to put mine in where I have a decade of evidence proving I've done the work. I just figured everyone else applying was in the same boat as me. Now I'm looking at the site post my application and I see people who say they got diagnosed a week prior so they want the DSP, or they haven't done any treatment but they want the DSP.
Maybe truthfully there is a small part of me which is bitter cause I'm like 'I fucking deserve this, my life has been hell and with the DSP I could move out of my shitty tiny studio apartment and move into one with a bedroom. It would change my life.' And then a huge part of me wonders how someone who doesn't even have a treating mental health team can go so far as to say that they are in the extreme category. Like I didn't even want to be that disrespectful to people who live with the absolute most horribly debilitating psychotic disorders that exist which are disgustingly stigmatised, they often risk homelessness, even with medication, episodes can occur. And they just live that life on repeat. I at the very least have been able to make some definite progress. It's just everything for me together creates the issue. If I was to apply on the complex trauma alone I honestly don't think I'd do more than moderate. It just makes me sort of mad that this person who probably does have GP diagnosed depression or anxiety and really fits into the exact same category as any other regular Australian working their everyday job with a slight accomodation to make it easier for them, has made it out to seem like they are, without having done any work to fix themselves, entitled to welfare payments.
I also have no idea why their solution is to run for welfare payments rather than the first line treatments that are often very successful for mild cases of mental health issues. Like, would you rather have just above the poverty wage money for a few years until we reassess you? Or would you like to do a year or two of therapy and basically be 100% better at least 50% of the time? I would absolutely take getting better, every single time.
There is not comparison to mental health issues, really. They're each their own. But I know for a fact that what I have dealt with in my life would completely cripple any of my friends who live with mild depression. I don't say that to make myself sound better, that's the reality - it crippled me. But there is a reason bipolar, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, complex ptsd and DID are placed in the 'severe mental illness' category then you have things like treatment resistant depression, panic disorders, extreme or severe anxiety, personality disorders, regular PTSD, are in another, then really it's just depression and anxiety and seasonal affective disorder. The fact is even amongst mental health clinician and the medical system, there is a ranking system and it matters. a regular non specialist can take care of the simple matters. Beyond that for more complex medication, any psychiatrist will do. After that, people need to see psychiatrists who specialize in those areas. So if the medical system has decided that, there sort of is a universal system for how functionally impairing and serious a mental health issue is. There are always exceptions to every rule, of course. But in general, that's the way it goes.
So for me, it is super frustrating seeing someone put an application in by probably just telling the doctor the thing's they read off the tables even if they're not true, for the doctor (who may have literally never done one of these before because they're not official forms) just signed off on it. And the thing is we actually did used to have a problem with people getting the DSP based of just a GP report. So they added specialists to every single table to prevent that from happening again. There were certain doctors who only had patients they were trying to get on the DSP. So if you don't have that other medical evidence, and you can't get it because you don't have a treatment history, I feel like you really need to look at what is going on for you that you feel the need to make if seem like your GP case handled mental health issue is similarly debilitating as someone who spends half their life paranoid and hallucinating. Honestly I'd even feel wrong saying I'm in extreme. I don't want to pretend I am. It just really irks me. I would like to introduce her to some of the homeless people I helped when I volunteered who had schizophrenia and just have her understand that this condition is so debilitating that it pushes people to homelessness. And she says every once in a while she misses a retail shift at work. To me it is wrong.
I get that everyone feels their experiences differently and to her maybe it truly does feel that debilitating. But objectively it is not, and she really should understand that.
I got access to the NDIS which Australia has called the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Participants get individual funding packages of certain amounts of money scaled to their circumstances. It has its flaws (the current right win government is trying to gut it) but it's going strong.
I've been given access on level 3 autism, complex ptsd, and bipolar type 1. My funding package is $185,000 a year.
This money goes to paying support workers for around 4 hours each day (give or take)
It pays for a complex support coordinator/psychosocial recovery coach
It plays for plan management (bookkeeping)
It pays for respite care (weekend or overnight stays if I have a bipolar episode to avoid hospitals due to how I'm treated for being trans - not well.
It pays for a positive behaviour support plan, and time with a postive behaviour support practitioner 1-1 as well as training my team in the strategies that will be used in phasing out self-destructive behaviour over the next 2 heads.
It pays for individual social skills training
It pays for Assistive Technology - noise cancelling headphones, ear putty, sensory compression clothing, GPS nuttags. Anything that is related to my disability that I can use I can buy. I've been loving waterless body wash so I can be clean, without a shower.
It pays for therapy. And this is where my life gets more complex.
NDIS THERAPIES
- personal training (twice a week)
- psychologist (weekly)
- speech therapist (fortnightly)
- occupational therapist (fortnightly)
-,social skills group (fortnightly)
- Psychosocial recovery coach peer mentoring (once a fortnight)
- dietician (once a month)
- physio (once a month)
- podiatrist (once every 3-4 months)
NON NDIS THERAPIES
- SMART Recovery (once to twice a week)
- Mental health pscyhologist (fortnightly)
- Drug and Alcohol Counselling (fortnightly)
- GP (fortnightly)
- Psychiatrist (monthly)
- DASSA ( monthly)
- RA trauma counselling (monthly)
- SAMSN trauma peer group (monthly)
- Specialist 1 (once every 9 weeks)
- Specialist 2 (once every 3 months)
- Specialist 3 (once every 6 months)
OCCASIONAL:
- Dentist (once every 4-6 months)
- Optometrist (once every 6 months)
I'm pretty sure that's an exhaustive list of every appointment I go to, thanks to both the NDIS and much of my pre-existing supports.
I work casually, also as a support worker. Calling it work is pretty generous though. Last Monday me and my client played animal crossing for an hour and I helped him read. On Wednesday I played a pattern recognition game for 1.5 hours. For my other shifts I painted something with my non-verbal client. I'd do this all for free with them. They not only accept my autistic behaviour, it's actually why I was hired. It's the best (and only) job I am able to do. Even so, I can cope with 10 hours.
So 10 hours work, plus 30 hours support, plus 4-6 hours of therapy in a week. That's over full time hours worth of commitment. Damn being disabled takes effort and shit. Basically, I decided late last year I would try to get the Disability Support Pension because it would be amazing to be able to take sick days off work (instead of having to drag my sorry ass to work the days after my attempted suicide last year, or be able to take time off work to be properly medicated while manic instead of behaving erratically at work and just having to explain you're having an episode). Like I could take time off and my income wouldn't take the hit. For once I'd be something approaching financially secure with both my ten hours a week plus the DSP. I already satisfy the hardest requirement for the DSP anyway ''fully diagnosed, treated and stabilised' and my bipolar, complex trauma and substance use definitely fit that. The autism has only been fully diagnosed but I'll throw that report in too just to test my luck.
The thing is I've put all the work in. I've done every single trauma therapy known to man. I've been in therapy offically since 15, but regularly since 16. I have even done muliple extra groups and gotten free trauma counselling to work on it. I've bought heaps of self help books, stuff on complex trauma and a lot of Brene Brown my social worker showed me. Like I don't reckon you could find as many people as me who have put in such a substantial amount of effort into recovering from a debilitating condition. I got loads better, truthfully I did. But when you're coming from almost dead to something better, improvement doesn't look all that great. My complex trauma is precariously balancing in an unstable family situation which is liable to go tits up at any time. It isn't resolved by any means, it's just a reprieve.
So I also look through the impairment tables and I can identify that for mental health I have 3 or so in the highest ranking which is extreme, and the rest which fall into severe. All I need is severe to qualify so it looks all good from there.
I ask my clinical psychologist to write a report and he does. It's appalling. He basically wrote about everything I can do, not everything I can't do - he even included that I play social sport, which is just information that makes me look good and doesn't include that I have a panic attack in the car before every game but this club was the best thing for my transition and the guys have never let me down so I as the goalie cannot let them down and I must play despite how I feel like I'm about to die. Doesn't include anything about self harm and suicide attempts. Basically wrote about me on my best day ever and that isn't how these assessments work.
I show the report to my psychiatrist. She can't believe what he wrote and hopes I didn't have to pay for it. I didn't. She uses the treatment information to write a new report. She puts me in extreme/severe and based off her reading of his report he put me in moderate/severe.
But wait, there's more. I was originally somehow assessed as being able to work 15-22 hours a week, despite the ridiculous amounts of therapies and appointments I do plus support staff. I think this happened because if they assess me as lower I'm supposed to really be on disability. I get put with a Disability Employment Service where they attempt to get me working my benchmark assessed hours of 15-22. My current hours at work are 9.5 and 11. But my job is special. Autistic mentor to other autistic people and sometimes I just bring my nintendo switch to work and play animal crossing in silence. It cannot be considered normal work. The Job Coach I got has no idea what the hell level 3 Autism even means. Most people with level 3 never work a day in their lives. Plus he knows I have complex ptsd, which is fucked on its own. And Bipolar which thankfully currently is reasonably well managed. I (obviously) have a substance use disorder, and narcolepsy. But no one considers a debilitating sleep disorder a disability lol. Anyway he sets my hours to 24 a fortnight. Over what I'm doing and he fucked up the maths. But he says it's fine. The thing is I only need to stick the DES out another 6 months to complete an 18 month programme of support I started in 2020 and then it will help with the disability payments. So I just have to pretend I'm trying. He puts me looking for new clients in the job plan I need to agree to with some other stuff but it's pointless. Why would I organise to meet a potential client only to tell them I can work every third thursday between 10am and 11am. It's a fucking waste of everyones time. I try to explain that to him but its like talking to a brick wall.
The dude lays off me for the first couple fortnights and just lets me work whatever hours I do. Then I get stuck in a psych ward. He calls me the day after I'm let out and asks me to start looking for work. I tell him I just got out of a psych ward and he tells me I still have to search. I tell him I was suicidal and I still am but he says I need to because I'm getting payments and I need to meet my mutual obligation requirements. I remind him that looking for work was optional in my job plan and he backs off. Then I tell him I have to take a full week off work while my medication adjustment kicks in as I'm far too tired to drive. He grudgingly agrees.
A few weeks later I take my support worker to the appointment with me because the Job Coach has been starting to bully me and get aggressive. I keep pointing out I have so many therapies to go to and he just isn't listening. He has a go at me for a while then asks to speak with my support worker. He says his job, AND my support workers job, is to get me being a more contributory member of society by raising my work hours and that my support worker should consider using his shift so I can work more. My worker is pretty peeved at this because he takes his job seriously. He stares at the Job Coach and tells him that his job certainly is not getting me to work more hours, it's assisting me in any way that I require. Transport to appointments, errands, collecting medication, doing dishes as I can't do them, reminding me to shower, telling me to eat lunch, taking me to meet my recovery coach, unhanging the laundry, checking I've taken my medication, emptying fridge of old food, tidying apartment, other chores. You name it. He does it. I'm that low functioning I need someone to tell me to eat. The Job Coach gets frustrated at this and points out I need to be reaching my benchmark hours and he asks my support worker how many hours he thinks I could do. The support worker says on my best week, whatever my maximum is now and on my worst, none at all. And it's impossible to say when that switch might happen. He also points out I have to cancel work if I have appointments back to back to back throughout the day because it's exhausting so I am already on the brink of burning out working lower hours than I've been assessed. Job Coach is really not happy with this and says if I want my welfare payments I have to start hitting the hours. Support Worker breaks in and asks whether or not there is a way to have the hours dropped, because he's heard of that happening before and it would be more than reasonable to do it in my case, plus we are putting my Disability Support Pension claim in after this appointment anyway. The Job Coach ums and uhs about this and he says it's technically possible but it would take a lot of organization on his end and he doesn't think they will drop the hours because I can clearly work more. At this point my support worker gets mad and asks what the job coach thinks I spend all my time at home doing. He points out I have zero days off, I either have work, therapy or support or a combination of the two, I barely see friends, and I sometimes have up to 4 appointments in a day. He again points out if all of this stuff counted at work I'd be past full time so the Job Coach is now effectively punishing me for being disabled by giving me less free time than a non disabled person. We finish the appointment at a stalemate. Hours aren't dropped, but I am not increasing them.
Put DSP application in and add all the extra reports. Submit it on 10/1. Says it will be assessed by mid April. I get a one month mutual obligations exemption so the Job Coach needs to fuck off. Eventually I start ruminating on what people in the DSP advice online group I'm in said about getting the DSP for mental health and they were adamant that if you have any job, you cannot meet the 20 point severe table rating you need to qualify. I call the welfare agency in anxiety and speak on the phone with a lady who chats to me for 1.5 hours and I explain I have literally no clue what I'm doing, I just put every single relevant report I had from the NDIS in plus the hospital discharge summaries for all overdoses, self harm or suicide attempts since 2016. All up it's around 150 pages of medical evidence. She takes a glance through it and says that it's more than extensive. I ask about working being an issue. She says it really is case by case and it really does depend on the work and the person. I explain my job and she says they shouldn't even count that as work. I tell her I don't want to reduce my hours because then my recent relapse will get worse and I don't want to increase past my capacity because I'll just end up in a psych unit again. She asks if I would like me to connect me to one of their secret social workers they only tell you about if you are particularly vulnerable or isolated and I say yes gratefully.
A couple of weeks later the social worker calls me. Introduces herself and we have a chat. She commends me on the quality of the evidence I've provided and says she has rarely seen a mental health application this thorough. She also says I'm almost at the last stage and they're actually trying to push my application through extra fast. I ask if that means it didn't qualify and she says to her it actually looks the opposite. Says I have only the Job Capacity Assessment to do then it goes back to the assessment team and they make a decision. She says the team already did a file assessment and they marked it as 'DSP Recommended Pending JCA; so from what she can tell it really looks positive. She gives me some hints and advice for the appointment and says she will call me after I have it.
The Job Coach calls me on Tuesday morning when the JCA is Wednesday. He tells me my mutual obligations are now over and I have to start looking for work. I tell him I will not agree to increase my working hours while I have an active DSP application in and they have a strict cut off at 14. I'm not sabotaging what is sounding promising. He tells me (on Tuesday) that I have to come in Wednesday. I tell him I can't because of prior engagements. He says Thursday then. I say I have multiple appointments. He demands Friday. I say my answer is the same as the other days this week and these appointments have been booked weeks in advance so they're not being moved because he called me too late. He says I'll lose my payments if I don't meet my mutual obligations and I cut him off and tell him that I didn't say I wouldn't come in, I just said I can't be this week as he already knows by now I have two dozen therapies to attend and asking me to come in a day after you call is never going to happen.
I call the welfare agency to complain about him because he doesn't know what the NDIS is nor the commitment it requires, nor the fact that if he just allowed me to use the fucking funding I've been giving for the next 4-5 years I may actually be able to practice as a lawyer with just a bit less support than now. Like he just doesn't seem to be understanding that I'm thinking long-term benefit to society and he's stuck in short term. It's fair enough he's stuck in short term though. He gets a bonus for a specific amount of hours he spends with me, plus a bonus and money for the company for each fortnight I make benchmark hours. So I'm sort of dead weight right now. She tells me to call the company and cite fit issues. I call the company and explain the Job Coach doesn't understand the NDIS, doesn't understand I have a pending DSP claim, does not understand the profound impact of my combined disabilities, and doesn't seem interested in listening when I repeatedly explain either. She gets her boss, the state manager of three of my countries state and territories and he gets on the phone to me. I had sent the Job Coach a copy of my entire timetable and a list of my therapies and it is truly fucked. The state manager is stunned. He can't comprehend how I'm actually managing to work at all and thinks it's a miracle. He tells me the DES programme is the wrong programme and I need to be on the DSP yesterday. He is angry the Job Coach didn't action my file up to management the second I walked in and told him the size of my NDIS package because it should have been obvious based off that that I would have a substantial therapy load. The manager tells me to call him back after the appointment tomorrow and tell him how it goes and says if I don't get the DSP he will personally do whatever he can on his end to ensure I'm either left alone by the Job Coach and viewed as lost cause, or he will exit me early from the programme stating that there is nothing they can do to raise my capacity and therefore another DSP assessment will be triggered, with a lower work capacity this time.
The assessment goes well. The assessor says that from where she's looking at it, it is entirely cut and dried to her. Absolutely straightforward and she knows which choice she would make if she could, but she can't. She also did count my autism as an impairment even though I didn't think they would as she says legally it is fully diagnosed treated and stabilised as the only therapy I have not yet done is occupational therapy and that's not really going to change much, it isn't like I'll drop from level 3 to 1 in two years. So as far as she's concerned, it counts because I'm an adult and whatever my autism is now, it's likely to be in the future. I asked her if this was the SONIC assessment and she asked where I knew about that. I told her the online advice group. She groaned and told me not to listen to everything in the group. She said SONIC are doctors contracted who are used in cases where the evidence could reasonably go either way. They don't get called in for manifest or super obvious cases. She told me that I probably wouldn't get a sonic and it was basically up to going back to the original assessments team for them the make the final choice. Before she hung up she said my evidence was extensive, supportive, and extremely positive for my application and told me good luck.
The social worker called me back again and I filled her in with what the assessor said - the social worker was extremely pleased and said that even though she can't read the report yet that this sounded very positive and that given it was going back to the team who already recommended it be granted, she doesn't see a single reason why I shouldn't get it. She would be utterly astounded if I weren't given it and would urge me to appeal. She said good luck again and told me I'd find out in a couple of weeks.
Called the state manager back and filled him in, he said it sounded really positive too and that once I found out to call him back so he could fix anything up on his end.
Honestly I put in all the work over years and I achieved so much. I have an arts degree in German and History, and an actual law degree I managed to complete while homeless during my first year, and struggling with IV meth and heroin in my second year. Also my first year I mixed xanax vodka and heroin together for around 6 months and didn't die. I used a lot of disability support to get through uni. I managed because all the exams were open book and I got given replacements to study more and all my assignments were extended. I got a $5000 scholarship for merit and for being queer and disadvantaged and a $3000 scholarship for merit, financial disadvantage and having a disability. Both scholarships I did the applications on the night they were due, crammed them together, and was the prime and only candidate they were giving it too. I maintained a GPA of 5.5 for law which was a credit/distinction average (basically straight distinctions from 2018 onwards after I stopped my heavy drug use. A worse (4.5 GPA in arts but I did do a difficult language and to be fair I did most of that degree without an access plan. I received 6 incredible work references from law school lectures after I finished their courses, including the man who was the dean of the law school my first year and who gave me a free copy of his textbook when I was too poor to afford one. He wrote me an absolutely glowing personal reference and it's something that honestly makes me feel good reading to this day. He told me when I contacted him that he wasn't sure I was going to be able to cope with homelessness and a serious drug addiction and finish my studies and he is absolutely ecstatic to have seen me accomplish everything I set out to do against odds that barely any other student could comprehend. I continued to attend university and maintain distinctions while doing intensive outpatient rehab 2.5 hours a day, 3 days a week for 2 years.
So for me, I deserve this break. I just want to have the breakdown I promised myself I'd have every single year at university and just kept pushing on through until I couldn't anymore. This breakdown was 5 years in the making. I know I can qualify and I have all the evidence. It's not like I haven't put in the time and energy with endless treatment and still not had substantial changes.
The odd thing is though I was told that the DSP was notoriously difficult to qualify for, especially mental health. But my file literally got rushed through the process. I don't know now whether I am actually significantly more fucked than I think I realised, or that a bunch of people are applying for the DSP who don't and won't actually qualify, but because they have zero metric to compare what 'mild' or 'severe' mental illness is, they perhaps think that they are substantially more impaired than they are.
I've seen some applications in the group recently that were just obvious rejections for multiple reasons. Someone put a letter from a GP (not a psychiatrist or even clinical psychologist) rating the impairment at 30 points. For context, I wouldn't get 30 points all up. 30 points is like your untreatable schizophrenic guy drooling because of haldol and living in supervised accomodation with round the clock care. That is 30 points.
The thing is, in Australia ANY psychotic mental illness gets you send straight to the specialist. Ditto severe versions of more common mental illnesses. Both of these groups would also automictically get a clinical psychologist through a mental health care plan for 20 free sessions per year. For rich patients, they go private. For poor, public community mental health.
Thing is, anyone who sits in 30 points would have a veritable mental health treatment community team and and basically almost always be on the NDIS. They would have reports from both the clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist.
The 20 point category given the question on psychiatric medication would also be seeing a prescriber psychiatrist at least, plus the clinical psychologist.
The 10 point rating is where sort of depression and anxiety would kind of fit, and even then like this would sort of be long term clinical type thing. Still would be seeing a clinical psychologist at the very least for psychotherapy.
The last rating is 5 points. This is where the case would be handled by the GP and the GP alone. Mental health impairment is so mild that even therapy may not be needed.
The person who put the application in hadn't ever engaged in treatment with a clinical psychologist because they said they'd never been referred and their GP handled it. Plus they have a part time job at kmart.
So like, the thing I notice is that there's not way the welfare agency will assess this as being a truthful report. Because the GP has clearly just filled it in how she asked to get the rating. She would not be alive without a full treatment team at that rating and the 30 point rating really is reserved for psychosocial NDIS participants fully supervised living as that's the only way you can meet that criteria.
I just can't believe I let the fact that everyone's mental health application was getting rejected on that page as a reason not to put mine in where I have a decade of evidence proving I've done the work. I just figured everyone else applying was in the same boat as me. Now I'm looking at the site post my application and I see people who say they got diagnosed a week prior so they want the DSP, or they haven't done any treatment but they want the DSP.
Maybe truthfully there is a small part of me which is bitter cause I'm like 'I fucking deserve this, my life has been hell and with the DSP I could move out of my shitty tiny studio apartment and move into one with a bedroom. It would change my life.' And then a huge part of me wonders how someone who doesn't even have a treating mental health team can go so far as to say that they are in the extreme category. Like I didn't even want to be that disrespectful to people who live with the absolute most horribly debilitating psychotic disorders that exist which are disgustingly stigmatised, they often risk homelessness, even with medication, episodes can occur. And they just live that life on repeat. I at the very least have been able to make some definite progress. It's just everything for me together creates the issue. If I was to apply on the complex trauma alone I honestly don't think I'd do more than moderate. It just makes me sort of mad that this person who probably does have GP diagnosed depression or anxiety and really fits into the exact same category as any other regular Australian working their everyday job with a slight accomodation to make it easier for them, has made it out to seem like they are, without having done any work to fix themselves, entitled to welfare payments.
I also have no idea why their solution is to run for welfare payments rather than the first line treatments that are often very successful for mild cases of mental health issues. Like, would you rather have just above the poverty wage money for a few years until we reassess you? Or would you like to do a year or two of therapy and basically be 100% better at least 50% of the time? I would absolutely take getting better, every single time.
There is not comparison to mental health issues, really. They're each their own. But I know for a fact that what I have dealt with in my life would completely cripple any of my friends who live with mild depression. I don't say that to make myself sound better, that's the reality - it crippled me. But there is a reason bipolar, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, complex ptsd and DID are placed in the 'severe mental illness' category then you have things like treatment resistant depression, panic disorders, extreme or severe anxiety, personality disorders, regular PTSD, are in another, then really it's just depression and anxiety and seasonal affective disorder. The fact is even amongst mental health clinician and the medical system, there is a ranking system and it matters. a regular non specialist can take care of the simple matters. Beyond that for more complex medication, any psychiatrist will do. After that, people need to see psychiatrists who specialize in those areas. So if the medical system has decided that, there sort of is a universal system for how functionally impairing and serious a mental health issue is. There are always exceptions to every rule, of course. But in general, that's the way it goes.
So for me, it is super frustrating seeing someone put an application in by probably just telling the doctor the thing's they read off the tables even if they're not true, for the doctor (who may have literally never done one of these before because they're not official forms) just signed off on it. And the thing is we actually did used to have a problem with people getting the DSP based of just a GP report. So they added specialists to every single table to prevent that from happening again. There were certain doctors who only had patients they were trying to get on the DSP. So if you don't have that other medical evidence, and you can't get it because you don't have a treatment history, I feel like you really need to look at what is going on for you that you feel the need to make if seem like your GP case handled mental health issue is similarly debilitating as someone who spends half their life paranoid and hallucinating. Honestly I'd even feel wrong saying I'm in extreme. I don't want to pretend I am. It just really irks me. I would like to introduce her to some of the homeless people I helped when I volunteered who had schizophrenia and just have her understand that this condition is so debilitating that it pushes people to homelessness. And she says every once in a while she misses a retail shift at work. To me it is wrong.
I get that everyone feels their experiences differently and to her maybe it truly does feel that debilitating. But objectively it is not, and she really should understand that.