Mental health charities: Incapacity benefit changes causing huge distress

Chief executives from leading mental health charities including Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Centre for Mental Health write in the Guardian about the impact of the government’s welfare reforms:

“We’ve found that the prospect of IB reassessment is causing huge amounts of distress, and tragically there have already been cases where people have taken their own life following problems with changes to their benefits.

“We are hugely worried that the benefits system is heading in a direction which will put people with mental health problems under even more pressure and scrutiny, at a time when they are already being hit in other areas such as cuts to services.

“There needs to be a shift towards a more sympathetic and supportive system that genuinely takes into account the additional challenges people with mental health problems face and can make a real objective assessment of their needs rather than placing them into a situation where their wellbeing is put at risk.”