Health

Disagree With An Atos Decision? Then Starve

Health, Tories, UK politics
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There have been a lot of problems with the Work Capability Assessment run by companies like Atos, testing and retesting whether people are disabled enough for Employment Support Allowance (ESA), as claimaints are declared fit for work when they’re patently not. Now things are going to be made worse, as the possibility to appeal against these decisions is going to be made, both by complicating the process to do so and by stopping ESA during the appeal process, with claimants needing to apply for Job Seeksers Allowance instead:

This will mean that those appealing an ESA decision and claiming Jobseekers Allowance will be placed in a potentially fraudulent position. They will be appealing an ESA decision based on the fact they do not believe themselves able to work, and will be claiming JSA based on a claim that they are able to work.

It’s been quite clear for a while now that the current UK government is engaging in the salami slicing of welfare, discontinuing some benefit schemes, means testing others, tightening up access in general. The point in these exercises is clearly not limiting fraud or other tabloid friendly excuses, but to throw people off of welfare regardless of whether they need it or not. This has been the clearest in the way disability benefits have been handled, with no regards for the wellbeing and health of the people affected.

To put it blunty: the suicides, the unnecessary deaths of people cut off from disability benefits, the starving, that’s the system working.

The history of getting you to pee in a cup

Health, Life under Capitalism, Policing, Substance abuse
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Isabel McDonald’s article in The Nation about the history of the drug testing industry is fascinating:

The thirst for urine can be traced to the military’s 1971 Operation Golden Flow, aimed at detecting druggies among Vietnam veterans. Launched in response to rumors of heroin addiction, the test disproportionately netted marijuana users, since one byproduct of marijuana, carboxy-THC, lingers in the body longer than that of harder drugs. (In contrast, the body flushes out the byproducts of harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, within a day.) Nevertheless, before long, all service members were required to urinate in a cup at least once every two years.

Who’d have thought the US military could have a sense of humour? Be sure to read the part where one of the drug warriors regularly has her own adult sons drug tested too.

Mental health is a political issue

Health, Life under Capitalism
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Mark Fisher argues that mental health cannot be considered in isolation from our society as a whole and how the economic depression helps cause and worsen mental depression:

It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn’t address the social causation of mental illness either.

The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher’s view that there’s no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds “an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy”. Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is “with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress” – Smail calls this view “magical voluntarism”.

Welfare “reform” kills

Health, Life under Capitalism, Poverty, Tories, UK politics
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Just some of the people who committed suicide after their (disability) benefits were stopped:

Richard Sanderson, 44, an unemployed helicopter pilot of Southfields in London, who stabbed himself twice in the heart in May. He had been informed that his family faced a £30 a week cut in housing benefit and he feared this would leave his family homeless

Paul Willcoxson, 33, of Corby, Northants, was according to the suicide note he left behind, worried about benefit cuts when he hung himself in April.

[…]

Elaine Christian, 57, of Hull, was worried, according to reports of an inquest in July, about a meeting to assess her disability benefits. She was found drowned in a drain with ten self-inflicted cuts to her wrist and she had taken painkillers.

Now imagine you’re on long term disability benefits, unable to work or even find an employer willing to take you on, knowing that the “reforms” will mean you will lose what little money and assistance is getting you by at the moment. Sign the petition against this “reform” that will end up killing more people.