Dying Is An Option Thanks To DWP

Reblogged from enoughisenoughdwp:

Nothing left to do but die

It has taken 3 days to type this, I can't concentrate for long and can't be bothered to correct.

I suffer from crippling depression And anxiety. I also have problems walking  and standing unaided  because of a spinal issue. 

I rarely leave my home and spend most of my time in bed or in front of a Telly. I have lost contact with friends as I just want to be  left alone 

I haven't been paid any benefit since mid February when my ESA was stopped.

The reason they stopped it was because I didn't attend my medical assessment at Atos. This was because I never received my notification.

I am no longer at the address it was sent to, but when I lived there, mail could be very sporadic because mine and others on the street, would be sometimes delivered to different flats and houses on the street.

I appealed their decision but was refused twice and later told, they were not appeals, but  reconsideration, even though I filled out a GL24 form.

I have reached the point that some days I feel life is no longer worth living. I was evicted 3 Weeks ago and currently living in a mice infested squat because I didn't want to be parted with my dog.

If it wasn't for my pensioner mother, I don't know how I would have survived. She has helped me out with small amounts of money here and there, but it is not fair on her as she is also in bad health.

After several months I tried to apply for job seekers but was met by a very unhelpful and spiteful bitch called Saba who works at the Dalston Job Centre. I'm sorry, but after that woman did to me, it's the first word that comes to mind.

From the first meeting she showed no interest and didn't even look at me when I was in front of her.

Things came to a head when I attended  Dalston Job centre for my first sign on. Saba was unfriendly, barked at me. I told her I was unable to look for the required 8 jobs and only managed a few, because of my dire state of mind. I was on the verge of being evicted, suffering depression so bad that I spent most of the day with a duvet over my me. Compounded with arthritis and a bulging disc in my back, I was lower than low. Even standing at the kitchen sink was an ordeal. My only relief is when I'm lying down.

Saba reluctantly decided I would be paid, but scolded me like a child and told me to show up with proof of 8 jobs I had sought next sign on

She got me to sign something and when I handed the pen back to her, she claimed I threw it at her. In fact it dropped from my hand as I have problems holding on to things, even a phone because my fingers are numb most of the time  and feel like pins and needles.

She told me my JSA was being stopped because I threw a pen at her. I insisted on seeing her manager (she refused at first but I insisted). Her manager who overheard everything told me he had called her aside and spoke with her even before I requested to speak to him.

After two Weeks on JSA it was decided by my doctor I not try to work.

That is when the nightmare got worse.

How long am I supposed to live like this? I can't handle the stress of calling DWP, I can't handle the abuse from them, I can't handle sleeping on a mattress in a mice infested squat. I don't think I have enough pills left to take my life and not enough on my oyster card to get into my nearest tube station to jump infront of a train. The easiest thing is to walk in front of a bus on Kigslad High Rd nr the job centre What more do they want from me? My doctor has written a letter to them but that is not enough.

To our current government, Dwp, the staff at Hackney and Dalston job centre. My blood will be on your hands when I summon up the courage to leave this world.

I can't just blame them for everything, my problems began long before my dealings with Dwp. It hurts to be awake. I just want to sleep and never wake up.

It has taken 3 days to type this, I can't concentrate for long and can't be bothered to correct.

I rarely leave my home and spend most of my time in bed or infront of a Telly. I have lost contact with friends as I have nothig  to share

I'm out of money, can't pay for my mobile phone bill and can no longer pay for top up for mobile broadband,  basics like  personal hygiene and food

I don't want to be a burden to my mother anymore and cannot bare the thought of asking her for more money.

The following  people helped drive me over the edge

Dalston job centre, Hackney Job Centre, Francine (mare street jc) who was so cold and told me to kill myself if that's what I felt like doing , some woman called Begonia (mare st jc) who spoke very bad English and refused to give me her name yesterday and this morning, Jenny (mare st jct) who was rude some months ago and hung up when all I did was ask her a question.You are employed to help people not degrade them.

Rob on the Ajax Team at Mare St thanks for being very decent. Same goes to Delores at Dalston Job centre for being very patient and taking time out.

Workfare Scandal - Interserve, Rehab Jobfit - This weeks Private Eye

A scandal hit firm run by a Tory peer has quietly become one of the leading contractors on the coalitions welfare to work programme.

When the initiative was launched by the then employment minister Chris Grayling, he name checked a "voluntary sector organisation" called Rehab Jobfit whose involvement was a "massive boost for the big society". But Rehab Jobfit is in fact a joint venture between an Irish charity called Rehab and Interserve, a distinctly non-voluntary sector PFI specialist, chaired by the conservative peer Lord Blackwell.

Interserve has three "prime" Work Programme contracts in Wales and the South West - but its public sector work is, alas, nothing to boast about. in 2009 the Office of Fair Trading fined it £11.6m for rigging the price of public sector building contracts after it and other builders carved up supposedly competitive bids on big public contracts such as hospitals. The fines followed an investigation into "cover pricing", whereby companies put in artificially high bids to ensure another firm in the scam wins the deal.

Interserve is still reliant on public contracts, especially PFI, and is using its PFI experience on the Work Programme. Board member Dougie Sutherland, previously on Gordon Brown's PFI task force before working for PFI contractors, now runs its Work Programme business. Its share of Rehab Jobfit is owned through a subsidiary named "Interserve PFI 2009 Ltd".

Interserve has other Conservative links too: Gloucestershire Tory councillor David Thorpe serves on the board alongside Lord Blackwell, and Interserve's lobbying firm, MHP, has hired Sean Worth and Bill Morgan, former advisers to David Cameron and Andrew Landley respectively.

Interserve likes Work Programme contracts so much that last year it bought some more, taking over Business Employment Services & Training Ltd (BEST), which runs the Work Programme in West Yorkshire. Rehab Jobfit and BEST, no renamed Interserve Working Futures, receive at least £22m a year between them from Work Programme contracts.

Is Interserve any good at it's job? Last year's figures showed that just 2.8% of people referred by the service went into jobs, putting it well below the agreed minimum on its contract.


ATOS

More on ATOS,...Following the last Eye's revelation that Atos made an out-of-court settlement for disability discriminationwith one user over access, Reading councillor Peter Ruhemann has shared with us the results of his own freedom on information request.

 

The DWP told him that 28 out of 140 medical assessment centres, or 20%, do not provide wheelchair access. Many, including larger centres, are on the second or third floor. Brilliant!

Source Private Eye

If it’s not a bedroom tax then it’s not a spare room subsidy policy either

Reblogged from A Latent Existence

This is a clip from the Six O’Clock News on Radio 4 today. It is about a woman who killed herself and left a note blaming the government cuts to her housing benefit.

Download: 20130512-Radio_4-Spare_Room_Subisdy.mp3

  I suppose I should be grateful that the BBC are reporting this story at all, because most people who get their news from the BBC would hardly know that cuts to welfare are even happening. However, I am furious about this story because of the way they phrased the report. Here’s how they referred to the cuts:

“her benefits were being cut as a result of the coalition’s spare room subsidy policy.

…she was facing financial difficulty because of what critics have called the bedroom tax”

This is repetition of government propaganda. True, the cut is not called the bedroom tax. Nor is it the removal of a spare room subsidy, because there never was any such thing, merely people receiving enough housing benefit to cover their rent in the available social housing. The official name of this cut in the legislation is the under-occupancy penalty. Because that’s what it is – a penalty for having a spare room, even if you had no choice about the number of rooms in the home you were allocated or if you need that room for medical equipment or numerous other reasons. It was never, ever a subsidy in the first place to remove. ”Removal of the spare room subsidy” was a name given to the cut by a panicking government because people were calling it a bedroom tax and that was too close to the truth.

That the BBC repeated the official government line and referred to a spare room subsidy when reporting a suicide is a serious problem. Of course I don’t believe the BBC is unbiased any more; if anything the BBC follow a pro-government line no matter who is in power. But if the BBC won’t call it a bedroom tax then they shouldn’t call it a spare room subsidy either. They should use the official name of under-occupancy penalty, but they won’t because the word penalty is too revealing about this government’s actions when they are still claiming that this is not about money and that they are protecting the most vulnerable.

Cameron: dumping his support for sexually abused kids?

David Cameron outside Downing Street. Picture courtesy: Guardian

Politicians like journalists can be  creatures of the moment. Flitting from issue to issue – today will be the decision on implementing Leveson  on press regulation – they sometimes forget the bigger picture in the adrenalin rush of a crisis or a story.

Eleven years ago David Cameron, then a backbencher sat alongside Tom Watson, Labour MP, as a member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. Together the two MPs signed up to a report on historical child abuse. One of the key recommendations of the report ( for those who want to read it all, the link is http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmhaff/836/83602.htm ) was that when the police ” trawl” for abuse victims and witnesses  those who are interviewed should get support from day one.

The recommendation states: “complainants should be offered appropriate victim support services, such as
counselling, from an early stage of their involvement in the investigation.”

Now 11 years later the police seem to be working overtime investigating historic child abuse cases. Operation Fernbridge – the police investigation into sexual abuse of children in the care of Richmond Council and their links to Elm Guest House in Barnes – has at least 16 potential children in its sights. The aftermath of the Savile inquiry could bring  many others into its scope and the don’t forget  Operation Fairbank investigating other child abuse  allegations and at least 30 investigations into child grooming across Britain. The scale of abuse is obviously much higher than people realise.

Officially the police and it now appears Downing Street believe all these former kids, some now in their 40s, are getting support. But evidence from two people who can be expected to be important witnesses in any trial involving the Richmond scandal suggests otherwise.

Details were published yesterday in the Sunday People and on the Exaro website. You can read the article in the People here (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/vip-child-sex-ring-victims-1768956)  and the harrowing view of two witnesses here (http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4897/witnesses-in-operation-fernbridge-plead-for-support-service) .

Suffice to say they are both highly critical. One, Sam, not his real name , says the help he was given : “as “inadequate, ill-conceived and suffered from a complete failure to understand what they (the authorities) were doing.”

He doesn’t blame the police who appear to have been sensitive in interviewing him but just left him with a list of referral agencies to fend for himself.The other is also having to find his own care while his GP prescribes sleeping pills.

I put this direct to Downing Street – including sending Mr Cameron’s office a heart-rending quote from one of them – and reminded him of what he signed up to 11 years ago.

The reply was :”Sexual abuse is a devastating crime and the Government is committed to ensuring that every victim has access to the specialist support they need. This is why the Ministry of justice is providing £10.5million in Government funding over three years to provide services to support victims of these heinous crimes.

“The Government funds 78 Rape Support Centres across England and Wales. These provide confidential and expert support, advice and counselling for victims of these heinous crimes. More centres are in the process of being established and expected to open soon.

“The Government is committed to providing a justice system that protects, supports and reaches the highest possible standards of care for victims. There are a number of measures which already exist to protect vulnerable and special victims, including rape and sexual abuse victims, throughout their involvement with the CJS, and a number of reforms are under  way to improve the system further.”

 The rape crisis centres are not dealing with these partcular Fernbridge cases or any historic childhood sex abuse and therefore Downing Street is misleading people by suggesting that all this money is going to help victims of child sexual abuse.

 No answer was given to my main point – did David Cameron  support what he had signed up to 11 years ago. And the suggestion is that this support is not there on the ground nor is it co-ordinated.

 

 This is stupid, short-sighted and frankly callous. Tom Watson, who has been approached by some of the witnesses who suffered child sexual abuse about lack of support, believes Cameron should use his power to make sure this is properly implemented and people have support from day one.

 

For a successful prosecution of people who committed these heinous crimes some 30 years ago, the government must ensure that the people who complained and will be witnesses are properly supported. It is no good  having witnesses in the court who can’t sleep, feel sick or can’t cope.

 

Shame on you Mr Cameron if  you sign up to reports and don’t do anything about it when you are in power yourself.

David Hencke

We could stop the Bedroom Tax if we Chose to. Here's how

It's funny, isn't it. Every one of the policies we oppose are easily defeated.

Abolishing Disability Living Allowance, Severe Disability Premiums, the Independent Living Fund.
The Bedroom Tax, Council Tax Cuts, Slashing tax credits for disabled children.
The feared and hated Employment Support Allowance, limiting it to just one year, Workfare.
NHS "reform" press abuse, energy profiteers, loan sharks, slave wages

In just an hour or two, we could get rid of the lot.

There are 65 million of us and 650 of them. We just have to say "Erm, no thanks."

"We didn't vote for this, sorry, now off you go and think again."

It really is as easy as that. (Other countries do it all the time, we just seem to have forgotten why we fought for democracy in the first place)

So. At the end of the comment section on THIS post : http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-human-story-behind-bedroom-tax.html
The last 4 or 5 comments (left by an "A Smith" - sorry efforts to trace unsuccessful - if this has been posted elsewhere, I hope you'll forgive me) DO appear to give an excellent blueprint for destroying the Bedroom Tax.

Effectively, (and it IS vital you read the comments A Smith left if you want to really understand why I agree, I think this would work) councils will issue a "Benefit Decision Notice (BDM)" to say that you will be affected by the Bedroom Tax. 

The letter will describe how you can appeal. 

If everyone affected reads the comments A Smith left, writes back to their council asking them to explain/reconsider within 7 days

Then appeals within one month of the BDM

The system - and local council's ability to deal with the fallout - would come grinding to a halt. It simply could not function and would cost millions more than the tax will save. 

Again, to take part, it's crucial you read all of A Smith's shared reasoning and advice here in the comments thread, at the end : http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-human-story-behind-bedroom-tax.html

So, a quick click on the link above and 10 minutes to read the comments. 

Then, a letter, with stamp, once you get your BDM sent immediately. 

A further letter requesting an appeal (there is even a template you can use left by A Smith) SENT WITHIN ONE MONTH OF ORIGINAL BDM

That's it. All there is to it.

If all 660,000 people affected objected, then asked to go to appeal, the system would collapse.

All for the sake of a 10 minute read and 2 letters.

DWP estimate 200,000 people will lose their homes from this policy. 440,000 of those affected have disabilities.

We can accept it passively, or like the poll tax, we can say "Actually, no, I don't think so"

That's it. All there is to it.

So if you agree, share this post. Send it to friends you think might be affected. Email it. Help any vulnerable friends you have to take the simple action. The Bedroom Tax is a BIG deal on social media but do we want to moan about it or stop it? If we want to stop it, share this post and act.

The only thing allowing ALL of these policies to go forward, is our acceptance.


Aha! Thanks to the wonders of twitter, we've found the original post. It was on SPeye here http://speye.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/bedroom-tax-why-and-how-all-tenants-should-appeal-and-the-impact/ and author IS a housing advisor. 

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger

Smoking Gun that shows the Tories lied about ALL their Welfare intentions [Sue Marsh]

Reblogged from Sue Marsh

And that's how it goes folks. Being me these days. Suddenly, out of the blue, someone sends me something so perfect, so shocking, so undeniable that my heart starts to beat faster.

So in an innocent little tweet from someone called Stephe Meloy sent me this wonderful, oh-so-detailed smoking gun.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/05/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/Manifesto/Equalities-Manifesto.ashx 

Entitled "A Contract for Equalities" with (oh delicious irony) a foreword by Theresa May (Yes that's right, she IS the now Home Secretary who wants to abolish Human Rights) it is a detailed pre-election plan of what the Conservatives will and will not do if they win power in the 2010 election.

Best of all, as @mrsblogs points out on Twitter a link to launch the document urges "if we fail to make progress in these areas & do not deliver on our side of the bargain, then vote us out in five years time"

Theresa May assures us in her intro that

"Just as we are determined to fight poverty, so we are determined to fight prejudice and discrimination wherever it exists
No group, no minority, will be left behind on the road to a better future."

Which gives you the tone of pure fantasy of the rest of the document.

Initially, we are told, no-one too ill to work should be forced to. 

"Central to our plans is a clear distinction between people who can’t work and those who can. of course, there are some people who due the nature of their disability or illness will not be able to work. These people who cannot work because of a disability or illness should never be forced   to work."

So far, 22,620 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants in the 
WRAG  (Work Related Activity Group  - people found to be severely sick or disabled and unfit for immediate work) have been sanctioned - some onto the government's work programme - under threat of losing their income between 1st June 2010 and 31st May 2012 

"We are very much focused on
helping all who are capable of work, not just
those who are nearest to the job market."

Recent evidence to parliament's Work & Pensions committee shows providers ARE favouring those easiest to help


Here's where it get's really interesting. They WON'T be scrapping Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

"As disabled people themselves are best placed to judge how to meet their care needs, we will preserve Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance as cash benefits, which can be used to support family care and costs arising from their disability. "
Disability Living Allowance Mobility Component for blind people the current rules for people claiming the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance mean that it is only available to people who are physically unable to walk. This is unfair to visually impaired people as they too face mobility difficulties. While the law has now been altered to enable these rules to be changed, it is still not a reality for people with no useful sight for orientation purposes. We will implement this change to help support people with visual impairments to live more independently"

Expressing the desire to EXTEND a benefit, would certainly imply you had no intention of abolishing it the moment you came to power. The Conservatives announced a new benefit to replace it just weeks later

They go on to say they will "simplify the assessment process for accessing services" for disabled children,

they say they will "increase the number of health visitors by 4,200" and that they won't abolish Child Trust Funds or the top up payments for disabled children.

But here's the real killer punch at the end :


Under a section entitled Changing attitudes towards disabled people :

"A Conservative government will tackle the stigma and prejudice that still persists towards disabled people, particularly those with mental ill-health."

In fact, a misleading scrounger rhetoric, knowingly engineered and sustained by this government, has left millions of disabled people living in fear and allowed the single greatest attacks on disabled people in living memory. Note the HUGE spike in negative language about welfare claimants and the disabled from 2010 when this government came to power.

There are literally countless lies here, and I've only focussed on the very narrow subject of welfare reform and adult disability. Other groups are infinitely better qualified than me to discuss the many many other sections to this document. I'm sure they will want to when they see this utter fabrication from our current government.

PLEASE SHARE THIS : SHOW THE REST OF THE COUNTRY JUST HOW FAR THIS GOVERNMENT ARE PREPARED TO GO. 

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger

Professor Wessely: Knocking the Docs & Overstepping the Mark

I feel that my last post ended on a somewhat cryptic note  regarding Professor Wessely, and that I need to support the claim I made about the  undermining of physical medical authority within his ‘doctrine’. This I feel I have previously done to an certain degree with regard to Professor Aylward and his colleagues (here and here), though the potential certainly exists for more to be highlighted.

An insight into what could be termed the ‘under-the-radar‘ approach to undermining the integrity of medical personnel, such as GPs, is provided by Professor Wessely’s article for Unum’s Annual Chief Medical Officer’s Report 2007 entitled “Why and When do Doctors Collude With Patients?” (The CMO for this publication was Michael O’Donnell, now occupying the same role with Atos Healthcare.)

Subtle But Significant

This notion may seem to be introduced with apparent goodwill, even humour, but the important fact is that it is introduced at all. The question should always be asked about corporately financed material “Who is set to benefit from the dissemination of these ideas?”. Is there anything to gain on the part of the Insurance firm Unum who produced the report? – Such as carving a first chink in the hitherto resilient armour of the authority of physical medicine, perhaps. This, by suggesting that doctors can be psychologically ‘vulnerable’ to forms of ‘collusion’ with those in their care in ways which might work against the patient’s welfare.
Might it not in fact be an attempt to first, construct such a thing as this type of ‘psychological failing‘ of a doctor, and second, draw it into the classification of ‘iatrogenesis‘, a term historically limited to the adverse effects on patients of drugs, medical error, or negligence through decisions taken by medical personnel. Note should be taken of Professor Wessely’s reference to the naivety of  ‘ethically pure’ young doctors, new to practice, who will come to the realisation that “in real life things are not neat and simple, but grey and ambiguous”, ultimately, presumably, succumbing to this ‘necessary collusion’. Some of the reasons for colluding that Wessely lists give anything but a favourable impression of our medical practioners, including as it does such things as  financial reward, lack of time and fear of complaint.

Poor NHS. Also deluded.

Just prior to introducing Professor Wessely’s article Michael O’Donnell bemoans the way that “our NHS managers [are] fixated on providing those treatments which can be measured” such as operations and injections. As opposed perhaps to psychological interventions which rest solely on, and the success of which is evaluated only by, certain ‘experts’ in that field. He then states that “until return to work is included as the objective and final measure of success, it seems likely that the NHS will continue to miss the point.” This is of course an ‘objective’ perspective, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it serves insurers such as Unum’s best interests (and saves them money) to get the sick back to work.

Wessely’s ‘Previous’

If what I’m claiming seems a little exaggerated, or ‘conspiracy theory-ish’ perhaps you should also take a look at this paper by Professor Wessely from 2003. The main thrust of of which is that doctors who accept the possibility that their patients suffering from (ahem) ‘Medically Unexplained Symptoms’ (MUS) may actually be physically ill are in danger of committing an ‘iatrogenic’ offence against them. He does this by arguing that patients with ‘MUS’ conditions (an important and expensive group he alleges) are in effect made worse by doctors taking their illnesses seriously and organising physical investigations and treatments. There are, Wessely concludes, “points within the doctor-patient encounter where MUS may be iatrogenically maintained“. In simple terms, doctors need to stop ‘colluding’ with these patients because it is doing them harm.

Note: Professor Wessely’s list of MUS illnesses in the paper (detailed below) correlates very closely with those listed by fellow psychiatrist Dr Christopher Bass at the 2004 Atos Conference referenced in my earlier post. (Though he omits chronic back pain in favour of irritable bowel syndrome)

Non-cardiac chest pain
Fibromyalgia
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Repetitive strain injury

Caution: Unbridled Arrogance Ahead. 

An unexpected  interjection to the article under the sub-heading ‘Social’ is yet more evidence of just how entitled proponents of the Biopsychosocial model perceive themselves to be in stepping out of their own field and usurping theories from Sociology to twist into their arguments. Aylward from his ‘Medical’ expertise, and Wessely from Psychiatry. It is very telling indeed that there are no qualifed Sociologists involved in the Biopsychosocial lobby. A small matter of ethics, perhaps.

Wessely’s A Sociologist Now?

In this instance Wessely attempts to appropriate Ivan Illich’s notion of ‘Social Iatrogenesis‘ and ‘invent’ his own version for his own purposes.

Illich explains the meaning of his term as referring to the “impairments to health that are due precisely to those socio-economic transformations which have been made attractive, possible, or necessary by the institutional shape health care has taken“.  Note the use of the word ‘institutional’ here.

Illich’s main concern is that autonomy has been removed from the people, and he speaks about the danger of ‘radical monopolies’ such as is expressed in the idea that “When cities are built around vehicles, they devalue human feet“.

Illich asserts that “Ordinary monopolies corner the market; radical monopolies disable people from doing or making things on their own”. Disregarding this core idea, Wessely feels entitled to put his own spin on ‘Social Iatrogenesis’. Describing it as “a term for illness caused or prolonged by wider sociopolitical inputs” he uses it to discredit ‘Patient Support Groups, no less! It would be quite one thing were he a qualified Sociologist to make that assertion, and accordingly be ethically required to back it up with a full argument as to why that could be a reasonable (though inexplicably contradictory) interpretation of Illich’s theory. It is quite an extraordinary presumption to appropriate that theory towards the opposite aim of its originator.  Patient Support Groups are nothing if not an attempt to restore a measure of  autonomy to ‘the people’ within what has become an ever more  bureaucratised, institutionalised healthcare system.  This is nothing short of  abominable arrogance on Wessely’s part, but oh so very symptomatic of this group of ‘experts’ including Aylward et al.

Could He Possibly Be More Wrong?

Wessely just couldn’t be more wrong in citing Illich in this context, when the latter complains that the spread of medicine “turns mutual care and self-medication into misdemeanors or felonies”. Please compare against Wessely’s rubbishing in the Unum Report of any steps that that an individual may take outside of traditional medicine to ‘self-medicate’. These potential treatments he disparages as ‘”cod-immunology [mixed with] pseudo radiation science interspersed with New Age homilies” directing us towards that reknowed ‘quack-busting’ site ‘BadScience.com’. Hardly comments or sentiments in line with Illich’s philosophy is it? No, it’s quite the opposite. Perhaps Professor needs to sign up for a beginner’s course in Sociology, or better still refrain from playing with concepts that he doesn’t understand.

I’ll leave the final word to Illich on “nosology” (the system of classification of diseases, which he notes “changes with history”)

 In our society nosology is almost totally medicalized; ill-health that is not labeled by the physician is written off either as malingering or as illusion.

Oh deary me, Professor Wessely, oh deary me…

Source