Attempted suicides by disability benefit claimants rocket in just seven years
Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:30 pm
Attempted suicides among people claiming disability benefits have more than doubled in just seven years.
Data from NHS Digital’s Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey show 43% of those claiming out-work-benefits attempted suicide in 2014.
This represents a huge jump on the 21 percent of claimants who tried to take their own lives in 2007, a year before fit-to-work assessments were introduced.
A new assessment, the employment and support allowance (ESA), was introduced in 2008 and was designed to replace incapacity benefit.
But ESA was heavily criticised for failing to support the most vulnerable in society, and the figures have been slammed by experts.
And since the introduction of the work capability assessment, the figures show attempted suicides among out-of-work benefit claimants jumped from 21% to 43%.
Dr Jay Watts, a consultant clinical psychologist and member of the campaigning Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, told The Independent: ‘These results are staggering. It is difficult to overemphasise how large a jump in rates of attempted suicide this is. I cannot think of a greater jump in rates in any population.
‘If the Government has any real interest in suicide prevention, benefits reform must be the immediate priority. The UN has condoned the government’s treatment of disabled people as contrary to their human rights.
‘The shame, guilt, anxiety and paranoia the current system provokes is a national scandal, that should be headline news. Making the workless feel worthless and undeserving of support has provoked a mental health emergency.’
Fit-to-work assessments have come under heavy criticism for causing permanent damage to the mental health of claimants, with more than half of appealed assessment decisions found to be wrong when taken to tribunal.
