Am I on the right track?

Don't wait for the winter to come before you start to use the lamp. I suppose people must vary, but I have been most successful when using the lamp before symptoms start to appear. Last year I started mid-september. Around the time of the equinox. THe year before I left it until mid October.

Hi James

Re Incapacity Benifit/Income Support. You only need 10 points on mental health grounds. Funnily I scored 9 points too – methinks they are just testing how much you want it. I asked for a revision of the decision using the form they sent with the decision letter. They did not revise the decision, so I appealed against the decision to take it to a tribunal and sent off a lot more medical and work related evidence.

The Czech doctor I saw at my first medical had trouble with English and had not recorded answers to questions how I had stated them. For example she had said that mental stress was not a factor in my stopping work, because she took out of context that I said I was fired from my previous job – I was fired because I was termed unreliable for not attending work due of mental stress. That mental health descriptor alone was worth 2 points to take my total to 11 and over the qualifying threshold – I had my termination of employment letter as evidence. I went to a tribunal, but they said that they didn’t know why it got that far – and the decided that I be awarded Income Support, without me even having to say anything. The DWP did not contest the tribunal decision, and I was paid Income Support with Disability Premium.

The main problem with the medical is that the doctor is only looking for answers to specific questions relating to the mental health descriptors, but they will not necessarily directly ask the specific question; instead they ask a related question to infer the answer to the question they are really looking for the answer too – very sly and not exactly fair. You really should read the mental health descriptors and take a set of pre-prepared answers to them with you in future. Make sure that you state the answers to the questions that you know that they are really seeking answers to. You should use the same answers on the IB50 form as well.

Basically all other information not directly relating to the mental health descriptors is irrelevant, and you are wasting your time by deviating from them. Therefore you should only state facts relating to the mental health descriptors. A helpful website dealing with mental health and incapacity for work is:

http://www.benefitsinmind.org.uk/index.htm

All the best for your appeal and it is a shame that it has to go that far. Remember that there are charities and organisations like Citizen Advice Bureaus that can help you with the appeal and tribunal. Be reassured that the tribunal is independent from the idiots that make the initial ludicrous decisions.