Applying for Incapacity Benefit

After I had to stop working was a lean period because I did not immediately qualify for Incapacity Benefit (IB). What happened was this. As an acolyte to a religious order I was invited to be ordained on a four month retreat in the mountains in Spain. Yes! The business is run by members of the order and in return for a certain number of years service, and some other minor conditions they not only gave me leave but paid the cost of the retreat. So far so good. I should say that for the five years I worked for them I did so as a volunteer receiving board and lodging and a small stipend – so the retreat was the big payoff. But while I was away they did not pay National Insurance contributions for me and though I could top them up for the purposes of my pension, there was nothing I could do about the IB, and just had to wait until I qualified – about 6 months it was.

Applying for the IB is a nightmare. One fills in an IB50 form in which they want to know every little detail of one’s illness and disability – no detail of your affliction is too small. When one is “mentally ill” (how I hate that term, but that is my designation) one must supply details just as though it were a physical illness. “How does your mental illness affect your life?” they ask. With mental health issues you have to divulge your deepest fears, your darkest moments, your black heart on command to complete strangers in clinical detail in order to be taken seriously – it is grotesque. If I wasn’t suicidal at the start I was by the end. What they don’t tell you, but the Citizen’s Advice Bureau do, is that some drone goes through with a marker and gives you points on the tick boxes – they probably only look at the narrative answers as a last resort and in any case they won’t take your word for it, you have to be examined.

When one is sick it is expected that one will talk openly and frankly about one’s illness to any stranger that the state says one must – they’re paying the bill after all. So I duly showed up for my appointment with the state doctor and the anonymous seventies office block which looked like it had been going cheap. I was anxious to the point of nausea, but I knew that my life depended on this meeting.

When said doctor appeared to call me from the mercifully empty waiting room I was gob-smacked. He was late 50’s and hugely fat. Perspiration ran down a forehead pocked with pimples old and new, and his hair hung limp and oily down the side of his head like a dead fern. This man was going to judge my state of mind and body? Actually this fat and spotty man was very kind and I realised that he had a shitty job that he did with the grace that (older ) English people still often have under difficult circumstances. Don’t get me started on the youth of today.

Anyway he was kind and I am grateful to him. Then after eight months you get a letter with a new IB50 to fill in. Same ordeal all over again. Except that I got my form in by the due date of 27 June, and now it’s October. I’m too terrified to ring them and ask about it because they may well judge me fit to work – this means £25 less per week (which means not being able to afford my psychotherapist) and having to take seriously the idea of finding a job. Who in their right mind, in this performance and youth obsessed world, would employ me? It’s terrifying.

Other perceptions of the IB50 experience

• benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.com

Tips for filling in the IB50.