Psychosocial Disability, it’s a thing!

Psychosocial Disability

So whadda ya know! not only do we get a mental health diagnosis, but we also get recognised with a REAL LEGIT disability! Abou time. So, for all you out here who are suffering with an invisible disability such as Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder, yep, we need and can now get support through the NDIS with the right paperwork. So, what do we get? We get a new service that addresses the gap that existed in finding support to manage life lifelong mental health conditions. Historically the NDIS has only had a very narrow parameter when defining permanent disability and whether a mental illness could be the biggest disorder impacting the person’s quality of life. In a nutshell getting funding for SOLELY a mental illness was like pulling teeth.

The eligibility for funding laid out in the NDIS Act is that an applicant has impairments which “are, or likely to be, permanent.” The attitude was that with talk therapy and medication most mental health conditions could be remedied. Umm…yeah nah.

Historically, looking to determine if a condition is permanent and you can get funding for it Rule 5.4 in the NDIA’s Becoming a Participant Rules requires the NDIA to confirm that “there are no known, available and appropriate evidence-based clinical, medical or other treatments that would be likely to remedy the impairment.”

https://teamdsc.com.au/resources/federal-court-widens-ndis-eligibility?

Basically, telling YOU that YOU haven’t done enough research or worked on your illness. Go away, try those expensive therapies and things and then come back to us when you have failed. Give us the evidence, you’ve tried everything else, it’s not working, and then we MIGHT give you some funding. Phew! Is there now a hoop I need to jump through? I’m not implying that the NDIA willfully ignores mental health conditions but that it lacks a deeper understanding of mental illness and the nuances of living with a mental health disorder across time .

The NDIA saw the word “remedy” to mean that a treatment would likely “relieve” someone’s impairment. The federal court has taken a new perspective on this, at last some common sense!! They decided that they are going to broad then definition to stop the confusion and frustration of thousands of people living with the long effects of mental illness on their lives, and in this context, “remedy” actually means “something approaching removal or cure of the impairment.”

What does this mean to us simple folk? it lowers the threshold for eligibility to get funding and supports yay! Because let’s face it, mental illnesses rarely go away permanently. We can have periods of being well and periods of being in remission but many of those conditions, managed with medication and talk therapy will always be with us. Yep, I know life can be a bitch. But we know have a silver lining yay!

The job of the NDIA now, according to the Federal Court, is to see whether these treatments would nearly cure or remove the impairment. Bingo! A flipping of the perspective to being person centred. We now have an insurance scheme working for us, to look for ways to support us, rather than most insurance companies whose main modus operandi is profit and therefore is to find policy setting and jargon to avoid paying up. Think the definition of “flood” in historical house and land insurance policies with all the major insurance players, what a shemozzle that was for many families losing their home to heavy rainfalls! It was a STORM remember, NOT A FLOOD!!!

Out of the shift in consciousness for people with mental health impairments there has emerged a new support with the NDIS and that is called Psychosocial Recovery Coaching. So basically, someone with a Psychosocial disability can get a cross between a counsellor and a life coach to help them get their lives back on track.

Psychosocial disability is not about a diagnosis, it is about the functional impact and barriers which may be faced by someone living with a mental health condition. A psychosocial disability arises when someone with a mental health condition interacts with a social environment that presents barriers to their equality with others. So, living ya best life can be hard.

It’s a great shift in my view as it may well start to plug the gap between the psychologist and the counsellor and that the fact that getting to see a psychologist is time consuming and costly. Counsellors can now also access NDIS participants. Whilst not replacing psychologists work, it will reduce the need for intense psychological attention and therapy as the coach can help with many of the issues that could be presented in the psychologists’ practice.

So, what will a psychosocial recovery coach do with you? Subject to the preferences of the person, the responsibilities of the recovery coach should include:

Developing recovery-enabling relationships, based on hope, trust and consistency.

Supporting you with their recovery planning,

Coaching you to increase your recovery skills and personal capacity, including motivation, strengths, resilience, and decision-making.

Collaborating with the broader system of supports to ensure supports are recovery oriented.

Supporting your engagement with the NDIS, including support with your plan implementation.

Documentation and reporting to all parties involved.

The Psychosocial Recovery Coach comes to you as the participant with a core belief that you can live a full and meaningful life, prioritising building rapport and trust throughout the working relationship, respecting you and your carers’ values, interests and preferences, your support network, and preference on when and how to include family and carers.

They will also understand and respect your values and preferences on how you wish to receive support, exploring and developing a shared understanding of what recovery means for you.

They will also bring an awareness of power imbalances and how their own values and preferences impact on the working relationship, raising the expectations held by you that your values, strengths and goals will be prioritised, helping you to understand your human rights and supporting you to build up your capacity for self-advocacy, supporting your right to ‘dignity of risk’, so that your agency can be upheld, and respecting the decisions you make that impact your life. It’s a positive and progressive way forward and I’m hoping that it will being dignity and respect to the role that mental health conditions have in our society and go a long way to reducing stigma ! Which is getting better, but still has a way to go , we are not out of the woods yet !

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