NICKY CLARK. The Independent

Thursday 4 October 2012

As a survey reveals that disabled patients have been driven to suicide due to the Government‘s fitness to work test, it’s time to fight back.

SHARE
+MORE
FACT FILE
  • 20% of GPshad at least one disabled patient who had thought about suicide due to the fitness to work test
  • 65,000The number of hate crimes against disabled people last year
RELATED TOPICS

Six per cent of doctors have experienced a patient who has attempted – or committed – suicide as a result of “undergoing, or fear of undergoing” the Government’s fitness to work test.

The survey, highlighted by Exaro, the investigative website also found 14 per cent had patients who had self-harmed as a result of the test.

As I’m commenting on this, I’m so angry that the words are crashing against one another in my fury.

People are either contemplating, or actually committing suicide, because their Government, our Government, are pushing through with policies which defy all understanding.

The survey found that one in five GPs had at least one disabled patient who had thought about suicide because of the test.

There are people are dying because their elected representatives have chosen to make the welfare reform a reality.

In 2011, the Government ordered that everyone on incapacity benefit, some two million people, should be assessed.

This is just the beginning as George Osbourne set out plans for £18 billion in welfare savings by 2014-15. And yet it seems to me that disabled people are always remembered for a politician’s PR photo opportunity, but forgotten when it comes to pushing through dehumanising policy.

This is robbing disabled people of life chances and meaningful existence, but with an eye to the polls, the votes and the perceived will of the public, no one will speak out.

These men and women are choosing death because life is offering no meaningful option. They have no champion, they have no hope. So they tell their doctor. These doctors are ignored by the people paid to bring the savings, but these same doctors have made an oath to save lives.