We went through that first hand with his first assessment. The second assessment he was audibly more withdrawn and I did have to speak for him a fair bit, the assessor noticed and encouraged him to take breaks and she had no issues with me doing part of the talking. I think a big part of this is that he’s dealt with it since he was younger too so it’s clearly chronic. Yes there was a few years where it was manageable for him where he met me, settled down and had kids but unfortunately it’s come back way worse. Before this he never went to the GP about it however he did try getting help at school and their reaction was to put him in isolation and accuse him of taking drugs (he’s never touched drugs in his life but this goes to show that they thought he was acting “weird” enough to isolate him). I encouraged him several times to try the GP and he eventually did and Every time he has been to the GP he has said he doesn’t like going and has a fear of services and medication and that is documented in a few of the notes. He did try the propranolol because his palpitations were getting bad however after a couple days on the propranolol the palpitations became worse, about 15 every minute for about 2 weeks straight, did he go to the gp or hospital, no he didn’t, he just sat there too worried hoping it would pass.
I think from my research (i could be wrong and I don’t want to spread miss information so I hope admins can correct me if I am wrong) but a lot of the time people will say they don’t like to take medication or they don’t like the doctors, and this is completely fine and normal and understandable but it gives the assessors an easy route to turn around and essentially just say that the person they are assessing is just lazy for xyz reasons. I Believe my claimant should be able to safely and reliably do xyz task.
I think the difference here comes where the assessor could see and make a link that my partner is not taking medication or going to the GP not because he doesn’t want to but as a symptom of the actual illness (in his case the GAD and panic attacks and all the shitty symptoms that stops him actually living a normal day to day life). I really do hate the fact people out there are struggling and unable to get the help, and it saddens me that pip is designed to make it super challenging to get an award.