WHAT DO THEY MEAN BIOPSYCOSOCIAL DISEASE

Please help me to understand what they are implying in my ESA85:
My condition: Failed Spinal Fusion 2006, Permanent Nerve Damage Due to work related fall in 1990. In the Personalised Summary Statement of my ESA85 the Healthcare Professional (The word CARE should really be omitted) states: She clearly shows the Biopsychosocial Disease process with self limiting of activities and heavy reliance on others for everything. She has severe pain and would be unable to sit still for long enough to focus to co-ordinate using aids to mobilise any reasonable distance. This is all consistent with her having problems mobilising and combining sitting and standing? (Activity 1 Wc. 100 metres) (Activity 2 Sb, Standing, Sitting for more than 30 mins)
I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what the words Biopsychosocial Disease means. I have been put in the WRAG group. I attended the work focused interview where I was told they will phone me in 2yrs time.

pippers wrote: Please help me to understand what they are implying in my ESA85:
My condition: Failed Spinal Fusion 2006, Permanent Nerve Damage Due to work related fall in 1990. In the Personalised Summary Statement of my ESA85 the Healthcare Professional (The word CARE should really be omitted) states: She clearly shows the Biopsychosocial Disease process with self limiting of activities and heavy reliance on others for everything. She has severe pain and would be unable to sit still for long enough to focus to co-ordinate using aids to mobilise any reasonable distance. This is all consistent with her having problems mobilising and combining sitting and standing? (Activity 1 Wc. 100 metres) (Activity 2 Sb, Standing, Sitting for more than 30 mins)
I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what the words Biopsychosocial Disease means. I have been put in the WRAG group. I attended the work focused interview where I was told they will phone me in 2yrs time.

Hi p,

The Bio-psychosocial Model of assessment was basically used originally by Insurance Companies to assess claims.

Have a read of our News Story, here :

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/2219-unum...acity-benefit-reform

See also :

Bio-psychosocial Assessments.

It appears that they may be implying that the limitations mentioned are in some part psychological, and that you are self limiting your own capabilities.

bro58

Hi Bro58 Thanks for the info, from checking out the information you gave me I came across a little bit more imformation about Biopsychosocial use in the ATOS medicals.
Professor Sir Mansel Aylward had finally confirmed that the highly discredited BPS model of disability was now "unsatisfactory" and that its use "no longer addresses the real needs of disabled people and the exclusion of disabled people from society"
I am appealing against this and other discrepancies and contradictions in my ESA85. will let you know how I get on.

BioPsychoSocial (henceforward referred to as BPS) is a label for some health conditions. It is currently fashionable, particularly amongst psychologists and insurance companies.

Their explanation usually goes something like this:

"Many health conditions which are reported to doctors and used to claim benefits are not real diseases. Diseases have a proper set of objective tests, like X-Rays, and known causes, like kidney failure. Quite often they also have known methods of treatment or even cure.

But there are lots of conditions which don't fit this description, ME/CFS is a prime example. The patient reports profound fatigue, badly impaired concentration, muscle and joint pain and lots of other things which the doctor cannot test or measure. Many of these are BPS conditions and not real diseases at all."

What BPS people say about ME/CFS (and lots of other things) is that the onset of the condition may have been a genuine illness, like a nasty bout of glandular fever. That's the "bio" bit and its usually well in the past.

Afterwards, however, the patient may subconsciously make a decision to keep on being ill, because of the "secondary benefits". Some of these are psychological. e.g. if you're not doing very well at work, then being ill allows you to opt out of the competition without having to admit you're not very good at the job. So that's the psycho bit.

Then, if you are treated as being ill, then everyone sympathises with you and helps you out. You may be able to get state benefits, or money from a health insurance policy which you wouldn't get if you were not treated as being ill. That the social bit.

So if you have a BPS condition, then what you need (by their public account) is to be made to get active again, to have the prop of being considered ill taken away from you - which includes state/insurance company benefits - and you will gradually learn to manage without your illness.

This means that anyone who helps you or sympathises with you or believes that you have a genuine physical disorder is colluding in keeping you a dependent on others.

It also means that taking away your benefits is actually good for you.

Some of us translate this as "you are just malingering and need a kick up the backside to made get on with life and stop whingeing. This will also save your insurance company, or the state, the expense of helping to support you."

The BPS explanation is very popular with insurance companies who have sold this idea to the DWP and Atos.

pippers wrote: Hi Bro58 Thanks for the info, from checking out the information you gave me I came across a little bit more imformation about Biopsychosocial use in the ATOS medicals.
Professor Sir Mansel Aylward had finally confirmed that the highly discredited BPS model of disability was now "unsatisfactory" and that its use "no longer addresses the real needs of disabled people and the exclusion of disabled people from society"
I am appealing against this and other discrepancies and contradictions in my ESA85. will let you know how I get on.

Hi P,

I am glad that you found the information that you were looking for.

As you will have seen, it is rather complicated to explain in a post.

I think that there may have been an article late last year, on Mansel Aylward, in our News section, if you wish to have a search through the articles.

Good luck, and please let us know how things are progressing.

bro58