Here is a mental health consumer's personal history.
Background
Harassment and assault in the workplace led to a nervous breakdown. It exacerbated my conscientious tendency. Leaving me with OCD, and post traumatic symptoms. It left me anxious about Kafkaesque bureaucracy and angry at the system.
The flashbacks were controlled by psychological treatment and continued to be relieved by high-dose medication. However, the course of the anxiety disorder continued to progress. Some depression began to set in.
So I remain disabled. I was medically retired, to avoid exacerbating my depression. Because mental health consumers continue to experience stigma and victimisation.
Journal article
One person’s experience of fighting to access the NDIS
By Bryan Kilgallin
After I had my breakdown, I found attending groups like art classes and badminton assisted me and brought great enjoyment and helped with the challenges of living with mental health problems. These groups had been block funded, but with the advent of the NDIS, this block funding had been withdrawn and put into the pool of NDIS funding. To keep accessing these supports that had made a difference in my life, I had to try and access individual funding through the NDIS.
The access request forms were the first challenge. The medical evidence form is not designed at all for someone with mental illness. I was given a form from a mental health organisation, the NDIS Evidence of Disability Report form. Unfortunately, the misleading negative wording led to my psychiatrist filling out the complete opposite assessment to the actual facts about my condition. But my advocate informed me that I had not been given all pages of the form! So the shrink didn't read the negatively-worded, greyed-out header ‘function... reduced’. And he ticked boxes where I could do something, and crossed them where I couldn't. The NDIS reviewer in Perth read that I could do what the shrink meant that I couldn't, and couldn't do what he'd thought I could! My application was rejected by the NDIA.
So, I went through my first review, I got more evidence, including the supplementary evidence form. This was submitted to an NDIA official, again it was rejected—I wasn’t disabled enough.
Next, with the assistance of a lawyer and my advocate, I went to the next stage of review. My lawyer requested an extension of time to get further evidence that was required—an extensive report from my psychiatrist about my mental illness.
When I shared my experience with other people I know with mental health problems, they told me to sue them, but fighting them is easier said than done. It has been like being in a Kafkaesque nightmare, of a Byzantine bureaucracy! I can relate to the story of Kafka’s The Castle, which is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal. Kafka's The Trial expresses my feelings of appealing to NDIS. The Trial is one of his best-known works. It tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. The NDIS' processes, including that of proving your disability, are completely disempowering.
ACTCOSS Update, Issue 77, Spring 2016, NDIS Transition - Where have we landed?, Bryan Kilgallin: One person’s experience of fighting to access the NDIS, p.4.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal
I was in a tribunal, on Thursday 19 January 2017. The NDIS would not help me!
Appealing Comcare's decision
Insurance-assessment
In April 2018, an insurance-psychiatrist examined me. He claimed that I merely had a non-compensable personality disorder.
Treating psychiatrist
In contrast, my treating psychiatrist Dr Lean, reported in June 2018 as follows:
Mr Kilgallins Axis I Diagnosis accounts for his entire psychiatric state and they are directly associated to his work place injury -consistently reported more proximal to his injury and the report trajectory - his premorbid and functioning do not manifest a Personality Disorder at all.
Settlement
In April 2019, EML agreed to a settlement with my solicitors.
Then In October, the insurer started paying my medical bills. But I found out I was owed thousands of dollars! In December, I revised my lawyers’ spreadsheet. On seeing which, the other party agreed to pay me the balance.
In addition, in December, I also received, net of tax, payment for "incapacity" (loss of income).
Newsletter illustration
On June 30, 2021, my barbecue photos were featured on page 6 of the Winter newsletter of the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network.