Here is a mental health consumer's personal history. The patient gets treatment or support for a mental disorder.
Updated by Bryan Kilgallin on 27 June, 2025.
Background
Harassment and assault at work 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.
Psychological treatment controlled the flashbacks. High-dose medication continued to relieve them. 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 worsening my depression. As 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 These groups had been block funded, but with the advent of the NDIS, this block funding had been withdrawn and put into the pool of NDIS funding.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 was 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 an additional evidence form. This was submitted to an NDIA official. But again it was rejected; I wasn't disabled enough.
Next, with the help of a lawyer and my advocate, I went to the next stage of review. My lawyer asked for more time to get further evidence that was required. This was 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 Kafka's The Castle. It's about alienation, bureaucracy, frustration, and futility. Kafka's The Trial expresses my feelings of appealing to NDIS. The Trial is one of his best-known works. It's about a man arrested and prosecuted by an authority. The nature of his crime isn't revealed. The NDIS' process of proving your disability, was disempowering.
[Edited from] 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 personality disorder. That was not compensable.
Treating psychiatrist
In contrast, my treating psychiatrist Dr Lean, reported thus in June 2018.
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 that was short 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". That was for loss of income.
Newsletter illustrations
The ACT Mental Health Consumer Network has twice published my photos of its barbecue parties. On June 30, 2021, they were on page 6 of its Winter newsletter.
More were on page 13 of its Summer 2024 Network News.
