Bryan Kilgallin's mental health

Mental health is an aspect of well-being. Here is a mental health consumer's personal history.

Care bridges personal experience with clinical evaluation. Clinicians explore consumer life and wellbeing.
They gather information, asking about:

• complaint (symptoms or challenges);
• family genetics and environment;
• substance use interactions and issues;
• social functioning (daily life, relationships, and interactions); and
• stress (sources and management of pressures).

In mental health, the consumers are users of services for mental disorders.

These clinical questions inform areas of concern for consumers:

• safety (addressing risks);
• support (developing intervention strategies);
• impairment (impact on daily functioning and quality of life);
• stigma (barriers to seeking and maintaining support); and
• quality of life (improving overall well-being).

Newsletter illustrations

The ACT Mental Health Consumer Network has published my small group photos of its barbecue parties on two occasions. That was in its newsletter. On June 30, 2021, they mostly filled page 6 of the Winter 2021 edition. My only such contribution was photographing these two social events.

More of my photos were on page 13 of its Summer 2024 Network News.

Background

Experiencing harassment and assault at work wrecked my mental health! That trauma aggravated my conscientious tendency into frank OCD with post traumatic symptoms.

As a result I became anxious about Kafkaesque bureaucracy and angry at the system.

Psychological treatment managed the flashbacks. Then high-dose medication continued calming them.

However, the overall course of the anxiety disorder continued to progress. And I experienced symptoms of depression.

I have been dealing with impairments that led to my medical retirement. That decision aimed to prevent complications in managing my depression. Mental health consumers tend to experience stigma and victimisation, which are challenging for recovery and wellbeing.

Journal article

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 These groups had been block funded, but with the advent of the NDIS, this block funding was withdrawn and put into the pool of NDIS funding.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. But 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 a Kafkaesque nightmare, of a Byzantine bureaucracy! I can relate to 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.<

Administrative Appeals Tribunal

I sought support for psychosocial disability. On 19 January 2017, I attended a tribunal--that ruled the NDIS would not assist me.

Appealing Comcare's decision

Insurance-assessment

In April 2018, I was examined by a psychiatrist hired by Comcare. His opinion was that my condition was a personality disorder, which would not be compensable under the legislation.

Treating psychiatrist

In June 2018, my treating psychiatrist contradicted the insurer's psychiatric evaluation.

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 reached a settlement with my solicitors, ending the legal proceedings.

Then In October of that year, the insurer started paying my medical bills. But I later discovered they were short by thousands of dollars! After I revised my lawyers’ spreadsheet in December, the other party agreed to pay the remaining balance.

In December, I received an after-tax payment for "incapacity", which compensated for the loss of income.