'The MSE guide to Mental Health and debt... nearly there at last' blog discussion

pebble65

I do not think I would be here now if it was not for the help and support I have received on mse. When i first posted, I was severely depressed,on medication, my world turned upside down.I had around £13000 of debt which had accumulated over a few troubled years when most of my adult life I had had a good credit rating,no huge money issues -but at the time of posting I was so messed up with everything, the money issues were mounting and I did not want to live, life was so unbearable.

Mse'rs helped. I got good advice on dmp, went through CCCS , but then I hit another crisis when due to an unexpected drop in income, I couldnt meet the DMP agreed repayments so CCcS told me they couldnt help anymore. Mse'rs advised me to go to the CAB, who took up my case, and Mse'rs pointed me in the direction of consumer legislation which should protect vulnerable people, to the point where eventually the debt collection agencies began to listen, stopped ringing me, and settled down to a payment plan i could manage.

The problems that triggered my depression are still there, I still owe £9000 approx, and still may not be doing things in the most beneficial way to clear my debt and face another few years of plodding on repaying, and maybe Im not living the life I aspire to, restricted budget, limited means,............... but I am recovering-now mild depression, off meds just on monitoring by gp with an open door policy.Ive been open and honest about this in all aspects of my life, including work, and have helped a few others cope with things life has thrown at them. Without MSE I don't think I would have acheived this -so I am truly grateful that you are there and that you are proactive in looking at ways of helping without stigmatising people. 1 in 4 people suffer mental health issues at some point, but many recover.Many more would probably recover faster and easier if they could receive support when they need it and without being stigmatised.

Thank you for being there for me when it felt everyone else was walking away.

rubytuesday

Well done and excellent news. As someone with Bipolar who got into debt when I was off work and therefore unable to repay my credit card (not because I went on a mad spending spree) I know how this compounds the problems. Thank you x

CyberHelen

Excellent news Martin. I look forward greatly to reading it.

I have Mental Health Issues, and was almost debt free from paying back my student loans (Which i was forced to pay back at £15,000 and they included my London Weighting in that figure as disposable income - thus, debt for living spiralled as i paid it back)
I only had £5,000 left to pay off from £28,000 when I became Mentally Unwell.:(:(:(:(

Since becoming unwell 4 years ago, my income dropped from £30,000 a year (if i did lots of nights) to £7500 on benefits.:eek: I have pulled my belt in as much as humanly possible - but despite initial recovery, I was discharged because i no longer met the "sickness requirements" for help. I had tipped from 50% unwell to 49% unwell and i lost my help.

Loosing services and with the banks deciding that they could reduce my overdraft by 1/2 my monthly income in 1 month :mad: (they didn't seem to get that it meant it was equivalent to my whole monthly income as i had to reduce it by the required amount, and still pay bills-whilst keeping it within the new limit) despite taking an advocate with me, the bank manager was sympathetic - but head office tied her hands - :mad: i have now left that bank - i had been banking with then since i was 7 (29 years):mad:

As a result - my mental health took a new hit - I am back in Therapy - which will. now last at least 2 more years, my finances are now being sorted by Christians Against Poverty :T- who have taken the weight and the worry away and for which i really thank them. And i am awaiting to hear whether it is Bankruptcy or DRO - it all depends now on the Mortgage Company, which one i will be able to go for.

i have to applaud CAP in their dealings with me. I went to the CAB, who gave me an initial assessment form to fill in detailing how much i spent per week on bread, milk, toiletries etc - i must admit i took one look at the form and panicked!! I looked at it in horror - i couldn't work out that detail. CAP just took all my income details, all my expenditure details and then worked it out for me and i stick to it like glue. I couldn't have got anywhere near to sorting out this mess without them.

The worry and stress of loosing the house still preys on my mind, but i am begining to be able to cope with it - though i will also admit - that all the cuts that have been announced in Benefits and the cut in SMI (which means i now have to pay 62% of my income on the mortgage) sent me into a huge downwards spiral from which i emerged last week.

My suggestion - is keep it very simple - remember some people with mental health problems cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes before their brains give up on taking in information.

I applaud all your hard work on this issue - it is greatly appreciated by me, and i'm sure others as well.

Karina_Marshall

I think you may mean "stock in trade" rather than "stocking trade" :rotfl:

dizzygirl

i was sent this link. i started reading then thought i would post, maybe my mental health impacts greater than i realise. reading some of the posts ive got a different perspective entirely borne out of experience with the bank, with the solicitor offering advice, with presenting papers for bankruptcy, and with having mental health probs all my life. part of me wants to express, part wants me to stay quiet. but hey, here goes. no one will bother with my two pennorth anyway.
i banked with one of the big uns, had been with them since my divorce, which was sh**. i will mention the previous big bank i was with during my marriage shafted me too and at that time i hadnt had a diagnosis so didnt realise i was ill, but only that everything was a struggle. so that was my first hurdle. that first big bank hiccup. i had been a loyal customer, paying all my expenditure on time etc, but once i was divorced my financial situation changed overnight. i was homeless, took my issues up with money/debt support agencies, put things on hold...in effect due to my circumstances i never did pay that first hurdle and hiccup, but as i was ashamed about that, i took up with one of the other big four so that i could start afresh.
my new circs, new relationship, etc meant i was very unstable in all sense of the word, little did i know how much the mental health was to impact. suffice to say 6 years down the line things were really bad, healthwise and i was struggling to just survive basically
but i relied heavily on my new relationship and this meant i was not in a good place to make judgements. ultimately i kept going thro the same loops with my finances. my circs meant i was getting IS but out of that money i was supporting myself, my 4 children and my new relationship and keeping a home running. i managed this on IS but the impact on my mental health was enormous
every time i tried to do new things i fell back into old habits as this was my comfort zone. i was suffering PTSD and other mental issues and i didnt tell the bank, other that i was ill
eventually i moved, to a new area, still with the same bank, but as a newbie, no one knew me. i wanted to give a good impression but the bank was very clique and very soon i had to highlight that i was ill, but still didnt say what it was. apparently on insurance docs etc mental illness, depression, if its not revealed, could invalidate the insurance, but some areas its best to reveal, others its not
i fell into the trap of getting my benefit, but not on time, which meant money was to be in the account, and appearing online, but not in the account until the monday and i didnt know this. i couldnt by this time operate my account effectively as i would fall into the dip of emotional morass which is my lot. if i tried to take control i would forget, only the old habits were what i remembered, im talking about pin numbers, if i tried to change i couldnt recall what i had changed them too and it was becoming a position where i couldnt use pin and chip or anything of this nature
i revealed i had mental health issues, they wanted to know very personal questions which i thought was wrong and at the teller counter i was told to take a firm stance on my finances, which i bought up as a complaint. i was actually verbally abused badly by this bank over this issue and i refused to go back into the bank. i took the issue with the solicitor who knew of my situation. we took the line of using martins advice over following the bank over charging etc
then the solicitor offered advice over the financial issues. and we also discovered that the bank were in the wrong to take benefit money and leave with nothing, so we got that money back and thats why i stopped going in to the bank itself. i also took the decision that i was no longer well enough to handle my finances or deal with any of the interaction necessary
and we took the matters of the bankruptcy up, drew up all the papers then drew a blank when it came to presenting as it meant a financial outlay that we didnt have. the advice we were given by the solicitor meant if we made no further contact with any debtors pressing for payment but referred them back to the solicitor, this meant bailiffs, we did not use cards from then on, we used cash, we took out money from the banks and only used this payment method where we could do no other, making payments in cash
and survived the best we could. mental health is not improved, i will never be able to deal with my finances, i cant even hold pennies in my hand and understand the decisions etc that make up choices. no one has addressed this. we are 3-4 years down the line of not making any further contact with creditors. overall the figure only amounted to £3,000 between us. im still wracked by shame but it was a case of trying to manage. we couldnt take any more out of our benefit, as we needed this to manage and not get into further debt and thats our slant on how we coped ...
whether others will understand and relate, its debateable. im not going to get better and i am very dependent on my husband (this is my new relationship, so there was progress in that area at least)
i am accountable, i am ill, i live - we both live, very frugally but we are not in debt, we have all we need to get by. its not rocket science, its a case of cut the cloth etc....but thats it

Terri31

Bless you dizzygirl... good luck to you and I'm sure Martin can use that as further evidence of the work that needs to be done on raising people's awareness of money issues and mental health xxx

dizzygirl

was gonna add, we have a phone line for internet use. the phone means we get calls but as we dont give out the number we installed an answer phone which is turned off, this way takes care of all unwanted calls. i couldnt deal with the phone or the contact from others. we live very isolated, we dont socialise, we use a car but walk when we have to. i couldnt use public transport and whilst it sounds bleak, we do live in a scenic part which allows for walks and fresh air

Erme

I just thank you for this thread guys. I forwarded it to the clinical nurse manager of my local unit and she was very interested .....so hopefully word will spread...

I also think it's great :j how ppl are telling their stories (good and bad) of mental health and debt and what helps and what doesn't....this can only be a good thing.....It's like recovery stories but specifically about this ....

Once again so glad to whoever gave me the link for this (think it was ST off facebook)....

E

Zebra

Penelope - Could you please clarify whether people with mental health issues are welcomed on the forum or not?

On a recent thread in Discussion Time, one of the Board Guides (Alwaysonthego) stated that Martin Lewis had said that the forum was not a suitable place for those people suffering from such problems.

I cannot post a link to the thread as it has now been deleted, but it was a discussion about the bullying apparent on this thread where the OP, who was clearly suffering from such issues, apparently committed suicide.

As an aside I would be interested as to why the thread was removed.

Terri31

Although I don't want to intrude here I feel impelled to comment that I think Martin would also say that a forum here is not a suitable place for bullies either. I would agree that a public forum - apart from one specifically aiming to help and support people - is a risky place to be if anyone is feeling really low or is having a relapse of a mental health disorder, as to protect them would require a huge amount of input from moderators. I'm confident Martin wouldn't mean that people are 'not welcome' in the sense you imply and that his wish was to safeguard people's health. It really isn't a good idea to divulge personal difficulties anywhere public because there are people who react poorly and are unable to empathise, and some are pretty harsh, which feels terrible to anyone sat at home alone trying to cope with difficulties plus low mood or worse. It's a question of self-protection and I think Martin's comment is from this perspective - being protective - rather than any other more negative standpoint.