Newsflash – abuse causes mental illness!

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tmiw-kafkaesque
ACC’s new logo

Newsflash – abuse causes mental illness. What? No!! Really???!!!

At last, finally ACC is being held to account over their ridiculous plan to knock as many abuse survivors off their books as they possibly can, with any excuse they can possibly find. It’s sick, it’s profit driven, and I am so proud of Judge Powell for finally sticking a spanner in their heartless system.

1 in 4 women and 1 in 8ish men are survivors of sexual assault. I know that’s going to cost the government a lot of $$$’s, but I really don’t care. Whether or not ACC should be responsible for this compensation is a legitimate argument, but I’m not going to concentrate on that today. It currently is – so it should damn well do its job and assist survivors in recovering their mental wellness and be enabled to live functional lives.

Psychologist Kyle MacDonald has campaigned long and hard for ACC to drop their ridiculous attitude towards sexual assault survivors, and has been what seems the lone voice for common sense (it’s not as common as you’d think) on the part of ACC regarding these cases. Well, I’m now adding mine.

How a government department has gotten away with the stunts that they have pulled is appalling and a major fail that needs to be held to account. Who on earth puts an open abuse-denier whose husband and his family have been to prison for sexual abuse in charge of sensitive claims? ACC does. ‘Dr’ Felicity Goodyear-Smith is in charge of sensitive claims at ACC. I have her book – ‘First Do No Harm – The Sexual Abuse Industry’. 167 infuriating pages worth of abuse denial. Who on earth puts a woman like that in charge of making decisions for abuse survivors? No agenda there, nah, not at all (yeah right)!

When ACC announced its profit for the year, I genuinely felt sick. Hurrah!! ACC’s actually in the black!! Pfffft. Just goes to show what lies we were told about the state of their financial affairs in the first place. A manufactured crisis that had huge ramifications for deserving sexual abuse survivors.

They made it all about money, and didn’t give a damn when their cuts to services caused mental illness, desperation and even suicide.

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As if having to be assaulted, then try and convince family and friends it happened, then try and convince the police it happened, then trying (if they get that far) to convince a jury it happened isn’t enough, now they have to also sit down and prove to a psychiatrist/psychologist hired especially to decline claims that it happened too. Talk about endless revictimisation. No wonder many never tell a soul, never reach out for help, never recover.

What an utterly insane way for a government department mandated to give a damn to act. It’s not like we have alternative routes to getting counselling and financial assistance after abuse. This is it. If ACC won’t help – sorry mate – you’re doomed to a life of PTSD, depression, anxiety – even schizophrenia – and we really don’t care cos it’s all about the money.

To try and claim that hearing voices isn’t at least partly the result of sexual abuse is utterly absurd. I don’t have schizophrenia, but I sure know the impact of abuse. Over the years I have suffered from depression, anxiety, social phobia, and PTSD. I got better – thanks to being lucky enough to have had 5 years with a great therapist on ACC before the changes to entitlement. Did I hear voices? Not made up ones, no. But boy did I hear, and still sometimes hear, all the ‘tapes’ that were installed by my abusers. These tapes made my life hell. They wore away at any self-esteem, any self-worth, any motivation that I had. They constantly reminded me what a nothing I was and how much I deserved to be hurt. Abuse does not end when it physically stops. Its effects last a LIFETIME. And I will not, and nor should any of us bow down to a government department hell bent on forcing us to suffer in silence because they want to publish a massive profit.

What is there to ‘rethink’? Legitimate, unbiased, validated research by many many researchers has shown strong causal links between abuse and mental illness. We’ve known this for years. Why is NZ a country full of ostriches run by crazy detractors with hands over their ears singing lalalalalalala – see no evil hear no evil??!! This research is constantly published in journals read by our psychiatrists. So what’s with the denial?

I wonder what the criteria to have a contract with ACC is? I can imagine the interview.
‘You don’t believe in sexual abuse? Awesome. You don’t believe in mental illness caused by abuse? Awesome. You think all articles proving it are a load of crap? Excellent. You’re hired!! Now go out there and decline as many people as you can. We pay extra for declines.’

That’s the sickening reality at ACC. For goodness sakes – what is wrong with our government??!!

ACC’s sensitive claims unit needs an overhaul. In its mission, its strategy, its staff, its leadership.
The sensitive claims unit should be a welcoming, enabling service that actively reaches out to the community to encourage survivors to ask for help. It should reassure them that they deserve to live a life free from the incredible pain that comes from abuse and rape. It should be a process where survivors are welcomed and encouraged to express their secret hell in the knowledge that doing so will increase the help available to them – not a process of walking over hot coals only to be declined. It should embrace the truth – that abuse is a huge influence on mental health.

ACC should be a world leader in providing comprehensive assistance, not an international embarrassment. Wake up and grow a heart, National.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Boy, is this all true. Thank you for writing this.
    As a survivour with PTSD, anxiety and agoraphobia, going through ACC has been a nightmare. All of my medication has been upped and I’ve been put on new medication just to deal with them.
    For ACC to claim that 3 years of violent sexual abuse didn’t give me my anxiety disorders, even though I have proof, but that ‘something else caused it, we don’t know what, just something else’. Has been awful.
    I have had to fight them for 2 years now and it might be another 2 more just to get the help I need. Finding an advocate to help has been almost impossible.
    But mainly I worry about the people just like me who get turned down and then can’t continue to fight and just give up and decide to live with their illnesses. ACC owes those people more than they could ever give back to them. Not only can you not get help, you leave your ACC battle with worse scars than before.

  2. http://evolutionarymeans.com/2013/11/10/obedience-and-the-death-of-conscience/

    Sexual abuse occurs when a base instinct is able to be expressed without the constraints of conscience .
    Violence is able to be expressed without the constraints of conscience . ( Such as war and soldiering . )

    Our ‘ government’ actively encourages the suppression of conscience in it’s demands that we citizens crush one another under foot in the pursuit of profit . That theft of conscience is seeping into our society and it’s that which is causing us terrible damage .
    The reason why our ‘ government ‘ is bleaching us from our conscience is simple . They have a lie to hide and we are the collateral damage of that process .

    The Lie is that we , as a country must borrow money off shore to support an urban population while the Good Old Boys rape and pillage our export industry for their private wealth creation and damn the lot of us .

    The ‘ government ‘ borrows money against the likes of the fat flanks of ACC so of course they want more money pouring into ACC than is being spent on [us] because if we have ACC money spent on [us] , that spending devalues the asset the ‘ government ‘ is using as collateral to borrow against . Am I wrong ? Who wants to enter the fucking ring on this one ?

    New Zealand is not much more than this .

    Four Million , one hundred and ninety nine thousand , nine hundred and ninety victims of abuse and ten scum bags who have our money and are laughing as they watch us struggle .

    Who are these mythical Scum Bags you ask ?

    Look who squats at the Business Round Table . Fat and soulless like maggots on a carcass . Look at the Executive of Federated Farmers . Look at the board members of the Primary Producer Boards . Look at the Gin Palaces floating like big white shits in Auckland harbour .

    Come to know your enemy .

    National nor it’s Minions will ever grow the heart you want . They will always be fiendish . It’s in the blood . It’s up to us to put a stop to the bastards and put them back in their place .
    Excellent Post Rachael Goldsmith . Your anger is commendable .

  3. I saw Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith in her capacity as a general practitioner many years ago. She struck me as totally devoid of any sort of empathy and incapable of connecting with people on a human level. I am appalled that she should have anything to do with sensitive claims, but sadly not surprised that ACC is using her. In my view, she should not be practising any sort of medicine that requires contact with patients. Ironically, Felicity has the same root as felicidade and felicidad, which mean happiness in Latin languages. Her parents should have called her Tristeza, because that’s what she’ll bring to those she revictimises.

  4. Yes, I wonder what has happened to this “exit strategy” that ’60 minutes’ exposed in September 2012? It went mighty quiet after all the initial outrage about ACC off-loading complex and costly claims cases off their books.

    Suddenly the talk by the Minister, the government politicians, and certainly also the so often misinforming, misleading media, only focused on “privacy breaches”, little else.

    Strangely the same happened with the ruthless welfare reforms brought in since July this year, which WINZ implements ruthlessly and relentlessly, to sole parents, sick and disabled, also some that were earlier “off loaded” by ACC. There was much furore about the privacy breaches at the customer self help kiosks, but there was damned little attention by the media on what is really going on.

    So, yes ACC “rolls” in lots of cash, from investments, and from “savings”, but abused and others, that should get support and treatment, they are often “short changed”:

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15530-acc-rolling-in-cash-while-many-claimants-left-without-help/

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15264-welfare-reform-the-health-and-disability-panel-msd-the-truth-behind-the-agenda/

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15188-medical-and-work-capability-assessments-based-on-the-bps-model-aimed-at-disentiteling-affected-from-welfare-benefits-and-acc-compo/

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15463-designated-doctors-%e2%80%93-used-by-work-and-income-some-also-used-by-acc/

    And where is that extra spending on mental health services, by the way, dear Tony Ryall, Bill English and Paula Beneshit? We were told there was to be more spent and better services offered, but apart from some extra spend on prison inmates and a few youth, all I hear from providers is about cuts and caps on spending!?

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