Parents warned of \u2018hidden crisis\u2019 as childcare costs push 1 in 6 to credit cards<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nAt the time, this represented a 29% increase in the number of claimants since July 2021 (2.8m).<\/p>\n
Mental health conditions and behavioural disorders were found to be the main cause of the increased numbers.<\/p>\n
When comparing 2019 to 2024, the number of people claiming PIP for anxiety and depression rose from 2,500 per month to 8,800 per month.<\/p>\n
1,444,016 people were receiving financial support for \u2018Psychiatric disorders\u2019 by the end of April 2025, with 3.7 million people in total receiving PIP by then.<\/p>\n
PIP’s use of ‘Psychiatric disorders’ covers anxiety and mood disorders, stress reactions and depressive disorders, along with a wide range of other conditions that may affect someone’s mental wellbeing.<\/p>\n
It comes as thousands of PIP claimants could be owed over \u00a35,000 after a major DWP error.<\/p>\n
Thousands of disabled people may be entitled to payouts worth over \u00a35,000 each after a string of serious administrative errors.<\/p>\n
PIP claimants have been wrongly denied vital support or underpaid due to mistakes stretching back years.<\/p>\n
Some claums were wrongly rejected from people who didn\u2019t have a National Insurance number, despite the fact that one is not required to qualify for PIP.<\/p>\n
he DWP has reviewed 455 of these cases and paid out \u00a3500,000 in arrears in the past 12 months alone.<\/p>\n
In July 2019, a Supreme Court ruling followed an Upper Tribunal decision that altered how the DWP interprets the term ‘social support’ for Daily Living activity number nine.<\/p>\n
This ‘MM’ judgment pertains to the definition of ‘social support’ when interacting with others face-to-face and when ‘prompting’ should be deemed ‘social support’ in the PIP assessment, as well as how far ahead social support can be provided.<\/p>\n
Ayla Ozmen, director of policy at anti-poverty charity Z2K, warned that benefits underpayment errors could cause “significant financial hardship” for disabled people.<\/p>\n
“We are calling on the DWP to do everything it can to ensure that these errors are corrected as soon as possible,” Ozmen said.<\/p>\n
Former Liberal Democrat DWP minister Sir Steve Webb suggested the review of social support-related PIP cases “could perhaps have been processed more promptly”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Individuals with long-term physical or mental conditions can get the money through Personal Independence PaymentsThe DWP is paying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[1267,105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-283555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-dwp","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114899104426923038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Department](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_Department-For-Work-And-Pensions.jpg\")
The DWP is paying up to \u00a3750 to people with stress, anxiety, or depression(Image: In Pictures via Getty Images)<\/p>\n