Hi, my friend is currently claiming ESA for mental illness which is anxiety,depression and OCD. They have been assessed a few months ago and were awarded ESA and put into the support group, they have been with various mental health teams and were finally put into CBT therapy where they was diagnosed with OCD,anxiety and depression.

They finished this 2 weeks ago and their scores have come down to normal levels, however their OCD was not treated as there was not enough time to work on this, they tried coming of their medication 2 weeks ago and then went into complete panic and suffered from extreme anxiety and now have been put back onto their original dose.

They have started to go out the past couple months and tried to start doing normal things but still suffer with anxiety and when they went out with some friends they felt so anxious that they started to use drugs and alcohol to cope with the anxiety.

They then stopped going out because they couldn't cope and went to a substance abuse and mental health charity treatment centre, who they are now with and they are going to groups with them and trying to get referred for some CBT to help with their OCD and low confidence, self esteem etc.

This is all they are doing at the moment and trying to get themselves better, they also prior going to the assessment went on a holiday in which they were so anxious they stayed in the hotel room they told the gp about this, but when they went to the assessment they were so nervous and anxious during the assessment they forgot to tell them and was sure they were not asked, also they didn't know they had to tell them until last week when was anxious due to lowered medication.

They were on the internet and saw an article about benefit fraud and this triggered a panic attack and there mind told them they had committed some type of fraud, they then began searching the internet for information regarding fraud, now have been panicking about this, can someone tell me if they have done something wrong?

I'll let others offer opinions, but I can't see any problem here. People on ESA are allowed to take holidays, and in terms of his condition, it doesn't sound like there's been a significant improvement since he was assessed. I see no fraud.

ESA accept that people do have better days.

With the activities, it hsa to be something that can be done repeatedly and not cause any health problem (ie, going out without it causing a panic attack) to the claimant.

My friend is in the support group for esa, they have now finished therapy and was diagnosed with ocd during the therapy this was not tarted ad there was not enough time, there anxiety and depression scores went down to normal levels, however there ocd is the source of there anxiety and they are still very anxious and as anxious as they were before therapy, they think the dwp will think they are better because of there scores being shown as normal on there reports but they don't feel better yet, are they at risk of being seen as committing fraud?

Hello there.

I've merged your two threads as they seem to be about the same thing.

HB