Can I claim on PPP if I am suffering from stress or mental illness?

Almost all Payment Protection Plans (PPP) exclude any claims which result from any form of mental illness, including stress. This is unfortunate, and can leave many unemployed claimants with little to no recourse.

But the fact is that in the past decade the distinction that used to exist between mental and physical illnesses has been disappearing. The illnesses that PPP purports to cover should take care of a range of medical symptoms, and how this doesn't include mental symptoms, the insurers have not really been able to explain. 50% of all illnesses are, according to media reports, caused by mental illnesses. So it is a significant and unrealistic limitation of cover to automatically exclude mental illnesses, and it is sometimes not being made completely clear to purchasers of insurance before they buy the policy.

The reason for insurers' concerns about mental illnesses such as stress and depression is that they are very difficult to diagnose and verify with confidence, which means that actually assessing claimants fitness to work is extremely difficult. Some insurers address this by only accepting claims should the insured person be receiving treatment or have been referred to a consultant for their condition.

It gets more complicated though if you are made redundant fairly and squarely, but then suffer from depression. When you claim for unemployment you need to be actively seeking work. But you can't do that if you are too ill to sign on.

So, you have the combined impact of not being able to claim on sickness benefit due to being diagnosed with a mental illness, and also not being able to claim for unemployment due to restrictions on your redundancy policy. Both of these individually are reasonable exclusions, but together they are unfair. Redundancy is an extremely difficult thing to take, and stress related symptoms are commonly related to it. If someone can't look for work as they are sick, then how is it fair that they can't claim due to their insurer stipulating that a claimant must be actively seeking for work?

Should someone be made redundant, then suffer from an illness which would have been covered by a disability policy, then they are covered under the redundancy policy. Had they still had a job when they contracted that illness, they would have been covered under disability policies.

It is not unreasonable that an insurer should require someone to whom they are paying redundancy benefits to be searching for new employment. But they do need to accept that some people made redundant will suffer from ill-health which stops them searching for work for a period, but which will not affect their prospects for re-employment when they do eventually look for work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© AskFinancially.com 2008

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