Dr Jay Watts
@shrinkatlarge.bsky.social
Consultant psychotherapist/ disability activist/ bluestocking. Former Lived Experience Worker, future failed poet. Will question ideology for cake ❤️🥄💜🎭🦓🥄🏳️🌈 #MadSky #TraumaNotPD #Disability #Neurodivergent #Mad https://t.co/83d2Ztwpp2
“Writing from bed is a time-honored disabled way of being an activist and a cultural worker. It’s one the mainstream doesn’t often acknowledge but whose lineage stretches from Frida Kahlo painting in bed to Grace Lee Boggs writing in her wheelchair age 98.” - Piepzna-Samarasinha
It’ll kick off in London today cos no one knows what to do when it gets above 28 and the daily mail will call it ‘lawless London’ when most of what we need is lollies.
As someone actually trained in behavioural psychology—unlike most MPs—I can tell you: financial precarity doesn’t “incentivise” sick people to work. It breaks them. Stress worsens health. Fear doesn’t create productivity. It creates collapse. #TakingThePIP
The Canary@thecanaryuk.bsky.social · last yr.DWP boss just said Universal Credit gives disabled people 'perverse incentives' not to work Liz Kendall's shocking comments came just as a new report slams the DWP for failing vulnerable claimants. So which is it??? www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/...
Biggest threat to trauma therapy in the UK right now? PIP cuts & tighter rules. Tens of thousands with PTSD/CPTSD rely on PIP to fund private therapy — NHS waits are years long. Respond to the Timms Review consultation by 28 May or many will lose access. tinyurl.com/mrk8hy4m
Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment: call for evidence
tinyurl.com
Trauma not merely as fear or horror, but as chronic assault on reality-testing, credibility, embodiment, autonomy, and social legibility.
If you can, please say hello to the security guard at your local supermarket. There's a new one at mine who smiles so sweetly and looks genuinely pleased to see everyone. The last one did too -before month on month of being barely acknowledged in the inhumane modern workplace wore him into despair.
Still remember the crushing moment as a young researcher when I realised that proving something through evidence had damn near no impact on social policy unless it was politically useful to believe it.
🚨Clinicians - The PIP Review closes on Thursday. We must improve PIP and protect existing rights after fifteen years of relentless attacks on disabled people. Fill in the form: tinyurl.com/5f4xfe5w Email: timmsreview.callforevidence@dwp.gov.uk Sign the professional letter: tinyurl.com/37nrsmxx
Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment: call for evidence
tinyurl.com
Just a reminder: you are NOT unusual, weird, or unlovable if you have: - no one to see on Christmas Day, - no presents, or - no contactable relatives. Very few people live the idealised version on TV. Those of us who live differently—whether by choice or trauma—matter as much.
Going for my Christmas Day swim at the lido — or about to embark on a deep-sea fishing mission in the Arctic? You decide.
Sending solidarity and love to everyone in the Mad/traumatised/neurodivergent community in pain or lonely tonight x
Thank you for this @shrinkatlarge.bsky.social "the real avoidance isn’t on the part of those struggling to survive. It’s governmental: the avoidance of the real, the avoidance of the structural, and—most crucially—the cynical avoidance of justice." substack.com/inbox/post/1...
The 'Avoiding Avoidance' Trap
How Britain's Welfare Policy Weaponizes Therapy.
substack.com
This needs shouting from the rooftops "the real avoidance isn’t on the part of those struggling to survive. It’s governmental: the avoidance of the real, the avoidance of the structural, and—most crucially—the cynical avoidance of justice."
Incredible article, dissembling the Governments floored Welfare plans by leading Psychotherapist and Activist @shrinkatlarge.bsky.social substack.com/inbox/post/1...
The 'Avoiding Avoidance' Trap
How Britain's Welfare Policy Weaponizes Therapy.
substack.com
Request #8538 to @bsky.app: I would love to use Bluesky regularly, but I can’t. Why? No locked/private accounts. This isn’t a nice-to-have feature. It’s a safety essential that excludes many in Mad and Disabled communities who face real risks posting publicly. Please sort this Out.
The DWP have absolutely no place in a GP surgery, or anywhere people access healthcare, health-related support, mental health support. Many people who claim disability benefit experience a hyper-vigilance over the DWP 'checking up' on them, and it is not unfounded. People avoid things
Dr Jay Watts@shrinkatlarge.bsky.social · 10mo agoWork is not a health outcome. It’s a social determinant — and sometimes a damaging one. Putting DWP work coaches in GP surgeries turns healthcare into a branch of welfare policing.
Work is not a health outcome. It’s a social determinant — and sometimes a damaging one. Putting DWP work coaches in GP surgeries turns healthcare into a branch of welfare policing.
“Yeah but I saw on the internet that if you fill out a form you get a free BMW!” I’m sure you did, babe. I also saw on the internet that I can make tens of millions from a timeshare pyramid scheme.
Personally, I think “We’re all people with lived experience” is just the ableist cousin of “we all have mental health.” It takes a phrase born to centre marginalised voices and uses it to erase the difference that made it necessary in the first place. But then I'm moody.
Can’t believe this needs saying in 2025 but: Human rights are good for humans.
The folk shouting about “protecting women and girls” as they form gangs are the very same who, in another century, would have lit the pyres for any woman even vaguely deviant — branding her a witch and burning her alive. Groupthink and violence has always worn the mask of virtue.
The Centre for Social Justice has just released a report called ‘Wasted Lives’ which is being picked up by the media and recommends withdrawing: “UC Health and PIP from those with milder anxiety, depression or ADHD, equivalent to around 1.1 million people”. Why is this wrong? 🧵
If folk are so keen on ‘protecting women and girls’, how about campaigning on the conviction rate for reported rape which is 2%?
I can’t tell you how many parents’ MENTAL HEALTH problems are CAUSED and EXACERBATED by the pressure of trying to get any—let alone decent—SEND SUPPORT. If the GOVERNMENT want to reduce DIAGNOSIS, they should make SEND FUNDING easier and more RELIABLE to get, not CUT it.
Dear @teamlabouruk.bsky.social Having to publish three impact assessments — none of which would pass GCSE level scrutiny — because you got thrashed by the disability movement is not “extensive” impact assessment. Nor was dropping the PIP changes. Stop lying to the United Nations. Dr Jay
