Am I entitled to any disability benefits having now been diagnosed with FND?

[Reikiblossom]

I am self-employed and find that the chronic fatigue, cognitive issues and dizziness interfere with my work. I suspect I may have had this much longer than I realise as I have a history of struggling in employment due mainly to fatigue, anxiety and sudden illness.

[kotovasv]

It depends on the country where you live. I recommend you to talk to people from your country over the FND Facebook pages. Please find them through the fndhope.org website.

[geordie-girl]

Hi Reikiblossom

I am in receipt of Disability Living Allowance and as far as I am aware I was assessed by the severity of my symptoms and not the name of the condition. I think how much you may receive depends on your assessment

It is now called Personal Independence Payment or PIP for short. You can read all about it if you go to gov.uk/pip. I recommend once you have applied that you get somebody from them to come to your home to assist with filling out the fairly complex forms.

Hope this will be of some help to you and you are successful.

Please let me know how you get on or if you require anymore information or help

[Mistertoad17]

Like Geordie Girl I too am on DLA. I also get a small amount of ESA, severe disability premium and a couple of others, but my wooly brain won't let me recall them right now. My case is a bit different in that I have a genetic disk disorder which is what originally caused me to have to retire at 47 years old. I only found out I had FND a year ago when the symptoms began hitting me hard. So I have told the DWP about the changes and haven't had any issues because of it.

My FND is quite aggressive and severely interrupts my life. I have become house bound because of it and partly because the flat I am in hasn't been adapted. I have a neighbour from hell who has blocked the council from adapting the place which has given me the year from hell and made me very sick to boot. However, ever cloud has a silver lining and the council are currently adapting a flat for me in a nearby town.

The point of my telling you this is that it shows the council are prepared to invest heavily on the basis of FND. If you come up against brick walls where departments or even doctors plead ignorance, point them at neurosymptoms.org and point out that it is a site that is backed by the NHS. I have found that changes minds pretty quickly in the few cases I have come across where they hadn't heard of FND.

I hope this helps. It's also my first proper post on here so hello everyone.

Ade..

[geordie-girl in reply to Mistertoad17]

Hi Mistertoad17

I am sorry to read your neighbours are giving you hell, it must be agravating your FND symtoms as I believe stress can make it worse. I am pleased the council are moving you and are adapting your new premises. I hope it wont be long till this happens and once you settle in things will improve for you. I am also new to this site and only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. I wish you welcome and a big hello from geordie-girl.

[Reikiblossom]

Kotovasv - I've now done that and joined the private Facebook group, thankyou.

I've now applied for ESA and am summoning the courage to apply for PIP.

Ade, hello and thankyou for that. I wish you all the best for your move!

Geordie-girl, thankyou. PIP will send someone to your home? I keep wondering if mine is severe enough to count, even though I can list a whole range of symptoms and have kept a symptom diary since Aug 2012. I get fatigue, dizziness and cognitive problems: poor memory and difficulty finding words, mixing sounds and words. The muscle twitches are mostly annoying though I worry about my legs giving way (only happened once). There's more but I won't list all of them.