Once again our government has opted to compensate common circumstance over common experience. By wiping suicide from ACC’s responsibilities, putting it in the “sickness” rather than “accident” bucket, our leaders refuse to value the fact that grief is the experience common to people who lose loved ones, no matter the cause. They choose instead to recognise the more common grief-causing circumstances of car crashes and work accidents and ignore the more unique circumstance of suicide.

This is no different to the distinction made between the circumstances of birth- or illness-related and accident-related dysfunction (disability). People who experience disability due to birth trauma (like me) do not get the same level of financial recognition as people who have a similar experience of disability due to, say, a brain injury during adulthood. Again, birth trauma goes in the “sickness” bucket and is compensated at a lower level than accidental trauma, through Health and Social Welfare funding rather than ACC. Read more…