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What is psychosocial disability?

What is psychosocial disability?


Not everyone who has a mental health issue will have a psychosocial disability but for those that do, it can be severe and longstanding and impact on somebody’s recovery.


What is recovery?

The term recovery is used widely throughout the mental health sector. It can have different meanings in different contexts.

The NDIA defines recovery as achieving an optimal state of personal, social and emotional wellbeing, as defined by each individual, whilst living with or recovering from a mental health condition.

The NDIS understands that recovery is a journey. There are key principles of the NDIS that align well with recovery.

These include:

  • Choice and control for participants.
  • A lifetime commitment to supports and funding (enables hope and optimism).
  • Provision of plan flexibility (enables support to be used to meet different needs at different times).
  • Opportunities for increased social and economic participation.
  • Disability focused support which is recovery orientated.

Accessing the NDIS

Everyone who applies to the NDIS must meet eligibility criteria. These include age, residency and disability requirements. You must also live in an area where the NDIS is being rolled out.

For a person with a psychosocial disability to access the Scheme, they need to have a permanent or likely-to-be permanent disability as a result of their mental health condition. The condition must have a significant impact on their day-to-day life and the person’s ability to participate in the community. It also needs to be likely that the person will need support for the rest of their life.

For more information, go to Accessing the NDIS section of the website.

What supports will the NDIS fund?

For NDIS participants, the scheme will fund supports that assist you to live an ordinary life.

This includes:

  • Assistance with planning, decision making and household tasks
  • Assistance to build the skills to live independently and achieve their goals, such as building social relationships, as well as financial management and tenancy management skills

You can choose to access your funded supports in your own home, at a centre or to access community activities.

The terms ‘treatment’ in the mental health system and ‘ongoing functional support for psychosocial disability’ (targeted at reducing the impact on a persons’ functional capacity of impairments/s attributable to a psychiatric condition) provided by the NDIS, assist us to better define the respective roles.

The NDIS will not fund supports provided by the health and mental health system. This includes things like medical and clinical treatment services, medications and in-patient and residential care.

Reimagine Today is an excellent resource for carers and people living with mental health conditions to navigate the NDIS.