UTIAC (1) The Tribunal is entitled to reject a clinical diagnosis that an appellant suffers from a depressive illness but it must give clear reasons for doing so which engage adequately with a medical opinion representing the judgment of a professional psychiatrist on what he has seen of the appellant.
(2) In the present case where the psychiatric evidence was being relied on to provide an explanation for admitted discrepancies in the appellant’s evidence, the psychiatrists’ comment on the role of depression in explaining inconsistencies could not and did not even purport to deal with all the aspects of the claim which the Immigration Judge had found incredible.
(3) On the facts of the present case even taking the diagnosis as correct, it provided no reasonable explanation for the many aspects of the appellant’s evidence and behaviour which led to the rejection of his claim as credible. Accordingly, if there were any error of law in what the Immigration Judge had concluded in relation to the diagnosis, the error had no effect on the result.
Judges:
Ouseley J, Latter SIJ
Citations:
[2010] UKUT 279 (IAC)
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Immigration
Updated: 22 August 2022; Ref: scu.421566