How to Describe Mental Health Support Needs for Your I-CAN v6 Assessment

A practical guide for people with psychosocial disability

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It reflects publicly available information about the NDIS I-CAN v6 assessment framework and psychosocial disability as at June 2026. This guide does not constitute professional mental health, disability support, or legal advice. If you need personalised support, contact your treating mental health professional, Support Coordinator, or a disability advocacy organisation.

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There are approximately 65,000 NDIS participants whose primary disability is psychosocial — arising from a mental health condition that significantly and permanently affects their daily functioning.

For many of these participants, preparing for the I-CAN v6 assessment involves a particular challenge: describing a disability that is often invisible, frequently fluctuating, and genuinely difficult to put into words — especially under pressure, in an unfamiliar setting, with a stranger asking structured questions.

This guide is for you.

It covers what the I-CAN v6 assessment is looking for, why diagnosis-focused language is not enough, and how to describe the functional impact of your mental health condition clearly and specifically — domain by domain.

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The Most Important Shift: From Diagnosis to Function

The I-CAN v6 assessment is not interested in what diagnosis you have. It is interested in how your condition affects your daily life.

This is a crucial distinction — and it is the source of the most common preparation gap for people with psychosocial disability.

The pattern is the same each time: what condition you have is context. What you actually experience in daily life is evidence.

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A Note on Fluctuating and Episodic Conditions

Many psychosocial disabilities do not present consistently. Symptoms fluctuate. Some days are manageable; others are not. This variability can make assessment feel unfair — if you happen to be having a relatively good period when your assessment occurs, the assessor may not see the full picture.

The I-CAN v6 is designed to assess your typical functioning across a range — not just the snapshot from a single session. Your job in preparation is to give the assessor the information they need to understand that range.

Document your range explicitly:

• Describe what a good day looks like (what you can manage)
• Describe what a difficult day looks like (what you cannot manage)
• Estimate how often difficult days occur — on average, how many days per week or month?
• Describe what triggers a difficult period, if there are identifiable triggers
• Describe how long difficult periods typically last

This is not exaggerating your difficulties. It is giving the assessor an honest, complete picture rather than a misleadingly optimistic one.

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Domain-by-Domain Guidance

Here is how to think about each of the 12 I-CAN domains in the context of a mental health condition or psychosocial disability.

Self Care

Self-care difficulties are extremely common in psychosocial disability but are often under-reported because they feel shameful or are attributed to motivation rather than disability.

What to describe: Difficulties with maintaining personal hygiene, managing medication, preparing adequate food, and maintaining a reasonable sleep pattern — and how often these difficulties occur.

Prompts:

• How often do you shower or bathe? Is this less frequent than you would like, and why?
• How reliably do you take prescribed medication? What happens when you miss doses?
• Do you eat regular meals? What prevents you from cooking or eating on difficult days?
• How does your sleep pattern affect your ability to manage the rest of the day?

Example: "I struggle to shower more than twice a week. The effort feels overwhelming on most days. I know it matters but I cannot make myself do it. I have missed medication doses on at least 10–12 days in the past month, and when I miss them the following two or three days are significantly harder to manage."

General Tasks and Demands

Mental health conditions frequently affect the ability to maintain daily routines, manage medications, and stay safe — through executive function impairment, unpredictable mood episodes, or cognitive symptoms of the condition.

What to describe: Whether you can follow a daily routine reliably or need prompting and external structure; ability to manage medications consistently (missed doses have direct consequences for many psychiatric medications); any safety concerns or vulnerability to exploitation during difficult periods.

Prompts:

• Can you maintain a consistent daily routine independently, or does it depend heavily on how you are feeling?
• Do you reliably take your medications, or do you miss doses? What happens when you do?
• Are there times when your mental state makes you more vulnerable to making poor decisions or being taken advantage of?

Example: "During depressive episodes I cannot maintain any routine. I go days without eating properly, stop taking medication, and lose track of appointments entirely. Even during more stable periods I need reminders for medication — I have a daily alarm but still miss doses several times a month."

Domestic Life

Mental health conditions frequently disrupt the ability to manage a household — particularly when episodes of depression, anxiety, or psychosis affect motivation, energy, and executive function.

What to describe: Tasks you cannot reliably manage and the support or workarounds you currently use.

Prompts:

• Can you manage household cleaning, laundry, and basic home maintenance reliably?
• Can you cook and prepare meals for yourself consistently?
• What domestic tasks pile up when you are going through a difficult period?

Example: "I cannot reliably manage household tasks. When I am in a depressive episode, which happens for several weeks every few months, my home deteriorates significantly — dishes pile up, I stop doing laundry, and food spoils because I cannot face grocery shopping. My mother comes over once a week to help, but it is not always sufficient."

Communication

What to describe: Any difficulties with verbal or written communication, particularly during difficult periods — word-finding problems, inability to initiate conversation, selective mutism in anxiety episodes, or dissociation affecting communication.

Prompts:

• Do you struggle to initiate or maintain conversations, even with people you know well?
• Are there situations where you find it very difficult to communicate your needs?
• Do you avoid phone calls, medical appointments, or official communications because of anxiety?

Example: "I avoid phone calls almost completely because of severe phone anxiety. This means I often miss medical appointments, cannot communicate with Centrelink or the NDIA, and cannot address issues with service providers without significant assistance. This happens on most days, not occasionally."

Mobility

Physical mobility is often intact in psychosocial disability, but anxiety, agoraphobia, or trauma responses can severely limit effective mobility in the community.

What to describe: Difficulty leaving the home or travelling to necessary appointments, and how often this occurs.

Example: "I can physically walk without limitation, but I cannot leave my home unaccompanied. The anxiety of public spaces is severe enough that I require someone with me to travel anywhere by public transport. On many days, I cannot leave even with someone present."

Interpersonal Interactions & Relationships

What to describe: Difficulties managing relationships with others — including friends, family, service providers, and strangers — as a direct result of your mental health condition.

Prompts:

• Do you struggle to maintain friendships or family relationships?
• Do trust issues, hypervigilance, or social anxiety affect how you interact with others?
• Are there situations where you act in ways that damage relationships, and that you recognise as related to your condition?

Example: "My complex PTSD means I have significant hypervigilance with new people. I require multiple appointments with any new service provider before I can engage in a productive way. I have ended supportive relationships because of trauma responses. I have no close friends I see regularly outside of my immediate family."

Learning & Applying Knowledge

What to describe: If you are studying, or have attempted to study, how your mental health condition affects your ability to learn and maintain participation in education.

Example: "I attempted a TAFE course last year. I withdrew after six weeks because I could not consistently attend due to my anxiety and episodes of depression. The fluctuating nature of my condition makes sustained participation in formal education currently not viable."

Life Long Learning

Many people with severe psychosocial disability have vocational aspirations that mental health barriers prevent them from pursuing or sustaining.

What to describe: Vocational goals and the barriers your mental health condition creates to pursuing them; periods when employment has been attempted and why it ended; what support or conditions would enable you to pursue work or skills development goals.

Important note for psychosocial disability: Many participants with severe psychosocial disability have periods where work is entirely not possible, and periods where limited work may be attempted. Describe this range honestly — including the goal, not just the current inability.

Example: "I have not been able to sustain employment for more than a few weeks at a time over the past four years. I want to work — ideally in a low-demand, flexible role. During manic phases I start jobs with high energy and then cannot maintain them when I move into a depressive episode. I have lost three jobs this way. I would need significant support to find and sustain suitable employment."

Mental & Emotional Health

What to describe: The nature of your mental health condition and how it affects your daily life; your current treatment and whether it is sufficient; the overall burden of mental health management.

Example: "I see my psychiatrist monthly and a psychologist fortnightly. I take three different medications, two of which require regular blood monitoring. Managing these appointments is a significant part of my weekly life, and I require support to remember and attend them consistently. My condition fluctuates and during difficult periods I am unable to engage with treatment at all — which then leads to deterioration."

Community, Social & Civic Life

This domain is frequently among the most significantly affected in psychosocial disability.

What to describe: Your actual level of community participation — not the level you wish you had, but what currently happens.

Example: "My Community, Social & Civic Life is almost entirely absent. I rarely leave the house. I have not attended any community activity — a class, a group, an event — in over two years. My interaction with the community is limited to essential appointments only, which I manage with difficulty."

Domestic Life

What to describe: Your ability to manage cooking, cleaning, laundry, and household tasks when your mental health is stable — and what happens to these when you are experiencing a difficult period.

Example: "I live with my sister. Without her presence, I believe I would not reliably manage meals, household cleaning, or laundry. She also helps me manage appointments and navigate crises. I do not believe I could safely live alone at this time."

Behaviours of Concern

What to describe: If your mental health condition leads to behaviours that create risk for yourself or others — self-harm, severe self-neglect, disordered eating, substance use as a coping mechanism — describe these in the context of how they affect safety and daily life.

Be specific but measured. This domain is not about judgment. It is about ensuring the assessment captures the full complexity of your support needs, including the need for Behaviours of Concern planning.

Physical Health

People with psychosocial disability often have co-occurring physical health conditions — partly as direct consequences of psychiatric medications (weight gain, metabolic effects, sedation), and partly because mental health conditions make it harder to maintain physical health.

What to describe: Any physical health conditions you have; the physical side effects of psychiatric medications that affect daily functioning; how your mental health condition affects your ability to manage physical health (attending appointments, following treatment, maintaining physical activity and nutrition).

Example: "I have gained significant weight from one of my psychiatric medications, which has led to pre-diabetes. I struggle to manage my physical health consistently — when my mental health deteriorates, physical health management is the first thing to stop. I have missed GP appointments because I could not leave the house, and have gone months without required blood tests."

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How to Prepare Your Documentation

Keep a daily record for at least four weeks before your assessment. Even a brief daily note — "today was a 3/10, could not leave the house, did not eat a proper meal, triggered by a phone call from an unknown number" — builds a specific, honest picture of your functioning across the full range.

Get your treating professionals to write functionally. Before your assessment, contact your psychiatrist, psychologist, GP, or social worker and ask them to provide a functional summary — a description of how your condition affects your daily life in practical terms — rather than (or in addition to) a standard clinical letter.

Describe what it looks like to an outside observer. Think about what a support worker or family member would report seeing, if they were with you on a difficult day. That external-observer perspective often captures things that first-person self-reporting misses.

Do not minimise. People with psychosocial disability often significantly underestimate their support needs — either from insight limitations during better periods, or from a learned pattern of not asking for help. The assessment is not the place for minimisation. Accuracy is what matters.

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A Word on the "Mainstream" Question

A common concern for people with psychosocial disability is the NDIS's position that psychology and some other mental health supports are "mainstream" services — accessible through Medicare-funded health care plans — rather than NDIS-fundable supports.

This distinction is real and does create complexity. The key is to frame your supports in terms of how they support your functioning in daily life as a person with a permanent psychosocial disability, rather than framing them as treatment for a mental health condition.

"I need weekly psychology sessions to treat my depression" positions this as health treatment.

"Without regular structured support from my psychologist, I am unable to maintain the daily routines and coping strategies that allow me to live independently, manage my medications, and maintain basic self-care" positions this as disability-related functional support.

Both may be true. The framing affects what the NDIS will fund.

If you are uncertain about how your specific supports should be framed, contact a disability advocate through Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA) or your state advocacy service before your assessment.

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How to Prepare When You Don't Feel Well Enough to Prepare

This is a real and significant challenge that almost no preparation guide addresses. The very conditions that make psychosocial disability so significant — depression that makes everything feel impossible, anxiety that makes sitting down to write overwhelming, cognitive symptoms that make sustained concentration unreachable — can make formal preparation feel completely out of reach.

Here are approaches that work even when your mental health is making preparation hard:

Do small pieces, not big sessions. Instead of trying to write a complete preparation document in one sitting, spend five minutes a day for two weeks. One domain. A few sentences. Over time, small pieces accumulate into a complete picture.

Use voice instead of writing. Speak your answers aloud and record them on your phone, then transcribe. Talking about your experience is often easier than writing it, particularly when depression or cognitive symptoms are present.

Ask a trusted person to be your scribe. Tell someone you trust about each domain and ask them to write what you say. The content comes from you; the format from them. This is a completely legitimate approach.

Use ICANReady with support. ICANReady's structured domain-by-domain prompts can be completed with a support person, one small step at a time. You don't have to complete it in one session.

Accept "good enough." A preparation document that covers six domains specifically is better than nothing. Start with the domains that are most significant for your condition and work from there. An imperfect preparation is still vastly better than arriving without any.

Tell the assessor how you are on the day. If your mental health is particularly difficult on assessment day, tell the assessor. "Today is a harder day than usual for me — my typical presentation is actually more difficult than you may see right now" is important information. Document your typical range regardless of how you present on the day.

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ICANReady guides you through all 12 I-CAN domains with prompts that help you describe the functional impact of mental health conditions specifically — including prompts designed to make preparation accessible even when your mental health makes it hard.

Try ICANReady free →

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Sources: NDIA — Support needs assessment framework, NDIS Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Act 2024, Mental Health Australia, People With Disability Australia (PWDA), Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA)