The Short Answer
There is no official PIP list of medical conditions: any long-term physical or mental health condition can qualify, because PIP is decided on points, not diagnosis. The DWP codes each claim into one of 178 sub-groups for statistics, but no condition secures or blocks an award. What matters is how your condition affects 12 everyday activities on the majority of days, with the end-of-life rules the single exception.
Is There a List of 178 PIP Conditions?
No: 178 is the number of disability sub-groups in the DWP's statistical coding for PIP, not a list of conditions that qualify. DWP Stat-Xplore, the department's official statistics tool, sets out the three levels it uses to record claims.
| Level of the DWP coding | Number | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Disability category | 21 | Broad groups, such as Neurological disease and Musculoskeletal disease (general) |
| Disability sub-group | 178 | Narrower groups inside each category |
| Disability | 536 | Individual condition codes |
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Each claim is recorded under one main disabling condition, which the DWP describes as "the condition considered to have the most significant impact on the individual's function in relation to the assessment criteria". The coding is used to produce statistics once a claim has been assessed. It is not an entitlement test, and nothing in the regulations turns on it.
Headlines saying the DWP "confirms" a full list of 178 conditions that could qualify are describing this statistical coding. A condition appearing in it shows that people with that condition claim PIP, not that the condition qualifies. A condition that is rare, undiagnosed or coded under a broad heading can still score the same points.
How PIP Is Decided Without a Conditions List
Points decide PIP: 8 points in a component pays the standard rate and 12 points pays the enhanced rate, whatever the diagnosis. GOV.UK sets out the conditions of entitlement without naming a single illness. You can get PIP if "you have a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability", "you have difficulty doing certain everyday tasks or getting around" and "you expect the difficulties to last for at least 12 months from when they started". You must also be 16 or over, and usually under State Pension age for a new claim.
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Those difficulties are scored against 10 daily living activities and 2 mobility activities in Schedule 1 of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013. The same descriptor tables apply to every condition. That is why each guide below maps one diagnosis onto the activities rather than declaring it qualifying.
Qualifying Conditions in Detail
The points-not-diagnosis principle decides every PIP claim, and it cuts both ways: no diagnosis qualifies you, and no diagnosis disqualifies you. Two claimants with the same condition can receive different awards, and money owed after a slow decision reaches back identically for every condition through the pip back pay rules.
What circulates online as a PIP conditions list is usually the DWP's statistical recording categories. They describe caseloads, never entitlement:
| Recorded category | Example conditions | Where points commonly arise |
|---|---|---|
| Psychiatric disorders | Anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia | Engaging with people, journeys, prompting across daily tasks |
| Musculoskeletal (general) | Arthritis, osteoarthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia | Moving around, washing, dressing, preparing food |
| Musculoskeletal (regional) | Sciatica, joint and limb conditions | Moving around, dressing, toilet needs |
| Neurological | MS, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, stroke effects | Both mobility activities, therapy, washing, communication |
| Respiratory | COPD, asthma | Moving around, washing and dressing exertion |
| Digestive | Crohn's disease, IBS | Toilet needs, taking nutrition, therapy |
| Cardiovascular | Heart conditions, stroke | Moving around, exertion-limited daily tasks |
| Sensory | Hearing loss, visual impairment | Communicating, reading, journeys |
| Neurodevelopmental and cognitive | Autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, dementia | Budgeting, engaging, journeys, prompting throughout |
| Other and combined | Diabetes, cancer, long Covid, EDS, endometriosis, lupus | Wherever the effects land across the 12 activities |
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The table's right-hand column is the useful part: it points each condition at the activities where its difficulties score. The scoring itself always runs through the same descriptor tables, the same 8-point and 12-point thresholds, and the same eligibility tests set out in PIP Eligibility.
How the major categories score in practice
Mental health conditions score through the prompting and support wording that runs across the daily living activities: needing prompting to cook, wash, dress or take medication, social support to engage with people, and, on mobility, the psychological distress descriptors for journeys. The pattern means a condition with no physical symptoms at all can reach either component's thresholds.
Musculoskeletal and pain conditions concentrate on the physical descriptors: aids and assistance in preparing food, washing, dressing and toilet needs, plus the metre bands of moving around. Fluctuation matters as much as severity here, because the majority-of-days rule decides whether the bad days set the descriptor.
Neurological conditions spread widest, from therapy management and communication through both mobility activities. Sensory conditions anchor on communicating and reading, with orientation needs scoring in journeys. Digestive conditions score most heavily in toilet needs, nutrition and therapy. And fatigue-led conditions, from ME/CFS to long Covid, score through reliability: tasks performable once but not repeatedly, or only with recovery time no descriptor line mentions, count as not performable.
None of these patterns is a rule. They are where evidence usually lands, and a claim's job is mapping its own reality, not matching the pattern.
Every major condition has its own guide, mapping one diagnosis onto the 12 activities in detail, and each guide links to a points calculator:
- Mental health: check pip for anxiety · check pip for depression · check pip for adhd · check pip for autism · check pip for ptsd · check pip for bipolar disorder · check pip for ocd · check pip for schizophrenia · check pip for personality disorders · check pip for mental health · check pip for pmdd
- Musculoskeletal and pain: check pip for fibromyalgia · check pip for arthritis · check pip for osteoarthritis · check pip for rheumatoid arthritis · check pip for back pain · check pip for sciatica · check pip for chronic pain · check pip for hypermobility & eds · check pip for gout
- Neurological: check pip for multiple sclerosis · check pip for epilepsy · check pip for migraines · check pip for parkinson's disease · check pip for stroke · check pip for dementia · check pip for fnd · check pip for nerve damage · check pip for vertigo
- Digestive, respiratory and cardiovascular: check pip for crohn's disease · check pip for ibs · check pip for copd · check pip for asthma · check pip for heart conditions · check pip for ulcerative colitis · check pip for diverticulitis · check pip for coeliac disease · check pip for sleep apnoea · check pip for pots · check pip for raynaud's
- Sensory and developmental: check pip for hearing loss · check pip for visual impairment · check pip for learning disabilities · check pip for dyspraxia · check pip for dyslexia
- Other conditions: check pip for diabetes · check pip for cancer · check pip for me/cfs · check pip for endometriosis · check pip for lupus · check pip for long covid · check pip for skin conditions · check pip for kidney disease · check pip for underactive thyroid · check pip for pcos · check pip for adenomyosis
One route bypasses the points system entirely. Claimants nearing the end of life claim under the special rules, with no assessment and the enhanced daily living rate set by law. Every other claim, whatever the condition, runs through the activities.
Where the list myth comes from
The qualifying-list belief has three real sources, and each dissolves on inspection. The DWP's statistical categories, tabled above, look like an entitlement list but only describe how claims are recorded after decisions. Headlines promising a list of conditions that qualify, often with the number 178 attached, repackage the DWP's statistical sub-groups; GOV.UK publishes no qualifying list. And other schemes genuinely do run on condition lists, notably some workplace and insurance frameworks, so the expectation migrates to PIP from systems built differently.
The absence of a list is deliberate design, not an oversight. A condition-based benefit would pay identical awards to people with wildly different needs, and nothing to people whose rare or undiagnosed conditions missed the list. Scoring function catches both.
Using your condition well in a claim
Diagnosis still earns its place in a strong claim, used as evidence rather than entitlement. A named condition explains the difficulties, supports their expected duration, and anchors professional evidence: a fibromyalgia diagnosis makes fluctuating pain and fatigue credible, and a schizophrenia diagnosis makes prompting and supervision needs legible. What the diagnosis cannot do is score. The claim form's real work is translating the condition into activity language: not I have arthritis, but I cannot grip a pan safely and my partner cooks on most days.
Multiple conditions combine naturally in this design. Points from a physical condition and a mental health condition accumulate in the same component totals, because the activities do not care which condition produced the difficulty. Claimants with several diagnoses should map each one across the 12 activities separately and claim the full picture.
From condition to claim: a worked mapping
One full example shows the translation the whole page recommends. A claimant with fibromyalgia takes their three dominant difficulties, pain on exertion, unreliable grip and post-activity exhaustion, and walks the activity list with them. Preparing food: cannot use pans safely on flare days, partner cooks four days a week. Washing and bathing: needs help washing hair, cannot get out of the bath unaided. Dressing: manages, slowly, with rests. Moving around: about 40 metres reliably with a stick. That mapping supports specific descriptors in four activities across both components, and each line of it invites a specific piece of evidence.
The same exercise works for any diagnosis, and it converts the useless question, does my condition qualify, into the decisive one: which descriptors describe my days. Nothing about the mapping requires medical vocabulary; the strongest claims read like accurate diaries.
Conditions the categories miss
Rare, undiagnosed and contested conditions fit the system precisely because no list exists. A condition too uncommon for any category still scores through its effects, and difficulties awaiting a diagnosis can be claimed on the strength of their reality, with medical evidence describing symptoms and function rather than a name. Fluctuating and invisible conditions, from epilepsy between seizures to bowel conditions between flares, are handled by the majority-of-days and reliability rules rather than by a visibility test.
The condition question, in the end, has one honest answer per person, not per diagnosis: map your difficulties, score them against the descriptors, and let the points speak.
Evidence by condition type
Different condition families lean on different evidence, and knowing which kind carries yours saves wasted requests. Physical conditions with objective findings, from joint damage to respiratory measurements, are well served by specialist letters and test results. Fluctuating conditions live and die on pattern evidence: symptom diaries, repeat prescriptions and physiotherapy or pain-clinic records that show the difficulties recurring across months. Mental health claims are strongest where care coordinators, community teams or therapists describe function, since GP letters often record diagnosis and medication without describing a single daily-life effect.
Two evidence rules hold across every family. Function beats diagnosis: one paragraph describing what you cannot do reliably outweighs pages naming the condition. And existing evidence beats commissioned evidence: the DWP weighs routine clinical records highly precisely because nobody wrote them for a benefits claim.
The recording category on your own claim
The category the DWP logs for your claim is chosen from your main condition and drives national statistics, not your money. Claimants with several conditions sometimes notice the recorded main condition is not the one causing most difficulty; nothing turns on it, and no correction is needed for payment purposes. The award letter's descriptors and points are the operative record, and they are the lines worth checking word by word against your reality.
The page in one paragraph
For a reader deciding what to do next, the whole page compresses to this: there is no list to check your diagnosis against, so stop searching for one. Take your difficulties, not your diagnosis, to the 12 activities; use the category table above to see where conditions like yours usually score; gather evidence that describes function; and let the points calculator turn the mapping into a number. The condition matters enormously to your life and not at all to the rate card, and the sooner a claim is built on that fact, the stronger it is.
No list, no shortcuts, and no condition left out: the points system's indifference to diagnosis is the fairest thing about it, and the strongest claims are the ones that stopped arguing with that fact earliest.
Whether your condition is common or rare, visible or invisible, the route to an award is identical, and it starts with the mapping above.
Work Out Your Number
Whatever your condition, the score comes from the same 12 activities. Work out your qualifying conditions position with the condition calculators directory, or go straight to the points check.