Update to self advocacy-Mental Health

I have a therapist with a one track mind, she gets fixated on an idea and will not let it go. She has that stereotype tone of voice that makes her sound patronising. She's not great, but better than the previous whose attitude was you had to do, or talk about what he told you, regardless of how upsetting or difficult it might be. A case of do as you're told.

I'm sorry to hear that. It can be very distressing when confronted with a bad practitioner. The NAS have just released new guidelines for MH Workers who are working with autistic clients. It remains to be seen whether any of them will make the effort to read and follow them.

I gave him the booklet link and new strategy outline before I left. Hope he reads them, I tried to educate him but I got the impression he was trying to justify his methods separating my autism and that cannot be done. In earlier sessions I tried to explain its autism first then trauma that overlays it as trauma to us is processed differently he insisted it was trauma that made me like this….due to vulnerability and naivety in social situations….how many auties fall into this NT theory does more damage than help.

Agreed. I think I dented his ego pointing out he didn’t see the masking, not my place to educate him like I tried. I think he was out of his depth.

He sounds like he would benefit from extensive retraining. The problem with the whole field of MH is that it is populated largely by mediocre, or less than mediocre practitioners—and there is hardly any scrutiny of their patient outcomes unlike other medical fields. We have to remember that it's only relatively recently that these people entered this profession and that the default treatment of intimidate, sedate and isolate has only recently been replaced by the medicate and equivocate model. You can probably count on both your hands the actual number of highly skilled and experienced mental health specialists in the UK.  Unfortunately and sadly the only way for patients to be guaranteed a quality service is to use a shame and blame approach, which is not only exhausting, but not always possible with mental ill health. Unless of course you are a wealthy patient and can afford to search out the best practitioners with proper psychological educational pedigrees and not Mickey Mouse Diplomas in counselling.

He sounds like he would benefit from extensive retraining. The problem with the whole field of MH is that it is populated largely by mediocre, or less than mediocre practitioners—and there is hardly any scrutiny of their patient outcomes unlike other medical fields. We have to remember that it's only relatively recently that these people entered this profession and that the default treatment of intimidate, sedate and isolate has only recently been replaced by the medicate and equivocate model. You can probably count on both your hands the actual number of highly skilled and experienced mental health specialists in the UK.  Unfortunately and sadly the only way for patients to be guaranteed a quality service is to use a shame and blame approach, which is not only exhausting, but not always possible with mental ill health. Unless of course you are a wealthy patient and can afford to search out the best practitioners with proper psychological educational pedigrees and not Mickey Mouse Diplomas in counselling.

Agreed. I think I dented his ego pointing out he didn’t see the masking, not my place to educate him like I tried. I think he was out of his depth.