Published on 12, July, 2020
For the second time, I was told by a GP that I "suffer with autism"
No I don't. I am autistic and any suffering involved comes from my needs as an autistic person not being met predominantly, in fact, in health care settings.
Grrrrr! Partly venting my spleen here, but at the same time I know this faux pas is born of ignorance not wilful intention to insult. This GP was trying to be sympathetic, I'm sure. He does not seem to know much about autism though since he's asking the patient who has diagnoses of autism, dyslexia, Irlen's syndromes and has further been identified as a synesthete, whether I have an SPD diagnosis - excuse me while I bang my head on brick wall (metaphorically, of course).
Then he stated I "suffer" with autism.
Are you folks getting the same from health care professionals? And how do you go about correcting them?
This obviously isn't his fault. It's just ignorance because he hasn't been trained. But none of us is getting very far, if our GPs don't understand what being autistic means. I'm wondering if it's time I popped my old trainer's hat back on and offered to do some training sessions for them free of charge.
I don't know whether you'll feel this is relevant or not, Dawn, but this is something I eventually realised (decades too late):
The women in my immediate & wider family who had mental health difficulties, and were possiby autistic, were instead written off by professionals as either silly, stupid, frivolous, stubborn or 'problems'.
Oh yeah! I was written off by MH that way. I found my own way to my diagnosis.
Certainly, I have heard of one other in our family who was thought to have sever MH problems, but it the surface descriptions seem to emerge in toddlerhood and sound very much like autism and/or adhd to me. I'll never know, but I think there were others who never knew their truth.
Certainly, many of us are dyslexic or dyspraxic and I have other autistic relatives.
It just feels like a hangover from the days when women's varying & genuine health issues were disgracefully dismissed as merely them being 'hysterical' or even attention-seeking.
Oh I think that's very much it. If it's got a womb it must be hysterical. Give it a slap! Truely, Freud has a lost to answer for.