Positive Psychiatry UK Experience - 16 Days from request to diagnosis

For me, it's clear. The Tories are choking the NHS to the point of calapse to usher in a private system they can make profits from.

They aren't public servants,they are corrupt business people. Fullstop.

Linus said:

going back over my school years and reading the few school reports I have were emotionally upsetting. It feels like a life time of being ignored or dismissed in some ways, it's made me feel broken as it all feels rather negative

For me the forms were very emotionally draining. I stayed up really late one night filling most of it in and it was distressing, particularly realising all the struggles I've had and how I've suffered so much (unnecessarily). I wish I could go back in time and just explain things to my younger self about why things were so difficult for me. I never should have been going through all that but I was trying to be as normal as possible and didn't understand why it never worked.

Afterwards I couldn't bring myself to look at it again for weeks, and then I went back and rewrote some of it and got upset all over again. It's not good to dwell on the past when I have a history of being depressed for most of my life, but the task of filling in these long questionnaires is basically reviewing your entire life with a specific focus on difficulties.

Linus said:

I just wondered if anyone else encountered family members being a bit dismissive and how they resolved it? 

I am trying to proceed without the involvement of my family because I don't see them very often and they have said some very dismissive and insulting things about autism so I don't believe they would be supportive. And I don't have any friends.

So we'll see whether P-UK allow me to continue without an informant. From what they told me my own answers and the interview will be the most important parts; the main purpose of the informant is for things you won't be able to remember (in early childhood) and anything you might not have noticed yourself or not be aware of (e.g. things you did and it never occurred to you were not normal, because your own perceptions might be coloured by the autism).

oh yeah they will discard entire swaths of your life.

me for example, when i refered myself to a assessment i was broke had nothing, owned nothing, no money, never any job, living in parents still at 30 years old.... i changed that myself now and still not got my asessment but now i have job and my own home now in all of this time and so they will see that and ignore the fact i was living up to my 30s in my parents with no jobs or friends or relationships or anything, all that will be ignored now because i have a job and a flat lol

I think it is around a six month wait, I applied around the start of July and I received an email on November 6 to upload id and some forms to fill out. 

The forms are taking me quite some time, for me certain sections are mentally draining, especially going back over my school years and reading the few school reports I have were emotionally upsetting. It feels like a life time of being ignored or dismissed in some ways, it's made me feel broken as it all feels rather negative. I give myself credit for the ways I have found to cope in various situations and I think it'll certainly help my son who is autistic and aged six. 

At the moment I am waiting on my parents to fill their form out, but my sister has just said they aren't doing it because I am not autistic! I find this astonishing, I get that they might feel guilt that it was missed, but I am 49, so it was very different then to now. 

I just wondered if anyone else encountered family members being a bit dismissive and how they resolved it? 

Yeah they are liars, I was passed onto them over 8 months ago from my GP via Right to choose and I’ve still not had anything back from them. Went with Clinical Partners and got diagnosed within 8 weeks via RTC.

Agreed! I used psychiatry uk under the NHS 'right to choose' scheme and got a quick response. The process was smooth but definitely not as quick as the private route. However, 2 months in and I have finally been diagnosed as autistic. As a high-masking 51 year old woman, my life makes sense at last.

If it helps I was referred under the right to choose at the end of May and had my assessment last week.

Been waiting since July for an appointment via right to choose,, initially told 4 months, who knows now?

Thank you Autumn_Trees (And what a beautiful name that brings such vivid imagery with it). 

I’m certainly feeling a little more free already, I’ve found myself not masking in certain circumstances (and noting I’m not), I’ve looked back on memories and realised I was fine then, and I’m fine now, and that the ‘standard’ I was holding myself to, really wasn’t right, which has given me some peace on long standing memories. 

TheCyberMan - I am delighted to hear that things went so quickly and smoothly for you. I hope you feel better/different now that you have finally got your diagnosis - for me it opened up a lot of questions but also answered a few too. 

It is a business, they have to look after their business model. If paying customers were not treated more quickly, why would anyone pay? The government could withdraw funding for RTC at any time and they would be thrown back solely onto privately funded patients. They really have to keep a reputation for treating these patients well. Why would anyone think that just because they are providing a medical-related service that market forces would not still apply? 

one thing you can always count on in this society is for people who are driven by money to lie. its management, its business, but we also see it in ourselves in many ways which i dont wanna point out incase i offend people on here. but money breeds dishonesty, and we live in a monetary system. it isnt the individual peoples problem though, its moneys problem. as my nan used to say money is the route of all evil.

theres not been budget cuts, factually the issue has been budget freezing instead.

With COVID in mind and the stresses that put on it, the NHS is just totally swamped. There's no possible way to deal with everything at once, this follows over a decade of mismanagement from our government (budget cuts since 2010 have left a £37 billion hole in funding). Unfortunately, it's what's happened and common people face the consequences.

My process took nearly 2 years to complete. But I'm glad I stuck at it. And I'm glad it was free.

But it means they lied then? I don't like when people lie. Here is what they have said in some of their responses to negative reviews:

whether you come to P-UK as an NHS or private patient, you are equally valued and will always receive the same level of care

We would like to clarify that we make no distinction between RTC and private patients in our approach to their care, or in the treatments which are advised.

From reading the negative reviews of them it sounds like they are very heavily swamped with a high number of ADHD referrals. But then why re-open the referrals?

They used to have a page of "myths" about them, which they appear to have deleted, but it originally said this:

1.We do not treat private patients or RTC patients any differently

In the face of delays, this is one we’re hearing a lot. Understandably private paying patients may feel the private pathway should take precedence over the NHS patients we are seeing under the Right to Choose.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and we do not discriminate against patients in this manner. All ADHD patients have the option to select the Right to Choose service and we openly encourage this with a notice on our booking form.

We don’t get any more or less money from the NHS Right to Choose service than we do from private paying patients and the only difference in treatment is an initial 2 week wait while we process your GP’s referral for Right to Choose patients.

it is.... paying customers essentially jump the que as they need to keep paying customers satisfied.
this is likely why nhs free referals have to wait so long.... when a new paying customer comes along all the free nhs referals get pushed down more.

So they must have lied when they said this:

In the interest of fairness, we are contacting people in date order from the time that we received your referral.

On October 19th they re-opened the Right to Choose pathway, despite having patients referred 6+ months ago still waiting. But apparently private customers can still get the whole process done in 16 days, whereas NHS patients might wait 2-3 months just to be added to the system after referral.

I think it's just about money, they don't give a *** about the patients. They continue to overload themselves and increase their waiting lists.

paid for private is absolutely the key to that.

paying customers are never kept waiting as they have to be satisfied, a person going free they can push back all the time because they dont respect free customers/freeloaders as they are not paying.

this is sorta a strength of a private system.... in anything the nhs does, even if you have a heart attack, you will be left waiting without care for years... in a private american paid system, you get seen to instantly because they have to keep you the customer happy to keep your custom. this is whats wrong with the free services we get, they dont respect us because we dont pay them.