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Occupational Health

BrokenBiscuits

Hi there, I wanted to share this experience just to see if it was me or if this was something that maybe someone should look into.

I've just started a job and had to fill out a "Fitness To Work" questionnaire before I started.  On the form I spoke about my long term depression, ASD and the back pain I had when I was doing a lot of building work on my house 15 years ago.

The Occupational therapist called me and asked me some supplementary questions about the form.  They were pretty standard questions asking me to elaborate on what was written.  The emphasis I felt was a lot on depression, especially as my depression has caused me to visit "crisis" teams because I got so low.  I explained that I felt the source of the depression was similar to a lot of ASD people, just the difficulty that some of us have understanding the world, finding friends, feeling lonely, feeling marginalised etc.

I'm in my 40's and was only diagnosed 2 months ago, so the better understanding of myself is only a recent thing.

My concern, and the purpose of this message was in her conclusion she said (to paraphrase)

"Listening to what you've told me, I would conclude that you are 'fit to work', and along with that statement, I'd like with your permission to inform them that I consider you to have a disability, and that disability is Depression"

I said, that's fine (I think it is always best to be honest when possible), but I did ask that if she considered making a formal statement about my Autism?  She said no, her rational surprised me because she said "as unlike your depression, you don't receive any medication for your autism, so I wouldn't consider that a disability".

I replied that I wasn't aware you could medicate autism (as I was pretty sure you can't) but she was adamant that your could.

I did a google search afterwards to double check, and no - you can medicate some of the secondary issues related to ASD (like anxiety, ADHD etc.) but you can't medicate Autism.

What are peoples view on this? Especially the views of the NAS?  Do you think I misunderstood what the Occupational Therapist was saying?

I worry that a Professional who society is trusting to advise businesses about conditions such as ASD might not have a great understanding of what it is, and if so, is it the place of the NAS to arrange training?

Parents

  • Thanks for the responses.  My ASD is official and was done by Mind through the Right To Choose scheme (which I would recommend to any readers who are currently sat in a very long que waiting for the NHS - Google "Right To Choose" and Mind to find out more) neither the depression or the autism has seen me take time off work, so neither would have been more of an issue on the form, neither would have been more of a red flag than the other.

    My concern is that earlier on in my career I was fired for "Gross Misconduct" which was incredibly painful and difficult, and caused my entire world to fall apart.  Part of the difficulty understanding what I was going through was because none of it made sense.  I don't want to go into details because it is still too painful, but to me it was the same as being fired for theft because you wrote a phone number down on a post-it note and took it home; or fired for sexual harassment because you told someone you thought their earrings looked nice. My truth of the matter was if in either case you WANTED to make an issue out of it, you could - because there was evidence there, but my confusion is WHY would someone?  That's the thing that hurt, confused, made me angry.

    Since I spoke with my ASD Mentor, he made me feel better about it.  Making comparisons to a person with cerebral palsy on a building site making a mistake because of balance, then someone like myself with ASD making a mistake based on society norms is equally as unfair.

    My initial instinct was worry, worry something like that may happen again, getting "professional" vindication from OC felt important.  I feel I am more likely to be judged negatively at work because of something that happens as a result of ASD rather than that of Depression.  But the former is much less understood. 

    I was just wondering if the NAS had experience of this, if they had the sort of contact or influence to make it happen to make businesses more aware through Occupational Health

  • in reply to BrokenBiscuits

    ah my boss almost fired me for gross misconduct as they was harrassing me and trying to get me fired for a while so i complained on facebook and one of their supervisors got on around my freinds only privacy and tried to use it as a social media policy breach and got me on my final warning, i would have been fired but i fought it well enough to just get me a final warning.

    im guessing by the sounds of it your gross misconduct was a similar thing. social media policy breach? 

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  • in reply to BrokenBiscuits

    ah my boss almost fired me for gross misconduct as they was harrassing me and trying to get me fired for a while so i complained on facebook and one of their supervisors got on around my freinds only privacy and tried to use it as a social media policy breach and got me on my final warning, i would have been fired but i fought it well enough to just get me a final warning.

    im guessing by the sounds of it your gross misconduct was a similar thing. social media policy breach? 

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