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Mental health services are shambolic

Hope

Just a rant!

It seems that these days the only groups who might benefit from mental health services  are those who are severely ill (been sectioned and are in hospital), and those with stress related anxiety and depression, who have access to Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT): 6 weeks of CBT in a GP surgery or brief telephone contact. But if you have a chronic anxiety condition as a complication of having a developmental condition like autism, there is hardly any mental health provision!. I know this from first hand experience; you might get 6 weeks  of CBT, which barely scratches the surface of your problems, and are then expected to get on with it yourself, until the problems you face mean you need more CBT; and so it goes on  in swings and roundabouts with no real progress!.

Isn't it about time this diabolical state of affairs changes? And what precisely is the Autism Strategy doing to ensure that adults on the spectrum with chronic anxiety get the intensive (more thaan 6 weeks in many cases) therapy they need?

Parents

  • I am just wondering if mental health services need a complete re-ordering in their general appraoch.

    It seems that they assume one of two problems for people with mental health problems. One: there is a chemical imbalance. Two: there is a disordered way of thinking.

    In actual fact neither of these things may be the case, and in fact what people need (whether they have autism or not, but very much more if they do have autism) is a change in their life circumstances. There is an assumption that giving medication or CBT will allow a person to change their circumstances themselves, but often this is not at all possible. Without ouside help with life circumstances there will never be a recovery, yet this type of help is specifically prohibited by the mental health services.

    There are some professionals out there who see this problem (for example those that speak of reactive depression or anxiety as a perfectly normal reaction to unbearable life circumstances which the individual cannot change), and talk about it, but there is nothing they can really do. It seems it is often the case that professionals prefer "easy" cases where a boost in mood created by short term SSRIs solves the problem, but in so many cases, and especially with autism this just doesn't work.

    Worse still is the use of person centred counselling/therapies where the therapist just repeats back to the "client" what they have just said. 

    Maybe some people have good experince with these therapies, but personally I don't think they are any use for adults with autism.

Reply

  • I am just wondering if mental health services need a complete re-ordering in their general appraoch.

    It seems that they assume one of two problems for people with mental health problems. One: there is a chemical imbalance. Two: there is a disordered way of thinking.

    In actual fact neither of these things may be the case, and in fact what people need (whether they have autism or not, but very much more if they do have autism) is a change in their life circumstances. There is an assumption that giving medication or CBT will allow a person to change their circumstances themselves, but often this is not at all possible. Without ouside help with life circumstances there will never be a recovery, yet this type of help is specifically prohibited by the mental health services.

    There are some professionals out there who see this problem (for example those that speak of reactive depression or anxiety as a perfectly normal reaction to unbearable life circumstances which the individual cannot change), and talk about it, but there is nothing they can really do. It seems it is often the case that professionals prefer "easy" cases where a boost in mood created by short term SSRIs solves the problem, but in so many cases, and especially with autism this just doesn't work.

    Worse still is the use of person centred counselling/therapies where the therapist just repeats back to the "client" what they have just said. 

    Maybe some people have good experince with these therapies, but personally I don't think they are any use for adults with autism.

Children
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