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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

  • DaisyGirl you are right.  I have always said this myself, which is why talking therapies don't work for people on the spectrum.  We need practical solutions to the problems that are dragging us down, not sitting talking endlessly in a loop.  You still come out with the same problem.

    I have just weaned myself off SSRIs which I recognise now, I should never have been given.  I didn't ask for them, a mental health worker contacted my GP and they persuaded me.  If I had not been facing the difficult situations I was, my anxiety levels would have been normal.  It was through addressable situations with services (about myself and my children) that they caused, I was given all the anxiety.  The SSRI's served a short-term purpose (albeit with unpleasant side-effects) but they just left me on them without review for about 18 months, and I had to take the decision myself or else no doubt I'd have ended up on them for life!

    And furthermore, their judgement of the nature of the anxiety has been entirely erroneous as zem indicates.

    They haven't got a clue, and they judge us by neurotypical standards which will never work.

Reply

  • DaisyGirl you are right.  I have always said this myself, which is why talking therapies don't work for people on the spectrum.  We need practical solutions to the problems that are dragging us down, not sitting talking endlessly in a loop.  You still come out with the same problem.

    I have just weaned myself off SSRIs which I recognise now, I should never have been given.  I didn't ask for them, a mental health worker contacted my GP and they persuaded me.  If I had not been facing the difficult situations I was, my anxiety levels would have been normal.  It was through addressable situations with services (about myself and my children) that they caused, I was given all the anxiety.  The SSRI's served a short-term purpose (albeit with unpleasant side-effects) but they just left me on them without review for about 18 months, and I had to take the decision myself or else no doubt I'd have ended up on them for life!

    And furthermore, their judgement of the nature of the anxiety has been entirely erroneous as zem indicates.

    They haven't got a clue, and they judge us by neurotypical standards which will never work.

Children
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