Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I've been called for Jury Service and am wondering if anyone has any experience of it please? Specifically, I have to fill in the form and return it in 7 days and it asks about reasonable adjustments - I'm not sure whether to say I'm autistic or not because the main thing that might happen is I get so overwhelmed I have a panic attack - but I don't know if that's going to happen or not . I don't want them to say I can't do it incase this happens because it might not and then I'd miss out on something I would find very interesting.
What to do ??
Being called for jury service (Scotland) last year was the thing that triggered my breakdown and resulted in me moving back in with my mum for almost a year. I found the whole process extremely stressful, despite it only lasting for three days and never actually needing to go into a court session. At the time I was not aware of my autism, and didn't feel that being anxious about the process was enough of a reason to get a GP letter for an excusal. I called up a couple of days before and explained that I might have a panic attack in court and would that be ok, but they said they couldn't do anything without the GP letter so I just had to go through with it.
It was a massive disruption to my routine, I didn't know til the morning of if I would be needed, I was stuck in a room with a bunch of strangers, we'd constantly be told to go away and come back in a few hours, then told eventually that we weren't needed that day. The process to recover lost earnings (I'm self employed) was so complicated that I never got the money back and it burnt me out so much that I couldn't live in my flat without help for daily tasks.
Get the excusal letter from your GP.