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Mental Health Services

NAS82925

Hi! Just curious to see what mental health services have been made available for autistic people to use? Do you think they are suitable/ beneficial? If not, what do you think can be done to improve these services/make them more accessible for autistic people? I am currently writing a proposal to improve mental health services offered to autistic people and I would really love some insight from people that have used these services so that we can focus on areas of improvement! Slight smile

Parents

  • Suitable and beneficial for some, yes. But for people with Autism and other disabilities probably not. At least that's been my experience. When I was involved with Mental Health services they treated me terrible and paid no attention to my Autism diagnosis, in fact they acted as if it didn't even exist and disregarded it and how certain things affected me, like bright rooms, people yelling at me... I had so many meltdowns with them and they just sighed and told me to calm down. Eventually my mum decided we'd drop them and she would help me along with Autism specialist. I got better a lot quicker after dropping Mental Health services, they really did more harm than good and I would never turn to them again. They made me worse each time I turned to them and they understood nothing about Autism.

  • in reply to KittyCandy

    Indeed. So many of us have had that experience.

    And yet since the Autism Act 2009, they are supposed to have been trained. Clearly, very few have been. The solution here starts at the top....structure, institutional culture, resources and training!

    We may only be about 1.5% of the population but given that we are statistically massively more likely to run into MH problems, I think we need special MH services for Autistic and other neurodivergent people, preferably staffed by folk who are neurodivergent themselves. A lot of our problems with the system might then magically go away. We wouldn't be having our experiences disbelieved and invalidated, or our motives and behaviours misunderstood every time we speak to them.

    It's interesting that you say you got better, quicker after dropping MH. I know the right help is out there. I found my own private Autism informed counsellor, who was a huge improvement and who certainly did not treat me like a child. I also saw a private clinical psychologist who was a specialist in neurodivergence and who helped me draft a medical passport for general health practitioners. She was great and absolutely got it.

    But we shouldn't have to go private for this. It is massively expensive and can't be a luxury for the few who can afford it.

  • in reply to Dawn
    Dawn said:
    they are supposed to have been trained

    I found this free government provided autism training online, I have wondered if it might be interesting to sign up for the course and see if it's any good.

    https://freecoursesinengland.co.uk/understanding-autism/

    My husband did their cyber security one and found it interesting but rather a lot of reading stuff off the screen.

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