Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m autistic, and I’ve been dealing with depression and social anxiety for over a decade, now. My family has been battling the NHS to get the little support I have now. I am wondering how other autistic people are finding the NHS.
My first issue is that there are no autistic professionals accessible to me, which means I’m having to try and educate every professional I encounter on autism. I’ve been struggling to properly understand what autism is, myself, so I haven’t been doing great. I’m thankful to have an Adult Autism Intensive Support Team that operates in my area, because they have now taken up the role of educating NHS professionals on autism, but that means I’m now having to hope these other human beings internalise what is said to them, view me as equal, and treat my problems as equally as serious as a non-autistic person’s problems, which has happened rarely so far, it feels.
My second issue is the interactions with the professionals who do not care that I am autistic. Having a psychiatric doctor laugh when I told him I was autistic, asking me if it was something I had read on the internet. Having an occupational therapist try asking me to separate myself from my autism. Medication being the solution, for the time being, while I waste years of my life terrified of the world around me. I wonder what else there is that I’ve forgotten to mention. I should document the things that make me feel miserable.
If I were a caged animal, I’d have somebody in my corner. Somebody would scream “This is neglect!” Unfortunately, I’m an autistic human, so I don’t really have that. I have a team of NHS employees in my corner, who aren’t willing to bite the hand that feeds them, verbally, of course. Who would be willing to criticise the one that pays them, that gives them what they need to make it to the next day? I’m trapped, because they’re trapped. I’m losing hope. I have no faith in the NHS, or in British society to force our political leaders, those whose jobs it is to serve the people of our nation, to come to the aid of any autistic person.
In short: I have no faith in the NHS’ ability to help autistic people. How about you?
Aside from Labour wanting to privatise the NHS, in general terms, the whole mindset relating to mental health issues and hidden disability needs to fundamentally and radically change here in the U.K. so the many issues that we see are far deeper than it would appear at first glance when we scratch the surface - all too often and for many decades, mental health is the poor relation when it comes to NHS or other funding, because there is a certain mindset out there that mental health and hidden disability issues are (somehow) “not real” and this is something that probably requires a wider cultural change in social attitudes - being Irish myself and living almost 23 years here in the U.K., (where our mental health services are even worse under the HSE and the older health boards) - when I come home to Ireland, it’s a similar thing to how native Irish people still living in Ireland treat our Irish diaspora abroad, such as myself living in the U.K. as long as I have, for example renewing my Irish passport from here in the U.K. is always made purposely more difficult by the Irish government long before Brexit, there is still strong cultural resistance to allowing us Irish abroad to vote in Irish general elections and referenda, when I come home to Ireland and express any opinion or observation on anything that I see in Ireland from people whose minds are closed to change, I’m swiftly told that I don’t understand that I’m “wrong” even though I’ve done my research before making any comment
IrishInManchesterUK said: so the many issues that we see are far deeper than it would appear at first glance when we scratch the surface
I agree here, in terms of mental health
I agree in terms of most things.
The more you look and think about things & people, there more of it there is!!
Let's all agree to .....agree then.