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?
I have no faith in primary care whatsoever. It’s virtually impossible to access the service. Weeks to get an appointment, consultations by nurse practitioners who often lack the knowledge or diagnostic skills to get to the issue at hand. As to mental health issues it’s laughable, or it would be if it wasn’t so infuriating. You are just not taken seriously, and dismissed without follow up or any kind of treatment
I think I'm very lucky and Wales is lucky in general that we have fairly good primary care, I certainly do, I have 3 GP's in my surgery who I trust and who are good listeners and thorough in their approach, they're also realistic about what other care is available and are quite up for patients using services like osteopaths.
Bronglais has had a bad rep for years, but I'm not sure you can take an incident from 1976 and project it onto 2024, although I'm sure it remains vivid in your memory.
But, yes Anglesey does seem to have fairly good services, especially when talking to family in England, my son has been diagnosed with COPD and nobodies even listened to his chest, he's had no in person contact with his GP's who are all locums, so there's no continuity of care. My GP couldn't believe it when I told her.
Really??
In 1976 I almost DIED in Corris waiting for someone to get their act together and tell us why i was projectile vomiting, then get me to somewhere less "hillbilly" where I could actually have my inflamed and about to burst appendix removed! (Bronglais General Hospital) by screaming and speeding ambulance. My dad (who was no slouch behind the wheel) said they went proper fast!
To be fair, it presented during saturday night and none of us thought it serious until I could no longer bend my body in the middle next morninng... We threw an emergency at a tiny cottage practice at 09:00 on sunday morning!
They did save my life I believe, so I cant actually complain reasonably, and that paraggraph is very much tongue in cheek, but it was the last time I felt actually safe and "looked after properly" in a hospital/NHS setting, it's been obviously declining inexorably since then.
Here today, the emrgency ambulance would have quoted 5 hours (TBF it actually turned up in 3.5) if the scene I witnessed the other day playing out where one of my more criminally inclined frends was taking time out from his busy day to help a neighbour he found lying in the street with a head wound...