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Opinions: Do we believe the NHS is capable of helping autistic people with mental health problems?

Jermaine

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?

Parents

  • In short:

    I have no faith that the NHS could possibly have access to the requisite funding TO ENABLE the NHS to "properly" help autistic people with the plethora of diverse and complex needs that are known to exist.

    A subtle, but important distinction.......I think we must be careful not to universally besmirch the NHS which is on it's knees.  The clinicians, surgeons, nurses, porters, pharmacists, doctors.......all feel pretty overwhelmed and are in some form of shutdown or burnout at the moment (from what I understand from people I know, and what I read in the press)......so we should be careful NOT to make them feel more hopeless and inadequate than their current resources make them.

    I'll pack up my soap box now, and retire quietly to the shadows.

    [Disambiguation - Jermaine, I'm not having-a-go at you above....you raise important matters....I'm simply giving my opinion on those matters.]

  • in reply to Number

    I apreciate your kindness there Number, but every single time I engange with the NHS and it's minions, it's aggravating.

    Those poor people you talk about have been riding high on the hog, sneering and looking down their noses at us mere mortals for bloody decades.

    They get six years of learning "teh biggest flow-chart in teh world" followed by life on the "gravy train" with no performance metrics or targets to hit. (exceptr number of pateints per hour.  You have to both kill someone AND GET CAUGHT to actually get the sack... 

    Plainly we need more doctors, but they are just too expensive. 

    Still, A.I. will eventually replace their diagnostic function, and on the whole I expect it'll be able to out perform the humans Simply because it won't forget half it's training or fail to keep up with the latest data. Doctors rarely act like human beings, so the public will hardly notice any difference except for the improved efficiency.

    We will still want to be touched by a human I suspect, but "human interfaces" for the A.I. will be ten a penny by then. 

    The entire class of overly expensive and poorly perfoming doctors and consultants can be replaced by £250 worth of hardware from China (or another brics country, that does the electronics manufacture and design   that we used to do) and a lightly trained assistant...  

Reply
  • in reply to Number

    I apreciate your kindness there Number, but every single time I engange with the NHS and it's minions, it's aggravating.

    Those poor people you talk about have been riding high on the hog, sneering and looking down their noses at us mere mortals for bloody decades.

    They get six years of learning "teh biggest flow-chart in teh world" followed by life on the "gravy train" with no performance metrics or targets to hit. (exceptr number of pateints per hour.  You have to both kill someone AND GET CAUGHT to actually get the sack... 

    Plainly we need more doctors, but they are just too expensive. 

    Still, A.I. will eventually replace their diagnostic function, and on the whole I expect it'll be able to out perform the humans Simply because it won't forget half it's training or fail to keep up with the latest data. Doctors rarely act like human beings, so the public will hardly notice any difference except for the improved efficiency.

    We will still want to be touched by a human I suspect, but "human interfaces" for the A.I. will be ten a penny by then. 

    The entire class of overly expensive and poorly perfoming doctors and consultants can be replaced by £250 worth of hardware from China (or another brics country, that does the electronics manufacture and design   that we used to do) and a lightly trained assistant...  

Children
  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Devil -v- deep !

    fibromyalgia -v- hep c.

    It is good that you and your GP are of a similar mind though.....and great to hear of patient+GP synchronicity......and the funding/means to enable it in your case. 

  • in reply to Iain

    We'll probably all be asked to rate our pain on a 1-10 scale and how will it know if my 10 is the same as yours? I don't think humans do very well at this.

    Will it be translated from one language into half a dozen others that nobody understands, a bit like instructions from IKEA?

    You never know, we might actually end up with something thart listens to us, but I doubt it, it will probably want to talk to all our other devices which will be fun if like me you don't use social media, YouTube or have a smart phone. If it talked to my Kiindle it would probably come away with the impression that I'm obsessed with death as I read a lot of crime fiction.

    I'm having to have a blood test next week to see if I was given infected blood back in the 80's, the symptoms for hep C are very similar to those of fibromyalgia. I'm not that worried about it, but the GP and I both thought it was worth checking.

  • in reply to I Sperg
    I Sperg said:
    A.I. will eventually replace their diagnostic function, and on the whole I expect it'll be able to out perform the humans

    I can imagine the trouble that AI will have with the Brittish "it hurts a bit" or "I just feel a bit off" input, never mind the challenges with masking autists when trying to perform any sort of mental health work.

    Nightmare!