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 always used to have faith in the NHS but had a very negative experience a couple of years ago when I had a mental health crisis. I had only (finally) been diagnosed the year before that but had hope that now I and others knew what was going on with me I could at least be helped more effectively when the need arose.
What actually happened was I found a stressful event at home extremely traumatic and this resulted in me spiralling into an extreme state of anxiety and depression. I lost my appetite, I could barely sleep and I was shivering even though it was summer. This went on for a period of weeks and I became suicidal. My family phoned the local mental health crisis team and after some back and forth I recieved an appointment to be assessed by a member of the team the beginning of the next week. At the appointment however as soon as I mentioned to the nurse that I had received an autism diagnosis the year before he effectively lost interest and pretty rapidly shut things down. Apparently in his opinion the whole problem was related to me being autistic, and he proceeded to tell me that the service was not commissioned to deal with autism. Apparently I should have contacted an autism charity and was sent away with a photocopy of the contact details for a local informal autism support group...
Oh my god! That’s absolute rubbish. My heart goes out to you.