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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

  • Based on the state the NHS is currently in, I think it's obvious from the experiences of some of the members here, and also things reported by the media that far too many people are unable to access the help and support they need from the NHS for mental health issues.

    With enough funding and education/training about autism, then yes, I think the NHS mental health services would be capable.

Reply

  • Based on the state the NHS is currently in, I think it's obvious from the experiences of some of the members here, and also things reported by the media that far too many people are unable to access the help and support they need from the NHS for mental health issues.

    With enough funding and education/training about autism, then yes, I think the NHS mental health services would be capable.

Children
  • in reply to Sparkly-Temporary Account
    Sparkly-Temporary Account said:
    I think it's obvious from the experiences of some of the members here, and also things reported by the media that far too many people are unable to access the help and support they need from the NHS for mental health issues.

    Very true.

    With the increasing number of people being diagnosed with autism (especially the later diagnosed adults) then there is a ballooning of the number needing support and no realistic pipeline of either trained professionals or the funding for them to work.

    It looks like this pinch point could be more than a decade long as it isn't viable to train up vast numbers of new metal health professionals who will be largely at a loose end once the "catch up" of later diagnosed patients is complete.

    Also thinking about how people here report their support needs are often lifelong, this will be a tremendous overhead for the NHS were they to fund it, and since most autists are unlikely to be tax payers then we would be a massive drain on their budget.

    It is a tricky situation to find a way out of which is why I think the NHS are largely ignoring it and just letting us sort ourselves out as best we can.

    If anyone has a plan that includes funding options then I would love to hear it.

    Consider that around 2% of the population are autistic (I think neurodiverse overall is arounf 15% but most others have lower support needs) then there will be around 1.4 million autists.

    Support overhead would be on average one hour of support per month so to caculate the number of support staff hours for this I would estimate

    A therapist would have 40 weeks of work per year (52 minus holidays. sickness, training etc)

    Of a 40 hour working week, roughly half will be admin - writing up notes, preparing for sessions, meetings, research for particular clients etc.

    So each year a therapist has 40 weeks x 20 hours of face to face time = 800 hour per year.

    The NHS would need 1.4 millon support hours needed / 800 hours per therapist = 1,750 dedicated staff.

    Does anyone know how many they have now? If they staff are doing other stuff then they have even less hours for autists so we need even more staff. It would be interesting to see the numbers.

    If you consider an average salary of £80k, the cost to an employer is roughly double this for pension, benefits, National Insurance etc then this is £160k x 1,750 staff = £280 million per year.

    This is before the cost of premises, medications, additional support staff etc.

    I wonder how much we as a group contribute through National Insurance contributions versus how much we take in benefits.

    This was just playing with the numbers to see what we look like to the government on a balance sheet.