recent GP survey on stress not being an illness

That’s true. I can multitask but for some reason lots of the time I’m just waiting for 45 mins for the that one thing to finish. I have got real control over exactly when I’m going to have a do everything day. This is kind of the thing when people thing of autists they maybe think of casino card counters and artists, but it you can’t assume they are interested in making money or making art that other people like. I can do them on tap for me but not to perform for others, the environment and feeling has to be just right. I’ve been grappling with how to explain this for years, it’s is kind of like the 45 mins to multitask while the cake is baking analogy. I’m spinning plates in my head and it could all fall down.

It might be for some autists, but not for me, I can do several things at once, a lot of multitasking is doing things in the spaces left in other things. For example you might make a cake and put it in the oven for 45 mins to bake, what you do in the 45 mins is the important thing, you can wash up and clean the work surfaces, sweep the floor and do the hoovering whilst that cakes in the oven, or you can sit on your bum and wait for it to finish.

I know I'm lucky with my GP's, I know other practices on the island do the 8am scramble and it can takes weeks to get an appointment, no wonder A&E depts are full of people who shouldn't be there and wouldn't be there had they got a GP's appt sooner.

The HSE definition of stress. States that stress as itself is not an illness but the effects of prolonged stress impacts on health. This can be in a manner of different illnesses and conditions such as increased mental ill health and physical conditions such a high blood pressure and cardio-vascular problems.

Therefore stress is not in itself an illness but can cause or exacerbate ill health. 

I concur that stress per se is not an illness - depression and anxiety on the other hand are with stress being a major contributor and cause of this

Once one gets past the BBC news website headline it goes on to say "Hundreds of GPs across England have told the BBC they think mental health problems are being over-diagnosed." 

In addition to stress relating to physical situations one perhaps might also consider how prolonged psychological stress continues long after the physical situation was initially encountered.  Reactions "triggered" by encountering physical situations seemingly separate to the initial one can further deepen the trauma and lowering the trigger setting.

The figures I have shared indicate that GPs are themselves particularly vulnerable to this.

As others in this thread have correctly pointed out the respondents to the survey are not necessarily representative of the entire group to which the question was posed.

The greatest concern that I have about this sort of news media article is that it "dog whistles" to people who wish to play down the mental health challenges that modern society presents to almost all its members including, especially in this context, autistic people.

Best Wishes

Gald things OK for you with your GP.  This it not the case across the UK tho'

I believe it is an autistic trait to struggle with multi-tasking TheCatWoman 

An AI system could quite simply be designed to manage the "two things" problem I believe.

I don't really have that problem with my GP, unless it's urgent theres no such thing as the 8am rush, you an make an appointment for the afternoon and they're 10 mins rather than 5, so everybody gets a bit more time for things to be sorted out properly.

I could see AI not being able to cope if someone had more than one things that needed consultant opinion

Fair enough TheCatWoman 

I'm saying that the GPs and other professionals have been doing a sorting task of who one is sent to see and that AI might be able to do it (and maybe much better) if it is suitable for task.

This would free up those health care professionals for seeing the people that the AI has sorted them to see including the ones the AI couldn't sort and maybe.

Got to be better than trying to get an appointment thro' the GP receptionist triage process that has been the case in some circumstances or getting stuck in a bottleneck waiting to see a GP...

The thing is that with insufficient people able and/or funding to do the job making it difficult to get an appointment is all part of the game that is played by the system perhaps...

Waiting lists go down - oh and by the way so does life expectancy...

Sorry I don't understand your reply?

Agreed the IT needs to be fit for purpose and able to alter how it communicates with the specific person it is communicating with to match capability and needs.  Much as one might hope a human being is able to do too.

The "not an It solution" that we have relied upon for years in this is GPs and more recently other health care professionals who are "acting up" or promoted into that role.

In this, if they are deciding and facilitating where one should go next with us, this makes some sense.

Increasingly tho' they have been deliberately or otherwise been "gate-keepering" access to specialists who do not have capacity to see everyone who might need to see them perhaps.

They end up spending time and effort on this that perhaps society might find better used for other purposes maybe?

No not an IT solution, there's to much IT involved in health care, theres to much IT involved in daily life, computer says no is still to much of a problem. IT could be a solution, if it were better thought out, more responsive and focussed properly and that people both staff and patients know how to use it and it's relaible. My GP's have a check in screen that we're supposed ot use, I did it and it didn't register I was there, I sat in that waiting room for nearly an hour before I went and asked a person. Many older people don't use it either, touch screens aren't very good if you have dry skin, somethng many older people suffer from.

"Dr knows best" / society needs people to take responsibility for their own health are 2 ends of the same "spectrum" perhaps.

I understand that in other countries people go straight to the specialist involved.

That "gatekeeper" role of the GP combined with a triage role might mean that consultants aren't needlessly under too much load.

You're right

 maybe as part of the shake-up for those able to do so (with a back-up for those who aren't) using an IT solution to go straight to the specialist involved makes a lot of sense to me...

I don't know I think there have always been people who are more or less engaged with their health, there are still younger people who have the same attitude of my parents and grand parents that the doctor knows best and you don't question them and certainly never disagree with them. Then there are loads of others who do want to be treated as individual and expect it, I'm not saying its an easy position for anyone to be in, but over all I think the whole system could do with a shake-up. Access to consultants is always through a GP unless you go privately, worst of all, you will likely see the same consultant whether you go private or NHS. There are some specialities that are so few of them I wonder if there are enough consultants to teach anyone coming up the ranks? I did ask about seeing an allergy specialist and my GP didn't know if there was one, certainly not round here as far as he knew, how can that be right when there are more and more people with multiple allergies around?

Because they are not treating people as individuals.  Furthermore the public has become immune to being treated as individuals because many people appear to not have the capacity to engaged with on this basis - whether this is a new thing or an old - has relevance to social changes that have taken place more recently I do not know.

I think many GP's are aware of the conditions their patients are living in and thier financial circumstances, it used to be that if a GP wrote to the council someone would get rehoused or get some other sort of help, social service etc, but now with services cut to the bone and a tiny number of council houses compared to the need, everyones stuck. 

I think more and more GP's are aware of the need for a holistic approach, but the whole system is set up to make it very difficult. If they send you to one consultant, you have to wait for them to see you, say theres nothing they can do and tell you to go back to your GP and the whole sorry merry-go-round starts again.

Many services that are supposed to be an alternative, like pain clinics are so out of date, they're promoting stuff that I read in womens magazines 30 years ago, how can this be state of the art? How can it be that they're telling you to do stuff that would be in a self help book? 

++Its likely pragmatic GPs view stress as a symptom of something else. Until perhaps it affects them and becomes chronic. They have some of the most regimented roles of social servants. But also going from the intensive training of becoming a doctor to the relatively placid and monotonous daily routine. A lot of surgeries where I am vary the the times doctors can work - this is probably also one of the reasons you may have to wait a long time see a doctor.

Scientifically it would be hard to prove stress as physical illness, more consistent with being a mental illness caused by the body's response to physical situations. When people work remotely they can deal a lot better with stress. So removing yourself from the physical enviroment certainly has an improving factor on quality of life as we saw during the pandemic (with many people opting for hybrid roles). 

Consistent routines also cause fatigue which lead to stress. Eventually the body will break if it is subjective to repetetive motions (and thoughts).

Yes I agree completely.

The "biopsychosocial" model proposed by Engel in 1977 covers this ( and yes no doubt "reinventing the wheel" of how health has been seen by for a longer period than we have had medical doctors...)

One consideration is possibly that if one goes to a hairdresser they and you expect the visit to be for a haircut...

I think it fair to consider that medicalisation of social and psychological issues is very difficult to change with predictable response from all concerned...

it may be profoundly difficult for practitioners and patients to juggle the components of the biopsychosocial model given the complexity of social understanding today.

e.g. the doctor realises that actually the major presenting cause is the social conditions the person is living in - but the person says "I've come about my diabetes Dr...." Or the person and maybe the Dr. realises that in the way society is currently set up "I can't work because of my mental health problems" is an absolutely rational thing for that person to say...

Iain said:

It is worthwhile noting the the article says we do not yet have prevalence rates for autistic doctors and the responses they got would be hard to make statistically meaningful conclusions from due to confirmational bias. 

Exactly!

That is/was the case for me SunshineDrive 

I believe that Alexithymia, has something to do with this

Also called emotional blindness, as a neuropsycholgial phenomenon characterized by not being able to process or describe one's emotions . Instead, some people with alexithymia express emotions nonverbally.

Alexithymia - Wikipedia

Your points are well made mrs.snooks 

1 - 1 Agreed, "there are lies, damned lies and statistcis" I once attended a meeting where the professional body's advisor on use of statistics began their talk with us with "first decide what it is you want to show..."  Needless to say my response was forthright and appeared profoundly confusing to many of the people in the meeting.  (and these people had all received a graduate/post graduate science qualifications...)

1- 2 I admit to being very frightened in and by society and I think it comes in no small measure from being autistic.  Thanks for the "heads up" about who we might trust.  Please continue to be as brave as you are able to and (notwithstanding the be careful who one trusts bit!) I and others believe you and support you.

2- 1 yep, money, perhaps not even readers these days as enough money can keep parts of the media running even with few readers and able to be quoted by other wider parts of the media  - Private Eye magazine has had a running joke about the sale of The Telegraph - that someone has actually bought a copy...  

2 -2 yep - and what/who are they in it for..

2-3 yep - what drives these people isn't some heart-felt social agenda anymore - makes me deeply suspicious too

If you take a strict definition of what a medical problem is and isn't, then things like a broken leg might not be a medical condition, likewse appendix removal, thats a surgical one. Stress could be considered a mental health problem, which as we all know is an awkward thing provoking extreme reactions, from pull your socks up, to filling you with every pill they can find in the hope that one works.

I think the problem is more a lack of holistic thinking about health, than anything else. Mind and body are linked, is your IBS playing up because your stressed, or are you stressed because your IBS is playing up?