what kind of work do people do?

I’m a Mental Health Nurse, I work mainly in dementia care. I did my under grad in Psychology though I’m interested in most things brain related. I’d love to get back into studying Psychology to be honest but Nursing pays a wage and the children are far too young for me to even consider trying to study at postgraduate level for the foreseeable future.

Cool! You must have lots of academic knowledge about ASD then :) 

It's possible to do a part-time postgraduate, perhaps? To work while taking a couple of days off per week to do postgraduate stuff? 

And it's also a possibility to look forward to when your kids are grown up.

Cool! You must have lots of academic knowledge about ASD then :) 

It's possible to do a part-time postgraduate, perhaps? To work while taking a couple of days off per week to do postgraduate stuff? 

And it's also a possibility to look forward to when your kids are grown up.

You're welcome and Thank You :-)

No problem! What you are saying sounds like an excellent plan. I'm glad to hear that you have such passion for learning! The person I know who is doing a part-time masters also has children, but her children are in school. It'll probably be easier to find time for yourself during the day when all your children are old enough to be in school. 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that MH and LD have a lot of cross-overs. And I guess those with ASD that require nursing support will most likely be those that have additional learning difficulties. 

Thanks for sharing your journey of how you became a MH nurse. It does sound like a lot of hard work to squeeze a 3 year course to a 2 year course. But you've clearly done an excellent job of getting your degree.

Thank you for letting me know about this. At the moment I can only do part time agency Nursing because of the litluns but it might be something worth considering in a few years time.

I have a fair degree of knowledge about the brain from my undergrad and I love reading about brain function :-)

I think the reason that Autism falls under the Learning Disability branch of Nursing is because most people with Autism who require Nursing level support, usually the inpatient LD wards or the secure LD units (I've worked in a few of them as an agency nurse as there is a degree of cross over between MH and LD) will also have associated learning disabilities so the nurses that are treating them need to have good knowledge of learning disabilities.

I ended up going into mental health nursing purely by chance. It was the summer and I'd finished my undergrad and wanted to go into Clinical Psychology But I needed clinical experience first. So I was wondering what to do. As luck would have it a flyer came through my door advertising that my local University was starting up accelerated Masters Degrees (2 year MSc instead of the usual 3 year BSc for Nursing) for Mental Health Nursing/Adult Nursing/Physiotherapy, provided that you had a related undergrad degree, which I did, so I applied and started in the September. It was hard work though as it was 3 years squished into 2 years and at the higher MSc academic level.

I would absolutely love to do a part time MSc in Neuropsychology leading onto a part time PhD in NeuroPsychology,, but, time will tell. My youngest has such high needs that I will have to see how she progresses.

Northern Exposure is a Dr in Alaska, Due South is a Mountie in Chicago - both are great.

Looking back, I think Benton Fraser (the Mountie) shows definite ASD traits

I had the total hots for 'Maggie' (Janine Turner) from that show...

By the way, I also know someone who is doing a part-time masters while also working part-time for the disability centre in university. Your experience as a mental health nurse might be suitable for that role if you are interested in something like this. I think they also provide training to the workers. 

I'm sure you have a talent to gain lots of academic knowledge about ASD or brain stuff :)

It's interesting that autism falls under learning disability. I've been applying for jobs lately, and they often have a disability survey at the end, and autism is often put into cognitive impairment (and they put ADHD and dyslexia under learning disability). 

Did you need to study for another nursing degree after you did you undergraduate psychology to be a mental health nurse? 

A 8 year part-time PhD is definitely possible. I know some people doing part-time, and it seems great as there seems to be less time pressure.

Thanks for introducing me to this show. It sounds interesting.

Oh, no idea, but no mounty in NX

Strange question was that the one with the mounty or was that due south?

Hello qwerty, It's a TV series from the 90's called 'Northern Exposure', season 5 episode 14, 'Bolt from the Blue'. It's about a Jewish Doctor who ends up practising for 4 years in Alaska to repay his student loans after qualifying. Although filmed in Roslyn, Washington and not Alaska.Roslyn's is the name of the cafe too in the series named after the founders of the town of Cicely in the series. 

The characters are terrific and it's timeless. I've not had a TV for well over 20 years, was never a 'TV' person, but I loved that and have the boxset.

When I have been away from home and been around a TV I always have a look at the channel guide to see if its the same things still running and it always is, I'll then watch it for five minutes on any channel to see if it still makes me feel the same, and it does, I find it utterly depressing and other things I can't really describe but it's all bad feelings for humanity.

Unfortunately I don’t really have much academic knowledge of ASD. In terms of Psychology we studied a little bit about the link between Autism and Theory of mind in the 2nd year Social Psychology module. Psychology as a discipline is actually a very broad area and the undergraduate modules tend to cover quite general topics which form the foundation stones of knowledge for the more specific topics. I think Autism would be more suited to a PhD theses than to undergraduate study due to the high level of underpinning knowledge that would be required to ‘fully’ understand all the differences in brain function, thinking and behaviour. In terms of Nursing, Autism actually falls under Learning Disability Nursing and not Mental Health, so I’m not trained in the management of ASD. I do however have experience of working with Autistic children through my voluntary work in Scouting. It is possible to do a part time postgraduate course, over 8 years! I might just wait and do it when the children are adults though!

Sorry, it's my fault too for the misunderstanding. I made the assumption too quickly it was doctor who, and I also read too fast and picked up "doctor who" from the sentence "...with the doctor who comes...". Thank you for taking the time and patience to explain that it's a different doctor. I agree, it is really funny that two ASD/AS people are trying to communicate with and understand each other, haha. 

Just curious, what is the TV show you are talking about?

This is so funny qwerty, two ASD or AS trying to understand, thank you for pointing out inadvertently that I could have been clearer in my communication, this is something I always complain about with non ASD people, so, the doctor isn't the 'doctor who' character from the dr who series. The doctor is a medical practitioner who goes to see the park ranger. It's a different tv series. I understand that Dr Who is apparently popular with a few people on here so it would be easy to make that link, personally, can't stand the series but did like it when it was Tom Baker decades ago.

It can go both ways - it might mean that I'm not good at understanding jokes, haha. I think it's mainly because I'm not familiar with Doctor Who, I've only seen one episode my entire life, so I didn't know about this reference. I can imagine it would be funny if I knew the TV image! Thanks for explaining

It was meant to be a joke, you can see how bad I am at it. It's also the job a character had from my all time favorite tv show. It's the image I remember most and his conversation with the doctor who comes to treat him to tell him he's suffering from stress. It's a great scene.