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help for a parent of newly diagnosed daughter

Liz

Hi. Lovely to be on here and hopefully find support from other parents?  
My daughter and I have been on a very hard journey for many years. After two Sections - the first at age 17 for 6 weeks but without a diagnosis and it took me 2 years to nurse her back to health - and the second lasting a year until a few months ago - my daughter was lucky to be in the care of a doctor who could diagnose what we thought to be Schizophrenia as Aspergers, or High Functioning Autism. She’s now 21 and for us the diagnosis is life changing. Apparently it’s quite a new finding that psychosis and Autism are linked due to the hyper sensitivity.  
She is amazing and is attempting University for a third time. They seem to have amazing support and Autism socials. I truly hope she can now achieve her goals but with bumps along the way. 

I would love to make contact with any parents who might have suffered also?  We had to reach absolute rock bottom and we almost lost her. I’m now processing everything. She will have life long care from a community health team due to the link to psychosis but I can’t find much help for parents. 
Thanks in advance Pray

  • Your post really resonated with me. When my adult daughter discovered she was neurodivergent in her 30s, I found myself looking back over so many years with completely different eyes.

    I also found myself wondering how something so significant had been missed for so long. I know now that many women were misunderstood or misdiagnosed, and that knowledge brought a mixture of relief, sadness and guilt, even though I couldn't have recognised something that wasn't widely understood at the time.

    What I couldn't find was anywhere for mothers to make sense of those feelings from their own perspective.

    That experience led me to retrain as a Transactional Analysis counsellor after many years working in leadership, coaching and education in the NHS. I'm still in training, and I'm now working with clients, with a particular interest in supporting mothers who are navigating this experience.

  • Hi Liz,

    Welcome to the Community! - I hope you will find it useful and interesting to be a part of.

    There are a couple of places that you might like to look for help and support:

    Our Autism Services Directory has support groups for parents listed - you might like to search for a suitable group in your area.  You can find the Directory here.

    You could also contact your local NAS branch to find out what is available in your area - you can find you nearest branch here.

    Our Parent to Parent service offers emotional support to parents and carers of children or adults with autism. This service is confidential and run by trained parent volunteers who are all parents themselves of a child or adult with autism.  You can find further information about the service here: https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/help-and-support/parent-to-parent.  However, at the moment our Parent-to-Parent is temporarily closed due to a high volume of calls. Please check the information in the link above to find out more. Once the service reopens it will be announced on that page. 

    I hope that helps.

    Regards,

    Kerri-Mod