Have a strong suspicion I may be dyspraxic along with possible ASD/NVLD/learning difficulties, but never diagnosed as I come from a generation where knowledge and diagnosis of such things was much more limited.
One of my first crises in a psych hospital was over those difficulties and smashed those rose coloured glasses I had been wearing when it came to psychiatrists.
I went into a blue funk when told I was being sent to make doll’s houses a week after my first admission. I have zero ability at constructional tasks. Can’t even do simple jigsaws. Ended up being pulled from in front of a hospital bus . Instead of trying to find out why I had reacted that way ,and doing some detective work, the pdoc rushed to judging me to be an awkward and troublesome teenager.
40 plus years on there’s never been any acknowledgement or help and support for the long standing problems I’ve described here and elsewhere on quite a few occasions.
The worst is when staff ,who rush to judge before engaging what passes for intelligence ,dismiss you as awkward,troublesome ,obstructive etc.
It doesn’t help that the psychiatric system still very much fails to take an intelligent, whole person approach ,and narrowly focuses on textbook psychiatric symptoms to the exclusion of all else.
The nearest school got to saying I had difficulties was my prep school headmaster writing to the public school headmaster saying I was not very well coordinated , bad at drawing and writing, and not good at sports.
My public school report emphasised I was disorganised and untidy.
Yes I’ve also had my times of disillusionment with the mental healthcare system. I think what’s most infuriating to me is how SLOWLY it moves unless you are literally on the verge of or have already attempted to kill yourself.
It is as if you broke a bone, went into the doctor, you told them your issue and that you were in great pain, and then they told you to come back in several weeks for an X-ray. So you deal with this awful debilitating pain for several more weeks and the doctor gives you the X-ray and tells you to come back in another several weeks to discuss the results and what you want to do about them, pain meds or a cast…then you meet again weeks after that to start that treatment…it’s a disaster!! You keep people waiting that long and soon they are going to get to the point where they can’t wait anymore and take things into their own hands!
I believe a big reason why this happens that I’m learning now as I want to enter into the mental health field for a career is that they are HIGHLY understaffed. Not therapists, therapists are a dime a dozen…but prescribers. Psychiatrists, APNs…there are so few of them they are forced to take FAR more patients than they should, one psychiatrist can have over 100 patients to oversee. And also since prescribers are so rare and loaded with patients, this means they don’t have time to provide therapy themselves and also don’t make as much money doing so because of the abundance of therapists, thus creating this awkward and inconvenient division of care between a therapist and a psychiatrist, who is forced to prescribe you meds based on snap judgements of symptoms you tell them once a month or so without ever really getting to know you as an individual, which has its own problems.
And this is taking out of the equation that a LARGE number of psychiatrists simply became so because of the money and due to stigma often hold disdain for their patients, or that a significant number of therapists were dinky psych majors in college because the major was easy and they “want to help people” or “like talking to people” without any deeper knowledge of mental health issues going into their job basically just expecting to gossip with people about their lives and give advice and thus flounder terribly when faced with actual mental illness.
I don’t know about the US but here in the UK if you’re a chronic,non acute patient you’re an after thought.
Be a danger to yourself or others or be seen as a public nuisance and you’ll be high priority.
Be none of those things, but struggle to cope at anything like the level of a well person, and you are basically left to your own devices.
A lot has to do with serious underfunding with budget cuts being a regular fact of life.
I get how frustrating that must be. I also see the practical reasons behind why your doctor won’t test you for ASD. If funding is anything like it is in the US, there is basically no money available for people with ASD once they get over age 21. Your doctor probably wouldn’t be able to provide you with any real support, and so thinks the test would just be a waste of money. He’s wrong, because just knowing the name for your disorder would give you a lot of peace of mind. But there really aren’t many resources available to adults with ASD unless they have severe behavioral challenges.
My heart goes out to you, @firemonkey. I was born two months premature with many complications. I spent a month in the hospital and had seven blood transfusions. Once I was sent home and my body was strong and surviving, not another thought was given to how else I might have been affected. 50 years ago, if you were alive, apparently, no need for follow-up. And if you were an odd child, which I was, as long as you didn’t cause trouble everything was fine…
Anyway, I am sorry for any and all ways you were ever overlooked and not helped. ️
I know my first school in Thailand thought there were problems. Enough any way for them to persuade my parents to get me tested at Great Ormond street for the S word(now cerebral palsy).
The results came back negative and that was that. No further exploration. I think my parents were just glad I didn’t have CP and didn’t want to pursue the matter further.
My sister a little while ago said she’d thought I was most likely dyspraxic.
You know sometimes a change in doctor is necessary. My one friend struggled deeply with attention issues her entire life and was told she probably had ADD. However when she went in for testing at our college to confirm this she did not pass the rigorous testing process. When she later started seeing a psychiatrist, and told her story the doctor was shocked she hadn’t been diagnosed with ADD and found the test faulty. Now she is finally diagnosed and receiving medication that has drastically improved her functioning.
I never considered that I might have schizophrenia. I didn’t know I was delusional, and I believed (hard to let go) that I was in fact being tormented by demons, etc. My experiences, hallucinations, voices, etc. didn’t “drive me crazy”, so I just believed it was my life… When I finally began to question the reality of my experiences , into my 40’s, and really delve into what was wrong with me, I wanted relief from the misery and confusion I was becoming more aware of.
Receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia was enlightening, helpful and constructive for me. After so many years I knew what I have been dealing with. I could learn about a specific disorder, which does fit me, and learn to cope better because the diagnosis gave me a focus.
I would always recommend getting properly diagnosed as it gives an identity to an otherwise confusing situation.
I’m currently studying a OU degree, so it came up again. My gp doesn’t see the point or referring me to the learning disability team for a post 16 assessment.
I was let down by the system as it has always affected my studies, but I work through it.
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