Title: British GP fails to understand any purpose of autism diagnosis in attempted refusal

Source: British autistic man in early forties

Date received:  Jan 2020

Details:

In 2016, a late-diagnosed British autistic man began the process leading towards diagnosis. After dealing with years of anxiety and depression and finding his lifestyle and life events very different to those of people around him, he did some research, realised that high functioning autism was a possibility and thought that receiving a diagnosis would help explain the long term difficulties he had faced. At that point in time, he had found himself unable to continue in his previous, long term career and had become almost completely isolated.

He attended his GP surgery, where he had discussed depression and anxiety over a period of time, had been prescribed SSRI and SRNI medication and had been referred for assessment to the community mental health team, who had provided no recommendations except for change of dose and alteration to spread of dosage for one medication type.

Having long experienced difficulties in getting people to understand his medical concerns, the man had prepared a page of notes to be read out to help make his case. He worked his way through the notes, providing examples as he went, and asked that he be referred for a diagnosis of autism.

The man says he did have confidence in the medical ability of the GP in question, Dr Roger Neal of “The Hawthorns” surgery, Lower Stondon, but that he displayed a consistent attitude of trying to take any actions other than referral for diagnosis. In his response, he attempted to dissuade the patient with the following statements, among others:

• “Some say that everybody falls somewhere on the autistic spectrum.”

• “I don’t think a diagnosis will help you.”

• “There is no more kudos in a diagnosis of autism than depression.”

The previous statements were discouraging for the patient, but he found the final one extremely upsetting as it implied that there is some perceived benefit in the illness which he suspected had made his life very difficult to tolerate for a very long time. Ultimately, he persisted and was referred back to the Bedfordshire mental health team, who after two visits referred him to the Adult Autism team who did give him a positive and very clear diagnosis.

 The patient believed the diagnosis was essential to him understanding the difficulties he has had, and though he remains mostly isolated and of limited ability to function around others, he feels he is now at least able to head in the right direction with his life rather than constantly  struggling to fit in with everybody else and failing to understand why it is so difficult for him.

 He believes that denied a diagnosis, as he would have been if he had not been very persistent in his talk with his GP, would have left him with worsening depression and that suicide would ultimately have been a likely consequence.

Lower Stondon  “The Hawthorns” surgery where the patient received the upsetting comments from Dr Roger Neal.