Mental Health appointment

Yesterday I had an appointment with a Mental Health team, in fact it was a social worker who assessed me, although she didn't introduce herself until a few minutes in to the interview and my mum had to ask her who she was. Anyway, I wasn't sure what it was going to be about and the social worker said that they only deal with mental health issues not Asperger's. She was going to talk about my generalised anxiety disorder which is a mental health issue. GAD is associated with Asperger's I have read. She talked about whether I wanted to go on medication for it and I said no, I wasn't that bad with it and I didn't want to become dependent on them. She then mentioned cognitive behavourial therapy (CBT) where you have a counsellor and over a number of sessions you explore how you feel and why you feel that way. Both my mum and I believe that this could be beneficial to me and we wait and see what happens about it. They said that either they can offer it to me or they can refer me back to Maudsley where I was diagnosed with Asperger's. It was also mentioned about whether I would get a social worker and the answer was probably not because I think it was down to how serious my problems were, and we also brought up benefits, again the answer was no, because of the amount of savings I have got. The social worker said that because of that they wouldn't even consider me. So unfair. One thing we did learn about this interview was that my GP referred me to them originally last year, they had a meeting and decided that because it was all about Asperger's then they weren't the right people for me so wrote back to my GP to refer me to Maudsley. We didn't know this and had thought at the time that nothing was happening because we hadn't heard anything.

On to Asperger's, the social worker phoned the Autistic Society for me to find out about their services and what Asperger's is classed as. She came back after a while and said that they are only a phone service but have walk-in advisory centre local to us and was going to put it in her report to me next week. She had found out though that Asperger's is a Pervasive Development Disorder, so now my mum tells people I have a PDD. It sounds more serious that way.

Now it is back to more waiting. We feel that the Mental Health team we saw won't be seeing me again and it will be all down to going to the Autistic Society for help and support. Financially there is another avenue that might be happening soon. Watch this space...