To find the growing narrative of over diagnosis (autism, adhd and mental health) upsetting and draining

[Frazzlesforever]

There seems to be a drip drip of press headlines and change in the conversation that too many people are getting diagnosed. And that some parents are being too pushy to get extra help or trying to get be benefits etc.

As the parent of a high masking autistic girl I had to push for diagnosis although the school just saw a highly compliant, quiet anxious child. My daughter is now extremely mentally unwell through not coping in school, has had to drop out of school missing her gcses, emergency CAMHs involvement - devastating for her and us.

She is exactly the type of child who would fall under the radar. Just an anxious child with over anxious parents. Apparently seeming to cope until she just couldn't. Surely if anything we need better understanding and support for these types of children not less. Otherwise we also risk kicking the problem down the road To severe problems in adulthood. - poor mental health/outcomes etc.

100% it wouldn't surprise me if in 50 years that bpd is no longer a diagnosis and its actually autism or cptsd

I was diagnosed aged 34. I'd suspected for a while, but after an incident where I'd completely missed some non verbal cues I decided to get assessed, luckily I had the money for a private diagnosis so didn't need to join the waiting list.

I don't actually need very much support day to day, but I can get overstimulated if there's too much going on or I get too stressed. I'm not always great socially, I struggle with small talk, sometimes say the wrong thing and when I started school my teacher told my mum I wasn't a good mixer. But I own my own home, work full time, have a car, I can do life admin etc etc. I don't claim any benefits because for it.

My diagnosis means that I'm not wondering whether I'm autistic, I know for sure. It also means that if I'm struggling with a social situation or being overstimulated, I know the reason why and I'm kinder to myself about it. To me, that knowledge is the most important of having my diagnosis.

We need to find and achieve a balance between accepting and legislating for people’s needs, and adopting a bit more of a ‘that’s life, it’s hard’ approach.

It’s not denying someone’s identity/struggles/disability to state that the world is imperfect and isn’t designed to meet individual needs. School, for example, is a drag for most children, because it’s not a choice but rather forced upon them. However, DS1 is (medicated) AuDHD and loves school, because I’ve given him the tools to cope (medication, lots of downtime at home, an early start so that he can crack on with homework before school, encouragement to take part in fun extra-curricular activities). If these approaches hadn’t worked for him, I’d have persevered until something clicked.

We cannot expect the world to fit around our children/ourselves; it’s our job to recognise our struggles and find ways to overcome them, or fit into the world as it is.

Any actual facts, or just suppositon?

It wouldn’t surprise me if BPD was later classified as “ignorance in treating CPSD in autism and adhd”

Yes, and I believe that the relentless (government led) drive towards performance in the heavily theoretical subjects is most likely a huge culprit here.

Reading up on my diagnosis helped me realise a lot, it also made me realise what way I could support my children prior to them going for diagnosis themselves as it is a years long waiting list for assessment and they need help while waiting. I am on medication for my adhd which has been invaluable and also spoken to and see my psychiatrist twice a year to check in and see how things are going for me.

But that's not the fault of an individual teacher. The system is designed and the curriculum needs to change from government level. Individual schools and teachers cannot change this (unless private).

Imagine a classroom with 3-4 SEN children in with competing needs, and one adult. The support isn't going to be there. That one person cannot meet Xs need for 1:1 explanation, Ys need for low arousal (lighting etc), Zs need for background noise and As need to move around every 15 minutes. That's no ones fault, but parents overwhelming blame school.

Patents of ND children are some of the most resilient and skilful parents I know- normally struggling with next to no support.

You can’t parent or Google away ND!!!!

There isn’t much to be honest. It’s the reason I’m not going down the diagnosis route as I cannot see what it will add for me except validation that my suspicions about the difficulties I’ve always had are correct.

And the real question is “where is the support” as there absolutely should be some if we are diagnosing people. Then again maybe the sense of validation, of “so this is why” is enough.

I know of various support services which provide helplines etc but on its own that’s not enough.

i also support two adults currently, one a pensioner and I suspect both are undiagnosed ASD. Both have high support needs and damn right I am helping them both with the process of getting diagnosed, in the case of the pensioner a psychiatrist has suggested formal assessment and in the case if the younger person who has significant MH issues it’s a “let’s rule this in or out”. Both those adults will always need support though so diagnosis will mean we can involve the social care LD team for ongoing help
.

All SENs aren’t NDs!!!! Yet again ND being demonised. There are many SENS that aren’t autism or adhd.

Well 15-20% of adults in the UK are on antidepressants. 15 - 20% of people in the UK are neurodiverse. And these are just people with diagnosises. I would say you could easily add another 20% of people without diagnosis of mi and nd or who are on waiting lists

Oh my gosh you are so ignorant on autism,
google coping strategies..the specific blend of multiple coping strategies that work for you cannot be googled. I’d normally go onto probability maths here, so buckle up.

Imagine you suspect you may be autistic but you don’t know what autistic traits you have so you google coping strategies for autism.

You are met with a selection of 26 strategies (this is lower than the actual number available via google)

Which combination of these 26 strategies will work for you?

The number of combinations possible are 36^26 or
36 x 36 x 36 x 36 x 36… for 26 times total
resulting in
29,098,125,988,732,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
combinations of coping strategies you would need to try.

Given that you’d have to try each combination a minimum of a few weeks to see if it would work, you’d have to live longer than the Universe has to find the right combination for you.

The diagnostic report states what traits you have and these signposts will narrow down the coping strategies to ones that are know to help most autistic people with those specific traits. It’s not perfect, it’s still trial and error but it narrows it down from the above “just google it” to around a few dozen combinations to try.

I would say that it’s not good parenting, you’ve actually just had a bit of luck that your child has coped with school. Do you honestly think that the rest of us who have autistic children who can’t cope with school haven’t tried a million different strategies?

Do you not realise there are many other SENs aside from NDs.

Poor phrasing on my part. But likely those 3-4 are ND and then there will be other SEN children in the room as well.

I agree with the idea that parents can be helped to support thier children more. I had to do a parenting course as part of the diagnosis process and it was very useful..in fact at that time, in my area you couldnt get a diagnosis without this course. I also did two follow up courses one on challenging behaviour and one led by the OT team at the hospital.

Where i disagree is that you can 'just google strategies' sure you can get some ideas of simple strategies that may help but you will also get lots of ideas that won't and not enough info on how to implement the right ones properly.

The strategies that actually really worked for us came from speech and language and occupational therapy working with my child over a long period of time. The ot in particular showed most of the just googled stuff was actually wrong for the actual issue my son had. They also took a long time to build and implement.

He wasn’t coping with school in Year 2, but his ADHD diagnosis in Y3 changed our lives. Medication helped him to focus and learn the behaviours he needed to cope, and has continued to do so. His anxiety has been high at times, but CBT helped him with a toolkit to handle intrusive thoughts.

This is what pissed me of when I got diagnosed with eupd their was no treatment or support in the area I live so it was completely pointless and the "label" just made my life significantly worse (how people treat me)

I would suggest it is the expectations and curriculum are not age appropriate. There should be much more learning through play, physical instead of sit down learning the etc. But schools are pretty much banned from doing this because the academic curriculum is so full and difficult. Schools simply don't have the autonomy to do what is right for their pupils.

A diagnosis is only given if someone has significant difficulties in certain areas. Someone in their 50s or 60e who appears to have lived a ‘normal’ life has only done so by masking for their entire lives.

It was only recently known about how women present with ADHD/ASD. The conditions themselves were never know about at school (for boys or girls)

A diagnosis is a lightbulb moment where you understand how much effort you can expended trying to appear ‘normal’ when inside you think you are stupid or weird.

It helps you make sense of things

It also gives you workplace protections. Since my diagnosis, my employer has put reasonable adjustments in place.

@dizzydizzydizzy but the very ESSENCE of a disability is that it disables. So if you have had no difficulty in life you are not disabled.

Perhaps you had difficulty when younger and have overcome it (and I think it's about 25% of those diagnosed with ADHD don't have the same difficulties in adult life) or perhaps you have learned strategies which are effortful to apply (aka masking) so you don't use them all the time.
If you can use them all the time and they aren't effortful, then by definition you don't have a disability.

And yes, everyone CAN tick one or two boxes on an ASD questionnaire, but not everyone has ASD. But also, being anxious can make lots of conditions harder to manage.

It’s due to this interim review.

It’s v long. It’s worth using AI to get some key tldr takeaways.

diagnosis of autism and ADHD are subjective tests; it’s simply what someone (those who write the DSM) has decided they are. This is absolutely not to say these people and children are struggling.

We have a diagnosis led system that actually then doesn’t even give the correct help. Often a yp has anxiety- the diagnosis doesn’t change that. It may validate them but that also doesn’t teach them coping strategies.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69cbdb2369dd81b3f213c660/independent-review-into-mental-health-conditions-ADHD-and-autism-interim-report.pdf

Oh I completely agree with your first paragraph (although an excellent teacher/ TA makes a huge difference ime). I've been quite outspoken about the modern curriculum and education system. The SEN situation across education and healthcare is a perfect storm that places parents and schools as unwilling adversarials. This is compounded in our experience by bad schools (and they do exist) taking a default position that it's a parenting problem. Many parents simply feel exhausted by being disbelieved. Sure, bad parenting exists. But that doesn't mean that the child isn't also nd. Or indeed that the parents aren't struggling with discipline because their child is nd.

From my perspective (have been through process) a chunk of this is down to change in schooling to push more and more testing and less pastoral whilst also allowing bullying to go unchecked.

It is why children able to cope in primary fail in secondary so much.

If the system were changed to be more pastoral / fun with less relentless testing (as in the past) then anxiety would drop and the need for diagnosis and additional care would drop also.

It is better an anxious (and quite possibly undiagnosed ASD) child be able to do a few GCSE and learn to cope rather than having it drummed into them they need 10 or they are a failure and then they meltdown and need additional support.

Also many of the care sector fees changed to the government for SEN provision seem way too high (look them up) and need renegotiation.

This wouldn't deal with all the issues, but it would lower costs whilst also benefiting families and children.