1. I don’t often tweet about my personal life, but on 1st November, my mum Jane was hit by a large vehicle as a pedestrian in St. Louis, USA. She suffered a severe brain injury & remains in a coma in hospital.
Here's Jane & me in happier times.
You can walk in to a psychiatric appointment and be diagnosed with a personality disorder within minutes. You wait on a waiting list for an autism or ADHD assessment for YEARS.
The absurdity of our system will never not baffle me.
Take it from me as a clinician. Changing PIP in any way other than making it easier would have an immediate and immensely dangerous and damaging effect on claimants mental health. Consult long and consult hard without prejudice @UKLabour You do not know best.
It’s extraordinary that services have to be told not to discharge people with severe mental illness simply because they fail to attend appointments. One of the first things you learn working in mental health is that people with severe mental illness may not attend - indeed you may need to go out and see them in the community.
People don't choose to be on disability benefits. It's their last resort.
Stop blaming people with mental health problems. If the Secretary of State wants a grown-up conversation about this, then he should meet with us.
We've sent an invite. 1/3
Apparently it's autism awareness month-weird to me as I'll still be autistic next month,but here are a few things I've learned since my late diagnosis (Nov '21,age 49):
We have MANY more neurons than neurotypical folk bc synaptic pruning didn't really happen when we were tiny...
Genuinely horrific how many people in the mental health community take their own lives and their last tweets look like this. Mental health services can be so woefully inadequate and until that changes, people will continue to die.
RIP @TraumaPhDandMe.
There are genuine problems to be tackled regarding mental healthcare, the problems and inconsistencies of diagnosis, poor attitudes from providers, profit-driven companies in public healthcare systems etc.
Invoking them all to cast doubt on ADHD diagnosis? Dick move, guys
/52
OK then, you want to play? Let's do this
Here's a thread of every red flag I can identify in this article, and why they're misleading/dangerous/just generally bad
Strap in, because there are lot of them.
/1
🧵- Wasn’t sure I’d share my recent GP experience re. private ADHD diagnosis, but in the wake of this horrifying BBC Panorama ep I don’t think we have a choice but to confront these people with the harm they’re causing by pushing this wildly irresponsible narrative. So here goes:
I had to describe my AuDHD child's school masking to a psychologist yesterday and I came up with a pretty efficient analogy. At school she is beautiful origami. Everybody loves to look at the origami, and marvel at how pleasant it is, but nobody thinks about the complicated...1/4
It's #TimeToTalkDay tomorrow, so instead of telling mentally ill people to ask for help, here are 10 things to talk about instead:
1) the UK Government has scrapped their 10-year strategy for #mentalhealth
2) people with serious mental health problems die prematurely worldwide
When (should?) anorexia nervosa be considered 'terminal' & what are some ethical issues in forced vs nontreatment & euthanasia? My #LivedExperience response to the proposed diagnosis⬇️ (open access). Hoping this important discussion continues
#MentalHealth
https://t.co/OSzjxM84na
Earlier this year, I wondered to what extent it might be possible, using official Qatari data published by the Qatari Government, to answer the Q: How many people (foreign workers) have died during Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup?
🧵 1/n