after twenty hours of being pinned down in accident and emergency [ER] by a ton of police, i was transfered to the local secure mental health unit until they could sort out a room at a intellectual disability hospital miles away,it was full at the time as we only tend to go to those hospitals when we have been kicked out of our home because of our challenging behavior so we come with a ton of baggage and we have to have an extra room to ourselves just for our stuff,so the capacity of 14 tended to be halved in reality.
my experiences in the mental health unit were terrible,to top it off i was also still non verbal at the time and they took my PECS off me because they thought i could cut myself with the edges of them.
also-none of them were trained in makaton,which is a major issue for non verbal autistics.
i eventually got brought my laptop which they would charge for me with the cable and give it to me without the cable,i used it to communicate with,via a speech/pecs app,but they wouldnt wait for me to type they would look at the screen and verbally fill in the blanks which really annoyed me.
i was bullied and followed by a service user there,and no staff intervened despite being on a 1-1.... however a fellow service user who was like a mum to me protected me when she could and she treated me with respect unlike the staff.
i found the unit itself very sensory overloading,there were some very challenging patients there not least myself who was going through extreme challenging behavior,extreme anxiety,severe major depressive disorder and paranoid pyschosis at the time,so it was very noisy lots of shouting and people being restrained.
i was also in my own wheel chair full time apart from in my room as i couldnt walk with all the noise and lighting, i would instantly fall to the floor and smash my head on the floor.
they had the tv on in the lounge up full blast and when i signed for the tv to be turned down a bit [miraculously they understood my sign for noisy] the girl who was bullying me would kick off and the staff would look at her then at me and say; i have to think of everyone else,not just myself and if i dont like it i can go to my room,they basically had no understanding of sensory issues and couldnt spot when a vulnerable adult was being bullied.
i escaped that hell hole after 7 days,and was transfered in some sort of pimped up transit type van in handcuffs with four staff,the windows were black and grilled off, i felt like a criminal.
i felt like the staff in the mental health unit probably spoke to me with a bit more humanity and respect than the staff in the intellectual disability hospital, who all treated me like i was putting on the behaviors becuase a large number of their patients are profoundly intellectually disabled people and the staff dont recognise mild intellectual disability-they would say things like if you dont stop carrying on you will never get out of here yet they treated the more severely intellectually disabled people with respect,but there was one staff in the mental health unit knew a bit about classic/complex autism and she was awesome.
ever since that sectioning,i have been back in accident and emergency with mental health problems and it is often the lady who understands classic autism who is on the crisis team that come and see me,she tells me things like, look em; try your best to keep calm as you would hate to come on the unit right now,its crowded and noisy,she would give me an injection of haloperidol or lorazepam depending on the problem.
so key points i would say are:
*make sure noise is kept to a minimum or autistic patient is put in a quiet area.
*make sure all nurses are aware of the autistic patients autism, and how best to communicate with them.
*make sure to keep a close watch on the autistic patient for possible bullying issues as autists are highly vulnerable to it.
*allow the autistic patient to eat in their own room if they want it do not force them to eat with others as they may not be able to eat at all.
*allow the autistic patient to use fiddle toys,sensory toys etc if they are not risks to the patient or others.
*use visual mood thermometers and mood pictorials with the autistic patient to allow them to show you how they feel rather than asking them and likely confusing the patient as the autist may struggle to verbally express feelings.
*make sure the autistic patient has their dietry special needs met,such as needing plain food,certain colours of food and avoidance of certain foods,flavours,textures etc-dont call it being fussy;its a legit and difficult part of autism and is as much a need as is a mushy food diet for dysphagia.
*avoid using to many words in your conversations with the autistic as many autistics;particulary those with classic autism get overloaded by information.
*dont assume the autistic has a young mental age just because they are comforted by toys.
etc...
