This is really sad.
It's also scarily similar to my own experience, so I can understand how this could have happened, although I really doubt that this wasn't also compounded by other factors not mentioned, perhaps not known. I was diagnosed when just a little younger than her by CAMHS and I also wanted nothing to do with it.
For me it was a lack of understanding -- nobody ever explained to me what it was. CAMHS did not offer any actual support after the diagnosis. They didn't talk to me about it and explain. People were talking about me and boxing me in behind my back. The diagnosis was at the time not helpful to me, but felt like being isolated and set apart from anyone else when all I wanted to do was try to live normally. Like the reason people were giving me this label was because saying that there was something wrong with me was the only way they could justify my existence or my being the way I was. I don't know if Elspeth's feelings were the same, but it seems they were certainly similar.
Evidently I did not kill myself over it, but there were some months of wishing I were dead, or that I had never been born.
Although I doubt this was the only problem that drove her to suicide...this could have been avoided, I'm sure of it. In her case, mine, and any others. Seriously, if someone giving you a diagnosis is going to offer no actual help whatsoever, there should at least be an explanation. Something almost like a debriefing, where it's made sure that the person diagnosed understands what this means, has the opportunity to ask any questions and express any concerns.
Otherwise -- although it may still help some even without the above, if they happen to be fortunate enough to have people in their lives who can help them work it out or a good source of information or support of some kind -- it really can cause more harm than good. Putting on someone a label which (without adequate understanding, and how many teenage girls really know much about ASD? There isn't enough education/information; rather many of the messages being put out there, say those of autism speaks, or stereotypes passed around between people who don't really know about it) can feel like being labelled as incurably defective and ostrasized.
Then they're let go with little better understanding, and in some cases few or no resources to cope. (With a lot of people on this forum who were diagnosed later in life or are still undiagnosed, I realise, they have the resources already but are seeking diagnosis more for reasons of validation and being able to look into it more by themselves. But when you're diagnosed as a teenager who doesn't actually know much about it, or has been presented before with misinformation about it, it seems so much more likely that you'll be lacking those resources and not coping well to end up there in the first place. Of course this isn't always the case, but clearly it is at least sometimes)
Most manage to get through it, but for a few it's going to be like tying weights to their feet and throwing them alone into deep water. The weights don't have to be so heavy, but that means nothing unless there's more of an effort to correctly inform and to spread understanding.
08 Apr 2015, 12:21 pm
