I would never survive med school.

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Ever since I was 14 I wanted to study to become a forensic pathologist.

However the only route to that would be medical school.

I am great at textbook stuff but I strongly doubt I would survive medical school. The large amount of contact with living (as opposed to dead) people would overload me, and anyway I was told that having Asperger's that approaches classic autism in severity would make med school a near impossibilty.

Anyway I've been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 11 times in my life, five of those which were by the police. And I've been in secure units many times, although I have no formal convictions.

So now I have no ****ing idea where my life is going. My dreams are shattered and tbh iI can see myself ending up either still unemployed, or in a mediocre job.

I am very intelligent apparently but I am not too keen on going into research after my degree(s).

Any suggestions / advice?

OK the bad news is the "rehalibitation of offenders act" does not apply to work at hospital sites, I have no idea if being sent to a mental hospital against your will will show up in a crb check.

I would advise you to contact the admissions tutor at a medical school, be honest with them about the autism and the stays in the hospital. You should ask if an alternative route into pathology exists.

Please be aware that most forensic science and pathology is not about exciting sounding serial killers, the chances are that a typical forensic scientist will not deal with a single case like Harold Shipman or Jack the Ripper. You would be more likely to be doing things like blood / urine sample anaylsis to work out if drivers were drunk or if people are doing drugs.

I know that the prison service, military and drug rehab system all need a lot of urine samples to be tested for drugs of abuse, also top rank sport does now days want to screen people such as gold medal winners for drugs. I imagine that as soon as you win at Wimbledon that you would be asked to go and provide a urine sample to make sure that you have not been using some tennis enhancing drug.

I am aware that the job is not as glamorous as it sounds. I just am interested in the connection between crime and medicine. I originally wanted to be a doctor way way back but then my interests got narrowed.

I have seen my CRB (now called DBS I believe) and it mentions one event during a sectioning incident with the police, and I believe it only stays there for a finite amount of time. I think once I'm 26 or 27 it will be removed? I am not sure as the information was not made clear.

I really would like to be able to engage in a medical-related career but unfortunately I am awful with people and then there's the mental health history....

Now I change the subject. I don't actually know what career I want at all now. I am in my second year, part time, of BSc Pharmacology. I just have no clue what will happen after that.

I don't know if anyone else has any experience with careers in the pharmaceutical / medical area. I have yet to see a careers adviser.

Btw, I said forensic pathologist not scientist. And also I have no formal convictions. I've never been formally charged with an offence.

The only other job I can think of that doesn't involve live patient contact but can include diagnosing dead bodies is archaeology. Not terribly helpful probably.

No worries. I've fallen back onto looking at a career in research. I had a chat with my dad and he said it would suit me.

I'm about to start my 5th year in med school (I'm diagnosed with Asperger's). The reason I applied was because someone told me I couldn't get in. I regret my choice, but I'm stuck since I can't throw so many years out the window without ending up with a degree.

The easiest part in med school (from my point of view) is the theoretical stuff if you happen to have a sponge-like brain.

The next easiest part is actually patient contact. The key to my "success": watch lots of TV shows, learn to fake social interaction, watch lots of physical examination videos, learn to do procedures in a confident manner and you're set. Patient contact is easier because you're usually in and out of the room, you don't spend years engaging with the patients (unless you want to become a GP).

The crappiest part about med school: being stuck with mostly the same people for 6 years. I was able to fake it for a while, but after a while they started noticing weird stuff about me (they jokingly called me Sheldon and I'm a girl!). I can't disclose Asperger's to the faculty because these people are crazy monsters and would find a way to kick me out for no good reason. It's also difficult to avoid people wanting to be your friend (I'm not interested in making friends).

I often need breaks because the social part of med school has been making me almost suicidal. I can't stand student contact or professor contact (most of them don't belong in the field). What I do is study for two years, then take a break for a semester or two, and resume. I'm not interested in practicing medicine. If I have to, I would choose Radiology. My best chance is in research. After med school, I plant to start studying Robotics & Nanotechnology, maybe developing medical equipment.

Suggetion/advice:

Read the link in my sig. If you have similar symptoms, you may experience similar relief from them by treating them as I have done for myself. Then you can get on with life and career goals the same as I'm working on now.

Actually, I think that is a workable option. Think about it; you would still be investigating cause of death and identifying bodies and stuff like that, but the bodies would be a lot older--and probably harder to work with.

And you wouldn't have to go through the rigors of medical school. There are plenty of people who are smart enough to learn the material but don't have the sheer mental toughness to get through what amounts to eight years of academic boot camp. Med school simply isn't made for people who have to take breaks and slow down a lot, unfortunately, and however much I'd like to change that I think it'll be one of the last education barriers against disabled people to get taken down.

Here's the question: Do you like history? Do you like sociology? Agriculture? Biology? Geology? All of those are scientific fields closely related to archeology, and an autistic person has a higher chance than most people of having the skills to become a good archeologist.

To do this job, you would need:
Attention to detail.
Critical thinking skills.
Ability to take and keep very good notes, and to organize information.
At least high-average visual-spatial skills, enough to create and use three-dimensional maps and charts.
Ability to research information you do not know yet.
Ability to explain what you know to other people; public speaking not required but useful.

There are archeologists who work on more recent finds--you don't have to go and study Egyptian mummies, you know. You could dig up a battlefield from the US civil war, or even more recent things like World War 2, including the Holocaust as well as the battlefields. Sometimes, when a cemetery with a lot of history needs to be moved, archeologists will be called in to find information and identify the bodies before they are re-buried.

You don't even have to work directly with the bodies. You may find yourself working with imaging equipment like radar, ultrasound, MRI--whether to look beneath the ground and find things buried there, or to look inside bodies without disturbing them. Going further back in time, you could become a paleontologist and study fossilized remains--though animals, especially sea creatures, are much easier to find than humans, of course.

Whatever you do, you'll be doing a lot of reading, writing, note-taking, research, and organizing data. For most people that would be a drawback, but for many autistic people, it's a plus, because it's lining up facts just the way we might've lined up our toys as toddlers. It depends on exactly how your brain works, but I would say you've got a better than average chance to be talented with organizing data.

I agree with you that medical school, as it is organized now, is probably not going to be good for someone who is easily overwhelmed by stress that most NTs wouldn't notice. I know it's not something I could do. But please don't give up on your dreams. If you want to go into pathology, there is more than one way of doing it and there are closely related fields where you would be solving very similar problems.

My neurologist put down "autism" in my diagnosis list as opposed to "Asperger's syndrome". He said I'm more severe than any Asperger's patient he's seen, and he's a consultant.

So no way to med school then.

Unfortunately I am not into history. But your reasoning is very good and thought-provoking.

I am looking into neuroscience, since I did an analysis on the proportions of textbooks I have on neurology, neuroscience and psychiatry. I'm going ask my support worker to help me find an adviser on careers / higher education.

I found out today that I did have speech problems as a child. I still do have communication problems. I hate subsisting on benefits but the last job (voluntary) I had, I had to leave because even though it was just three days a week, I would come home with a severe migraine and I often ended up nonverbal for days.

I don't know if I could even survive a part time job. I have huge trouble leaving the house on my own and I need a support worker most of the time.

I am limited so I don't know how far, if it all, I can go regarding jobs.

Have you been to college before? If not, you could try it out to see if you liked it. Find a community college, perhaps one that offers online classes, and try taking some of those. Take general classes in different fields, maybe you'll find something that really sparks your interest. And if you are successful in those classes, then you can make a good argument to your support workers that you could someday get a degree. Starting at a community college offers some benefits: The work is easier, the classes are cheaper, and you don't have so much financial investment to worry about. At the same time, they are college level classes, so you would be able to establish a good grade record for a transfer to a four-year college where you could get more specialized education.

Sorry about this being from the US perspective, by the way. I don't know how similar the UK is. But the principle is the same, to find a school where people can get simpler, cheaper education, so you can try it out with the goal of transferring to a more "serious" school later.

I have A-levels in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. I don't know what I could gain from going to college. I'm already in university, although they're trying to kick me out because I keep getting ill and they don't like me.

Callista meant Uni, I believe. It's called "college" in America.

Here in America we have forensic anthropologists, and I am assuming that the UK has them, also. Forensic anthropologists help identify human remains that cannot be identified by usual means. The Fox TV series "Bones" features forensic anthropologists as well as a series of books by Kathy Reichs.