Autism Community: Mental Health and Suicide

Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lisa Cameron

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Cameron]

I agree. Our police are on the frontline and they deserve the utmost respect for the work they do, but yes, it is correct to say that they require further training and also further support. There requires to be a clearer pathway when people exhibit challenging behaviours in the community, from the point at which the police are put into contact with them right through to the provision of adequate support in the health system, without their being caught up in the criminal justice system in between.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the societal body that is most likely to come into contact with someone who is likely to take their own life is the police. The police, and particularly the British Transport police, are doing critical work in assessing how staff can be trained to identify potential suicides and to take action to take people back at a time of crisis in their life in order to prevent them from taking forward a suicide. We should not knock the police too much. They are doing fantastic work in this area.

[Dr Cameron]

I wholeheartedly agree. As I said, the police are on the frontline. They face the crux of the matter when it comes to matters of life or death. They are doing their very best with the training and resources that they have, but there requires to be a clearer pathway so that people who are at that crisis stage can access health services—and probably crisis health services—and so that the police have somewhere to ensure that the clinical needs of those people are met. It is unfair for our police to have to take care of people’s clinical needs when that is not what their training provides for.

In 2016, an academic study in Sweden, which was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that people with autistic spectrum disorder were nine times more likely to die by suicide than the rest of the population. The latest research indicates that people with autistic spectrum disorder account for a harrowing proportion of suicides in the UK. There is a 16-year gap in life expectancy between people with autistic spectrum disorder and the general population. To put it all very bluntly, people with autistic spectrum disorder are 28 times more likely to consider suicide than the average population —28 times. The statistics make one thing abundantly clear: what we are doing now to support people with autistic spectrum disorder is not working and is not enough. Research shows that almost seven in 10 people with autistic spectrum disorder experience mental health issues, including anxiety and depression. Services must be in place to ensure that people are cared for holistically. We have to meet all their clinical needs, which may mean their autism or their learning difficulties, but they will almost certainly have mental health issues. Quite frankly, we do not have services in place today that take account of the complexity of such needs.

What types of things are going wrong for people at the frontline? It is difficult for people with autistic spectrum disorder to access mental health support through the usual routes. For most of us, that might mean going to our GP as a first point of contact for primary care for mental health problems, but a GP practice is a daunting, unfamiliar place for people with autistic spectrum disorder. One young man wrote to me and described a recent trip, saying that it was

“quite hard for me to access the GP anyway. The whole environment is difficult. It’s noisy, there’s often children, it’s very hot. There’s also a loud beep when they call the next person that I find really quite painful. When you’re feeling emotionally poorly that becomes almost impossible.”

GP surgeries make reasonable adjustments for wheelchair users every day—simple changes that make the life of the patient easier—so the same policies should be implemented for people with autistic spectrum disorder. We need training to raise GP awareness. Access needs to be easier. We need to ensure that GPs know who on their register has a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder.

If an autistic person bypasses the GP and goes straight to mental health services, they may face unprecedented waiting times or they may simply be refused treatment. When individuals do attend services, they may find that they are discharged without any follow-up. At the Health Committee last week, we heard how a young autistic boy was turned away by child and adolescent mental health services four times, despite feeling suicidal, because he had not yet attempted to take his own life. Things have hit crisis point, and we need to ensure that we engage in prevention. Someone attempting to take their own life should not be the point at which they receive treatment. We need early intervention to pinpoint the symptoms of difficulty and where we should be aiming the treatment.