The Gables Day Hospital

I hope none of my family ever need referral to this place. First impressions from the exterior are that it is an old delapidated building and the path leading up to the entrance is a feat to dodge the pigeon droppings. This does not imbue a great welcome feeling. If attending early in the morning the reception/waiting area is relatively clean, but within an hour or two, of clients and staff coming and going the filth from outside is visibly trailed through the reception/waiting area. That is another unsettling/unnerving thing - to be seated in the reception/waiting area when people are coming and going right past where you’re sitting. It has always been like this but I still struggle with it. It does not put me in the right head space for whatever appointment I have. Whoever I’m seeing, once in a blue moon, I can usually expect them to be late. Nothing ever seems to go to plan as they always seem to have their own agenda and questions to fire at me. Where’s the respect and listening in that? What I am supposed to be there for - how I’m reslly feeling - never gets mentioned because the half hour allotted is up and they wind everything up, then I’m out the door. I just cannot get a word in edgeways and am afraid of them anyway, so I do not wish to upset them in any way by trying to interrupt them to express my feelings/thoughts. No mention is made of when the next meeting, or even telephone contact will be, beyond their apparent need to attend my upcoming consultant’s appointment. It would be very helpful to know when my next contact will be, instead of being told I have ‘duty’ or 111 option 2 to call if necessary. Generally, I do not call duty or 111 option 2, because I do not find it helpful talking to people who I do not know and who are often of the male gender, or they mainly run through a tick box form. How helpful is that to me in a crisis situation? I have now given up trying to contact my team, as I leave messages repeatedly, but I am rarely called back. On the very odd occasion that I am called back, the agenda seems to be to have the call over with as swiftly as possible, as indicated by the increased rate of speech. With hindsight, it seems as though the ongoing lapse of contact has been a deliberate ploy on their part. Now I know it is true, my time is up and they want me out the door for good. This is how things are nowadays. Once therapy begins, it is imagined that I will no longer require their support. However, going by past experiences of all different kinds of therapy, these have been truly traumatic times and exactly when I most need support, yet I have largely felt unsupported throughout much of the past year. I do not think that my consultant understands me. He seems a really nice man, but I find it incredibly difficult to maintain any sort of eye contact with him, as I do with most people, even family members. Whether this is part of my Autistic Spectrum Disorder, I do not know, but he always picks me up on it in his report after the consultation, like it is a negative thing. I do my best, and there are things I want to ask about medication too, but I am afraid I will be rebuffed. Only I know how I feel and having been on a particular medication for many years I strongly question its efficacy.

The gables is much more worth to be treated other than your local gp