Dykebar Hospital

Dykebar Hospital 2019-08-15 Person 1 5 0

*This is not a review of Dykebar Hospital but of Dr Kaur who is a psychiatrist at Dykebar and Renfrewshire Community Mental Health Team specifically* I am writing this complaint with regards to what I thought was going to be an appropriate assessment for ADHD in accordance with the guidelines drawn out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists for Scotland (RCOPS), NHS Scotland and NICE. I believe I have been the victim of discrimination based on a culture of doctors refusing to believe the adult ADHD is a real illness despite all the evidence and clear guidelines handed down in recent years. This is in direct conflict with the contracts these doctors work under for the NHS. My mother and anyone who knew me as a child, including school reports, etc all point towards me having this as a child but growing up in the wrong time for this to be diagnosed has completely turned my life upside down. Every single part of my life has been affected causing great distress and subsequent mental health issues. I could go into great detail and also provide evidence from family, friends, etc that all clearly supports a possible diagnosis for ADHD as this was supposed to be looked at during assessment but again guidelines were not followed and no one wanted to see any evidence. My family also worked within the medical community for years and we had multiple family friends who were also our doctors, I was even named after one of them. When I was a child I struggled with ADHD symptoms but at the time it was seen as just a problem child type issue. Doctors didn’t want to put a mark against my name with any type of issue that could go against me in later life so these issues were kept off my medical records, we were told I would just grow out of it. I have never grown out of it and am almost ready to throw in the towel and kill myself as many sufferers do. I went to my GP after filling out everything recommended by RCOPS; my symptoms completely fit with the DSM, the Barkley Adult ADHD Rating Scale suggested by the RCOPS also shows I have an extremely high likelihood of ADHD. The GP agreed to refer me to the Renfrewshire Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) for assessment but also made clear he isn’t sure there's even any treatment for such illness in adults (one of many clear breaches of guidelines through this process). I saw a social worker (Louise Speirs) in my house for 40 minutes, multiple hours short for any possible diagnosis. She was condescending throughout, when I presented her with evidence my husband and I had compiled over months she suggested that someone with ADHD wouldn’t have been able to complete that despite me already telling her my husband had done the majority of it. I do believe she had the best of intentions but just didn’t have any expertise whatsoever in this illness especially being a social worker and not a medical doctor. She said at one point in the process there’s a school of thought that ADHD is not really a treatable illness and so was very unconfident that anything would come of this. This is in direct conflict with what the NHS and many other bodies have said about adult ADHD, I believe this is discriminatory and cannot understand how a social worker who clearly doesn’t believe this illness is even real can advocate on my behalf to Dr Kaur who is the lead psychiatrist CMHT weeks later after she got round to it. All of this was audio recorded by myself and witnessed by my husband as she was taking such light notes during the meeting I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to advocate on my behalf weeks later so wanted an accurate account of this meeting. When the decision eventually came back Ms Speirs was very careful to basically say they think I have ADHD but not severe enough to do anything about despite never asking for any of my evidence to explain how severe an impact this has on my life. If anyone reading this would like the audio recordings or evidence showing that I do suffer severely with this illness I will make them available to you. I was advised by DR Kaur’s secretary that she would phone me back to discuss the possible complaint I was putting in before writing this but this never happened leaving me with no other option but to send this. The world health organisation and NICE agree there is a rough occurrence rate of treatable adult ADHD between 3-4 people out of 100, in Scotland at the last count I could find there are roughly 1 out of 1250 people receiving treatment for adult ADHD. I believe so called assessments like the one I went through must be at least a contributing factor to the massive under-diagnosis of this illness causing unnecessary pain and suffering to a huge part of the population that are being discriminated against by at best out of touch doctors refusing to accept this as a real problem, or at worst a system purposefully avoiding diagnosis of conditions as a money saving exercise as seen with the Grampian NHS trust recently. There have been multiple memos leaked in similar situations to NHS Grampian that say if a person did not receive a diagnosis as a child then they should not be considered for a full assessment. These NHS trusts fully understand that this is a near impossible criteria for the thousands of people in my age group and older to meet as ADHD was seen as a myth by most NHS doctors when we were children. I don’t want this to be too long so have not included every point, my original version of this complaint is almost 7 pages long, but I was advised by Citizen’s Advice that it was too long. I am happy to provide that version to anyone who wants it to see the full extent of repeated discrimination and failure by those I came into contact with. There have been multiple breaches of guidelines and breaches of contract throughout this process, I genuinely believe I am the victim of discrimination because doctors are choosing not to accept that this is real and move with the times. All I want from this complaint is the chance of a fair assessment at The Edinburgh Clinic that actually has a specialist qualified to diagnose this illness and subsequently the expertise to say if I have it or not, I am completely prepared to travel there whenever needed as there is just no person qualified to carry this out in my area in accordance with the rules set out by the NHS and others.