Building mental health care for autistic people: what works? Mental Health Question Time

The public understanding of neurodiversity has markedly improved over recent years, with an increasing number of positive stories and role models appearing in the mainstream media.
Nevertheless, there is currently an autism mental health crisis, characterised by the following paradox: autistic people have a high probability of developing a mental health problem, but a low probability of receiving effective help.
Limitations to autistic mental health care include: (1) a lack of resources, meaning that requisite services lack capacity or simply do not exist; (2) barriers to accessing relevant services, due to them not adapting to accommodate autistic patients; (3) the lack of a relevant evidence base to guide prevention and treatment.
In this cross-disciplinary Mental Health Question Time event, we will bring together an expert panel of people with lived experience, clinicians, practitioners, researchers and policymakers, to set forward a vision for mental health care for autistic people.
We will also discuss the latest findings of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Mental Health reviews in this area: www.ucl.ac.uk/psychiatry/auti...
Confirmed panel
Chair: Prof William Mandy Professor of Neurodevelopmental Conditions, University College London
Dr James Cusack, Chief Exec, Autistica
Professor Dheeraj Rai, Professor of Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry, Bristol Medical School (PHS)
Eloise Stark, Postdoctoral Research, University of Oxford
Amanda Timmerman, MPhil/PhD student, University College London
Tamara Pemovska, Research Fellow, University College London
Georgia Pavlopoulou, Associate Professor, University College London
About Mental Health Question Time
Mental Health Question Time is a partnership between the UCL Division of Psychiatry, The Lancet Psychiatry and The Mental Elf, who work together to organise a series of free to attend public discussions that take place in London and online. This Mental Health Question Time event is supported by the UCL Grand Challenge of Mental Health & Wellbeing.
Our aim is to bring together patients, service users, carers, health and social care professionals, researchers, policy makers, commissioners, politicians, journalists, and others, to talk about important mental health topics. Previous events have covered subjects as diverse as dementia, eating disorders, women’s mental health, youth mental health, loneliness, racism, arts and culture, student mental health, and complex emotional needs.
We hope that these public discussions are accessible to everyone who wants to join in, whether that’s in person or by watching the live stream on TH-cam and joining the social media conversation #MHQT.

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Will doing a valiant job summarising the questions/comments we were unable to hear

[@richardmills2429]

Participatory Action Research (PAR) can bring together essential elements of lived experience and scientific research methods avoiding the dangers when these are used exclusively.