Girls, women and autism

Primary Learning Disability Liaison Service – Suffolk

The Primary Care Learning Disability Liaison Nurses support people with a learning disability. They ensure people have their health needs met by primary care services in a timely and appropriate manner.

Service Delivery Office: Mariner House, Portman Road, Ipswich, IP1 2GA
Service Manager Lead: Susie Howlett
Service Contact: Telephone on 01284 733300

Address:
F Block, Hospital Road, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 3NR
Service hours: Our service is available Monday to Friday between the hours of 9:00 and 17:00.

What this service offers

The Primary Care Learning Disability Liaison Service provides:

Advice to GP practices, social care colleagues, education, other NHS and third sector organisations. The nurses raise awareness and deliver training about the needs of people with learning disabilities.
Consultation, advice, brief assessment and formulation to GPs on the needs of adults with learning disabilities. This includes information about physical health conditions, behavioural difficulties or mental illness.
Advice and support to individuals and families about health needs.
Support to develop accurate Learning Disability registers, attendance at annual health checks, and health action planning for people aged 14.
Signposting to access the use of health and social care services and other organisations.
Supporting access through reasonable adjustments for people with a learning disability and autistic spectrum conditions.

We work with people who have a learning disability aged 14 and over.

Access this service

You can call or e-mail us or talk to your GP who can contact us.

We can meet you at your home, at our office, in your GP surgery or a place you feel comfortable. The team can give advice and support over the telephone.

How this service support carers including friends and family

The Primary Care Learning Disability Liaison Service can offer advice to carers and families.

Urgent help

If you are a service user and are in crisis and need support urgently you can contact your service on the number which will have been provided.

Call 111 and select the mental health option to speak to our 24 hour mental health crisis line.

If you are with someone who has attempted suicide, call 999 and stay with them until the ambulance arrives.

If anyone is at serious risk of harm, call 999 and ask for the police.

For non-life threatening medical situations, call NHS111 on 111.

For more information, see Help in a Crisis.

Why do some people think that Autism is a “boy thing”

When autism was first talked about it was to describe a group of boys who had been noticed behaving in a similar way. How autism was then diagnosed was based on these descriptions.

Over time new information has been added to our ideas of what autism looks like.

Often autistic women and girls are missed or misdiagnosed with something else like depression or personality disorder. This is often because it does not fit this traditional male pattern.

Lots of autistic women have been seen by doctors for their mental health and prescribed tablets. A lot of autistic women will say that the mental health diagnosis they were given never seemed to fully explain their difficulties.

When we look at diagnosing adults with autism, the evidence is that the average age that women are diagnosed is older than the average age for men.

The difficulties with social communication and social interaction, and flexibility of thought are still there, but may look very different.

Girls may be:

Better at copying other’ behaviour
More sociable
May communicate but less likely to do ‘social chit chat’
May be able to make a special friendship
More involved in pretend play and possibly have a more active imagination
May have similar interests to peers but may have a different quality or intensity of interest
Use intelligence in social interactions rather than intuition
Can copy other socially successful individuals
May seem to be coping but are often acting in order to fit in
Maybe better at masking difficulties
More likely to have been misdiagnosed with another problem such as an eating disorder, personality disorder, or OCD

Puberty and menopause

Puberty and menopause are significant times for girls and women. During these times there are a lot of changes in the female body and in how the person looks. Sensory sensitivities may increase. Emotions may seem more out of control. It is also impossible to know when these natural parts of life will actually happen. When a girl starts her periods, she will have to get used to using sanitary products which may feel uncomfortable.

Although puberty in autistic girls has been thought about in the literature, the effects of menopause on autistic women is only just starting to be thought about by researchers and is a very new area of knowledge.