Reflecting On My Psychology Placement Year In The NHS As A Neurodivergent Student

Time has flown by so fast – it feels like I started last month, but here we are, in July with the end of my placement year fast approaching. For my final blog post, I’d like to take some time to reflect on the past 10 months or so I’ve spent working in tier 4 CAMHS, bridging in my experiences of undertaking a placement year as an autistic student. Furthermore, I will also reflect a bit on what’s ahead and go through a couple of things that I wish to do in the future based on my year.

I knew that settling into a totally new environment with new people was going to be a struggle for me, a struggle that is common amongst autistic people, but one that I would have to endure. I remember sitting in my team meetings back in September being clueless as to what was going on while pretending I understood everything. This, of course, gave me a huge amount of imposter syndrome, especially as everyone else around me had years of clinical experience in the field. It felt like I walked in with just my lived experience of autism, and a dream.

Experiencing staff shortages in NHS services first hand meant that I had to adapt to my roles considerably quicker than how I would have liked. At times, the workplace dynamic felt almost ‘upside down’ to how I was expecting, as myself and the other undergraduate student, had to teach our team’s new assistant psychologists some of our workplace processes, as well as how to use the team’s spreadsheets and online patient systems. Even though it felt like I was being thrown in the deep end at times, my confidence has grown considerably over the past few months, and being able to cope with the (at times) high workload and fast pace has been ultimately rewarding, despite its challenges.

Another thing that I’ve found rewarding was being able to observe such a diverse range of autistic young people, many of whom also experience other conditions that impact on their daily functioning and wellbeing – such as attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression, learning disabilities, Prader-Willi Syndrome etc. Writing up notes for behavioural observations and young person perspectives has been incredibly interesting, with each assessment and case I am involved with being so different each time! Furthermore, the service having a neuroaffirmative approach has been really helpful, and it ensured my colleagues would be supportive and understanding of my condition while on placement.

While I am going to miss my placement, I’m also excited for what’s ahead for me. This past year has been invaluable to me (not to mention a nice break away from standard university coursework and exams!) and I can’t wait to utilise all that I have learnt so far in future roles. For me personally, doing a placement has made me realise that I do not necessarily want or need to do a Panic Masters’ as soon as I finish my undergraduate degree to become a clinical psychologist. I realised that I enjoyed being able to apply my theoretical knowledge in a way that makes the positive impact of psychology and mental health research more tangible, hence my desire to continue working in clinical settings in the future.

If I had to list three things that I would like to do in future roles, based on my past year, I would love to:

1. Seek out extra opportunities to develop my research competencies, such as seeing if there is any data analysis or audits that I can have a role in carrying out. Having this extra research experience beyond an undergraduate dissertation would be super beneficial for the DClinPsy.
2. Take greater advantage of the resources that the workplace has. I took up the opportunity of having some textbooks that were being given away for free, but I feel like that I could have done more.
3. In a similar vein to the other points above, I would love to see the work that other specialist teams and services do within whatever Trusts I end up working for in the future – such as observing assessments for different conditions or a different population.

All this being said, returning to university in late September is going to be yet another massive change for me (as if I haven’t endured that enough!). The main thing I’m excited about for my final year is reuniting with my friends, whom I’ve sorely missed. Furthermore, I’m excited for all my final year modules – I’ll be really interested in seeing the links between the research and the clinic, especially as one of my second semester modules is dedicated to autism. I imagine that I’d see this in a different light considering my work experience on top of my lived experience.