"As a neurodivergent person, it was hard to receive the help I needed. Teladoc Health changed that."

“Suffering from depression, I desperately needed help. But I was so overwhelmed with advice that I found confusing or was provided advice that didn’t help. My partner was extremely worried and looked to find help. He discovered that our Life insurance provided access to Teladoc Health services.

I was too overwhelmed to cope and could not reliably do anything. My partner helped me download the app and checked in to ensure I was OK with getting help together.

I’ve been to therapy before with the NHS and had eight sessions there. However, the sessions were mostly me “talking to” the therapist, and without any particular feedback I could understand, I left the sessions feeling as lost as I had started.

Being a neurodivergent adult, I need more clarification and more examples, scenarios, story-telling, or coaching styles of advice; otherwise, if the expectation is to “read between the lines,” you might as well do therapy in “morse code.” Additionally, I found it challenging to communicate my frustrations to the therapist; trying to explain why you don’t always interpret things in the same way or trying to explain “how things are different” is really difficult when you cannot compare experiences of a neurotypical person since you don’t have any.

In contrast, the sessions we had with Teladoc were completely different.

Connie at Teladoc Health considered my needs and specifically phrased her way of talking more directly to help my understanding. She introduced herself and spoke about her background, what she was thinking of doing, and how many sessions there were. She was careful to check our expectations.

Connie also gave back as much as I gave in terms of information and affirmations of understanding; we were working through the problems together. Connie was so in-depth with her probing but also friendly. I was happy to open up to her about my issues.

A huge impact 

In our first session, we talked about the underlying issues of why I was having depression. We discussed what it is like to have neurodivergent traits and how that impacts a person. Connie was exceptionally helpful.

When I previously asked for help from my local GP, they said they couldn’t help me. They noted that I was too “high functioning” and, considering I had a good job, that I did not need the help. They couldn’t understand my suffering. I had been looking for assistance for over ten years, and each time I brought up “Autism,” I was treated like I was “making it up.”

During our session, Connie suggested that I try and get an assessment again and then used Connie’s consultation notes to convince my GP that I needed an assessment. I finally have one scheduled in nine months.

Each session we had was really helpful and impacted my recovery considerably, especially because I had been chasing an assessment for more than ten years and finally broke through that wall. This was a weight lifted off my shoulders, and I now had peace of mind. I constantly blamed myself for every bad social interaction or situation I thought I could have “done better.” Connie reminded me that not everything is my fault and It’ll take time, but I’ll learn these things over time as we keep working at it. Being neurodivergent takes more time and practice to get things right.

Connie was able to decipher the problems and was able to help me troubleshoot scenarios (business and personal), as well as provide suggestions for good workplaces and organisational structures that might work well for me.”

“Teladoc Health’s Mental Health service was critical to my recovery. I can’t thank Connie and Teladoc Health enough.”