Content warning: mentions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, eating disorders and medical gaslighting

What happens when you go to a mental health professional who has zero information about what it means when you, their patient, may be autistic?

For this episode I was joined by Rey Rissanen (pronouns: they/them). Together we will rant and tell you about the horrors of needing help with our mental health, and instead of getting it, getting misdiagnosed, gaslighted and harmed by misinformed mental health professionals, and how great it is to finally realize you’re autistic and to learn to self-advocate in the mental health setting.

Rey is an artist who creates beautiful crochet designs, including crochet stim toys and houseplants, and they’re also the one who came up with the idea for prepped.to, a platform for autistic folks to share locations’ sensory info and service instructions, and you can see their beautiful illustrations of their story on our blog.

You can support Aut2Aut and its platform prepped.to on Betterplace and Gofundme, or buy our #ActuallyAutistic designs in our print-on-demand shop.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Rey’s crochet designs: @rainbowrey.crafts and their art on Instagram
• Aut2Aut, the nonprofit I founded, providing free platforms and content by and for autistic people
• prepped.to is the website I created where autistic folks can upload and consult sensory info and service instructions about places, so folks can prep and script before going there
• How to support my nonprofit
• Theme music composed and produced by Lir Lutau Shahar (pronouns: he/fae/sea): YouTube, Soundcloud. For collaborations: lutaoshzh@gmail.com
• Follow Dr. Gal Schkolnik on LinkedIn, Mastodon or Tumblr

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