For the December 2023 edition of Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International – we feature this reflective and moving piece by Nigerian writer and author of the award-winning book Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds, Yemisi Aribisala who writes about her experience of carer burden of autism.

I sat on a Zoom call with a psychologist from Edinburgh. My mental state, not my autistic son’s, was in question. 

My 17-year-old son had brutally attacked me, and I was being cross-examined for defending myself. His attacks were sporadic but constant through his adolescent years. For five years through the COVID-19 lockdown, I was a live-in carer, teacher, doctor, therapist, driver, advocate for a stronger counterpart, a cocktail of pubertal hormones and autistic innocence. My defences swung between forceful and unlawful.

The Children Act of 1989, triggered by his father, placed our difficulties in a courtroom, not in therapy. My son and I found ourselves in the technicality of courts, where words like ‘assault’ and ‘abuse’ were boldly used. 

In Yoruba thought, mothers are idols, and sons are eager worshippers. But the Family Court, after six months of proceedings, ruled that I had no confidence to care for my son (perhaps they meant I had lost confidence or did not have the right kind). They sent him to a residential school. 

I realised my cardinal mistake in not committing to those mental-illness savvy words. There were no nods or allusions to phrases like “autistic meltdowns” and “loss of control”. We were in real life, where violence, attacks, aggression, mental illness, depression, and anxiety were the lexicon.

It was sink or swim furiously. Mothers of autistic children quickly understand around the age of toddlerhood that science has deserted them. But there’s little awareness of the harshness ahead when challenging behaviour related to the neurodiversity of autism rears its ugly head. The carer is blindsided by the rage invested in those attacks and can only process it through neurotypical assessments of violence or, put mildly, why people hurt others. There are no grey zones in processing irrational and unprovoked violent attacks. It is either the presence of psychosis in the autistic young person or the heart-breaking conclusion that the child that one carried through the darkness has decided that one is the enemy. 

I recognise the danger of over-diagnosing autism, but my opinion as a mother of an autistic son is that a wrong diagnosis at the beginning will reveal itself soon enough. But the right one may jump-start intervention as soon as possible. Diagnosis is particularly important in two periods: before the age of three and before puberty, when we are responsible for thinking about mental health and interventions in concrete, unsentimental terms, even if the storm never comes.

One of the most powerful ironies of our experience in the Family Court was that our Edinburg-based psychologist said to me, ‘All you really have to be is your son’s mother’. 

I paused for a long time and responded, ‘From your mouth to God’s ears.’

Welcome to Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International. Launched in March 2022, this new blog aims to highlight international art and artists, particularly from low-and-middle-income countries, with a focus on mental health. We welcome submissions for consideration, such as, comments on artwork, visual arts, literature, drama, films, podcasts, and videos. Do have a look at the instructions for blog authors for details on how to submit. General enquiries about the blog: BJPInternational@rcpsych.ac.uk

Professor David Skuse, Editor-in-Chief, BJPsych International