Upcoming diagnosis/assessment

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here so hello :-)

I went to my GP and asked for an Aspergers or autism referral because I think I may be on the spectrum, he agreed and gave me an AQ sheet to fill in, which I did and returned to him (I scored 42 out of 50).

So he referred me on 26th Feb this year 2018.

Having read a lot in several books and online and watched all the YouTube videos to give myself the confidence that I agree and can identify with loads of the traits and problems they have, I am pretty sure I have Aspergers. 

I also thought I had it over 25 years ago (I’m 47 now) but I had little understanding of who I was back then and dismissed the idea, convincing myself that I just had social anxiety and OCD and not Aspergers.

On my journey to my self diagnosis, I started to notice that my wife identified with a lot of the traits too, so she went to the GP a couple of months later and got a referral too.

Both myself and my wife have just received our appointment letters for an assessment with a consultant psychiatrist on the same day, 6th July.

I have a few concerns over this because her appointment is at 11:00 am and mine is immediately after at 12:30 pm with the same psychiatrist. The letters state that it will be about 90mins to 2 hours appointment time too.

I don’t have any close relatives that can give an account of my childhood, all I have is my wife. So my wife will have to help me through my assessment immediately after me helping her through her assessment!!!

My questions are:

Has anyone else had this kind of scenario?

Will this affect our assessments, because if they do any tests to find out stuff, then it won’t be a surprise test for me because I will have already seen it!

Is it normal just to see one single psychiatrist for 90 mins? Shouldn’t it be a multi disciplinary team?

I have terrible memory and also find it hard to think of things like stuff I can’t do or difficulties I have, if I can’t think of things then they won’t see them and they won’t diagnose right.

Getting a diagnosis is important to me because my life would finally make sense, I know it wouldn’t change anything, but at least I would know why my life has been so difficult.

Thanks for reading

Ade

Parents
  • Hi Robot,

    I don't have an answer to your question as I've yet to be referred let alone receive an assessment. I'm very impressed by the speed of your referral to the assessment date. 

    (If you don't mind me asking) Which county / health authority do you come under?

    From what I've read elsewhere in the forum and my sense of my local diagnostic services, most people seem to wait between 18 -24 months for an assessment. 

    Saz

Reply
  • Hi Robot,

    I don't have an answer to your question as I've yet to be referred let alone receive an assessment. I'm very impressed by the speed of your referral to the assessment date. 

    (If you don't mind me asking) Which county / health authority do you come under?

    From what I've read elsewhere in the forum and my sense of my local diagnostic services, most people seem to wait between 18 -24 months for an assessment. 

    Saz

Children