Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello. I am 36 years old. I have suffered with depression and anxieties almost all my adult life.I was referred to the Asperger's service on the NHS in 2014 after seeing several counsellors and therapists who recommended an assessment for Asperger's. The first to suggest that I might have Asperger's was a private funded counsellor, paid for by the college I was attending. The NHS services gave me a few short appointments. The first of which was with a nurse, and involved mainly questions about my childhood which I could not answer. The nurse seemed to have an attitude towards me, and said I didn't have Asperger's because I could not answer the questions - so therefore did not meet their criteria. I then asked for a further assessment with an actual doctor. I took someone with me to the appointment. The doctor seemed to have an attitude towards me and my companion. Virtually all of his questions seemed to be anchoring around a theme which seemed to be - that he must have thought that I was abused or neglected as a child. Again, not many of these questions could be answered and there were almost no questions relating to the symptoms I experience and how they affect my life.Now, just now in 2018, they have decided not to give me a diagnosis. The doctor said they will just refer me back to psychiatric services and recommend CBT and further assessments. He believes my symptoms are something to do with my personality. However he said that personality disorders are not diagnosed any more. I think it was a personality clash between myself and the doctor. He probably felt like I was wasting his time because I could not answer his questions. I feel that they have wasted years of my life - as I have been waiting for appointments this whole time.They have refused to give me a second opinion with another doctor and will not give me any more assessment time.Many people I know believe that I must have Asperger's. When I told some people that I was being assessed, they said that they thought I had Asperger's but never mentioned it before because they either did not wish to offend me or because they assumed I must already know.When I first learned what Asperger's and Autism is, I did a lot of research. I became able to identify autism in all of the other students at the college, whom I previously thought just had some learning difficulties such as dyslexia. It became clearly obvious to me if someone has autism or not.With every other illness in the world, the diagnosis is given based on the symptoms. With most illnesses, the doctor isn't even concerned with the cause. For example, if an alcoholic has depression then they diagnose depression and treat depression. They might recommend for the person to stop drinking, but they don't diagnose alcoholism and ignore the depression.One thing which is not made clear at all, in websites like this and the information available - is that if a person cannot answer questions about their childhood, no matter what symptoms they have, they will be refused a diagnosis for Asperger's autism. This should either be made abundantly clear, or it should be changed. The assessment criteria for an adult should depend on the symptoms alone and not the cause.There is no cure for Asperger's, yet they will try to cure me with CBT and give me other assessments which produce negative results.What am I supposed to do if I cannot answer questions about my childhood?
Asperger said:One thing which is not made clear at all, in websites like this and the information available - is that if a person cannot answer questions about their childhood, no matter what symptoms they have, they will be refused a diagnosis for Asperger's autism.
I don't think that can be the case. There are some questions I cannot answer because of my Asperger's / autism (admittedly not factual stuff), but I still got a diagnosis. After all some people won't be able to speak at all in response.
It sounds like they weren't being very transparent. Medical professionals' opinion about nature v nurture vary like anyone else's. Some people think tend to think problems are down to upbringing, some think they are constitutional or personality-based. They draw the boundary in different places, and maybe these thought that you were 'repressing' significant memories from childhood, although there's no scientific basis for that kind of belief. Do you know if they'd had proper autism training?
Why do you think you can't remember your childhood? Can you remember the journey to or from school?
I don't know why I can't remember. If I think about it for long enough then I can recall some things. But my brain is too busy looping through the other stuff I am thinking about at the time. It is hard for me to break out of a thought cycle. You can ask me about a journey to school as a child (as you just did) and my brain just wants to tell you about the programming classes I had at college and what projects I would like to work on.
You might wonder why the NHS does not put out its own questionnaires to speed up diagnostic assessments.
The doctor spent 10 to 15 minutes talking.10 minutes asking me questions.10 minutes asking the same questions in different wording to try and see if I gave the same answers.15 minutes asking my companion questions.10 minutes talking.The hour was spent.The doctor would not recognise any of these questionnaires. He didn't care that I am clumsy. He just doesn't want to give a diagnosis.
Asperger said:They are still alive, but my mother cannot remember much, and she divorced my dad when I was young. All he could say is that he didn't know about Asperger's and that he remembers I was very clumsy.
I bet 'clumsiness' could be taken as evidence of developmental conditions by the diagnosticians. Your parents might say more to the professionals than to you in forced to answer certain questions. It sounds though like the psychiatrist or psychologist you saw (I suspect the former) wasn't capable of using diagnostic tools or able to gather a history.
Your RDOS profile is a bit more Aspie than me, but less so than many people here (who get > 180/200). RDOS is not widely recognised as a screening instrument. If you want to present prima facie evidence to a professional, the AQ, EQ and possibly SQ from the Autism Research Centre link above would be more likely to be recognised.
They are still alive, but my mother cannot remember much, and she divorced my dad when I was young. All he could say is that he didn't know about Asperger's and that he remembers I was very clumsy.I looked at the stuff on here and on the other official websites. I seem to have many of the symptoms from the "triad of impairments" and secondary traits and - stereotypically I seem to have Asperger's. I will take a look at the link, thank you.
That mental behaviour makes sense to me, as it's within my conception of autism.
Forgive me if you've already indicated this, but: Are you parents still alive? Are you in contact with them? Would they be able to answer questions about your childhood? The logic of what qwerty said is why they spend so long taking a history.
By the way, have you done any online tests like the AQ/EQ? Some of us have found this one quite revealing:
http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php
I might give you an answer to your current question some time next week. At which point I won't be able to stop having the conversation with you - in my head, but you won't be there to hear the answer.