Countdown to diagnosis

Hi everyone, 

I've been undergoing autism assessment by a team of Clinical Psychologists for the last few weeks.  I hear the outcome later today.

I am a woman in my late 50s and the component parts of my ASD assessment are as follows:

• Initial assessment with psychologist (1.5 hrs)
• Full developmental history meeting with psychologist (1.5 hrs)
• AQ / EQ questionnaires (completed at home and handed back to psychologist) 
• Developmental history (written autobiographical information supplied by me)
• Developmental history questionnaires (completed by parents/siblings & emailed to psychologist)  
• Narrative account of issues and challenges (emailed by husband)
• ADOS-2  with two different psychologists (1 hr) followed by analysis of results (1 hr)
• Multi-disciplinary Formulation Meeting (professionals only) 
• Feedback meeting - psychologist + me (1 hr) 
• Post assessment follow-up sessions - optional (3 x 1 hr)

I first emailed the service provider requesting information on 10 August. 

The Formulation Meeting will be held sometime next week (mid November). This is where everyone in the team gets together to consider all the evidence and reach conclusions about likely causes of difficulties, and potentially helpful recommendations. 

I will get feedback from a psychologist at a meeting next Friday 16 November. 

Although I am paying for this assessment privately, the provider re-invests any profit into providing services for autistic people.

I looked up 'formulation' and it seems this is a psycho-social group decision-making process, combining narrative accounts with evidence derived from the application of ASD diagnostic criteria. This approach aims to reduce the risk of individual bias by promoting creative thinking and collaborative problem solving.  

Needless to say I am looking forward to finding out what diagnostic decision has been reached. It will be fascinating to see if the professionals agree with the conclusions I reached by reading, reflecting, and talking to people in this community!

There are varied formats for assessment so it would be interesting to know what other people's experiences have been.