is autism and ADD (attention deficit disorder) the same in a assesment?

no if your going for a autism assessment all they can assess is autism as far as im aware.... its beaurocratic, to get any other assessments you have to do it seperately and satisfy their beaurocratic paperwork system.

also if you mention it they may put your autism assessment on hold as then they maybe thinking that the autistic traits your trying to get assessed could infact not be autistic traits but add traits instead with this new information, and so this will cause complications as often they have to seperate each individual trait and if a trait is used for autism it cannot be used for add or something, there has to be seperate standalone traits for each one.

but by your logic anyway, all disorders share the exact same traits.... you should look through more, research shizotypal, schizoid, bpd and any other you can think of... you will find they all share the same taits... so how do they seperate and diagnose correct? .... thats the thing, they dont, they dont know what they are doing, its all guess work and if a trait has been allocated to autism they wont use it for another and if they do they will undo the autism diagnosis pending review if they are to remove a trait they thought was autism from you and allocate it to another disorder...  so yeah you run the chance of complicating it and it being pending investigation and then a choice of whether to slot matching traits into one thing or the other based on their best educated guess by everything they know about you.

Hi, I have recently been diagnosed with ADHD but the assessor also suggested an assessment for Autism. 
I’ve been prescribed Elvanse and wondered if that was one of the medications that you were prescribed prior to Ritalin. You mentioned previous medication wasn’t very helpful for you and  I’m worried about taking something that isn’t right for me. 
Thanks. 

I was told at the beginning of my autism assessment that they would only be looking for autism and that anything else would need to be diagnosed separately by the mental health team. 

The person I got the Ritalin from told me also that I would know if I had ADHD by my reaction to the Ritalin. And yes, after about 4 hours, I got very tired and was able to get to sleep with no problem, which surprised me. So what you said makes sense. 

All other medications the doctors gave me, slowed down my thoughts for a while (at best, if they did anything at all) but then they seemed to take away my imagination, so of course, I stopped taking them as the slowing of the thoughts was only temporary and after that they didn't seem to have any positive effects.

Everyone around me said I was better on the medication and when I brought this up at my autism group, just about everyone there had the same story. 

I realised that the medication dumbed us down and made us easier to be around, but it didn't make us feel any better and in fact it made us worse. We live in our heads and if we can't imagine, what is the point of being here? 

I understand what you mean about optimism and people think I'm optimistic, but I'm not. Optimism is pretty useless. Sure, you look on the bright side with optimism, but that's about all. You are still looking at the situation through the same lens, albeit on the opposite side. It's a bit like two sides of the same coin. 

I look at it very differently. I have been trying to clear, clean and organise my house for two years, and never suceeded until I took the Ritalin. I thought I could carry it on the next day, but I couldn't. And since then, I have noticed how ADHD I actually am!!!!

I've got one more Ritalin left (I got given 2) and that one I'm going to use in a couple of days time when I sit down and pull the book that I'm writing, together. 

Then I'm going to make an appointment at the doctors and basically demand that they give me Ritalin. They wouldn't give me anymore sleeping tablets and I'm ok with that, because it made me realise I didn't need sleeping tablets, I just needed to get my life together, get some routines going. 

That lead me to face what else was going on with me which lead me to ADHD. I don't want to take medication, I never have and I will always look for another way. But if Ritalin can do that for me, then I'm taking it because my inability to function isn't just me, as in me not getting on with things for whatever reason. It's more than that and if the Ritalin helps with that then I'm taking it.  

I don't want another assessment so I'm going to challenge the doctor to use their initiative and prescribe it for me. 

I wouldn't say my reaction to the Ritalin was profound in an earth shattering way. I simply felt calm in a way I can't ever remember feeling and I just got on with cleaning the house, no struggle. It was weird. So weird I thought it can't be the medication because I don't really feel anything. As if feeling calm was nothing! I guess not being calm is my normal to the point I couldn't really appreciate or value feeling it. I was convinced it was just me taking charge and deciding to get on with things so I was convinced I would do the same the next day. But I didn't. Despite my efforts. 

And today in church. I noticed that I was so restless and fidgety. Then I realised, I always am, I just don't usually take much notice of it. 

I have just completed 4 months of intensive 1 to 1 weekly sessions with an autism plus worker. Which gave me a level of self awareness that I've never had before. I was always 'self aware' but of course I was self aware through my own world vision, not realising that I see the world differently to most people. 

This new level of awareness doesn't change anything. It simply enables me to see what's going on from a different perspective. It has enabled me to see how I am affected by autism and ADHD. 

I can see I'm not stupid. But the autism really does mask the ADHD symptoms. However, now I am aware of this, I can do something about it. Not in trying to change me in anyway. If that was possible, it would have happened by now. And not to help me to 'fit in' because again, if that was ever going to happen it would have happened by now, and instead, I'm more ostracised than ever! But I can build my life around my needs and get the type of help that's actually going to help. And I want to try Ritalin. If it works for me like it did the other day, then I can achieve a lot. 

My current goals are to simply build the foundations of my life. Get my eating, sleeping, waking, yoga, mediation, exercise etc etc into routines along with long regular walks in the countryside, some kind of hobys maybe, time for reading etc. Get my house minimalised and organised. And when I've got all that in place, I'll think about work. 

I'm not optimistic. Im creating my life according to my needs, quirks, peculiararities etc. We have to forget about the past, use what we can from it to build our future from the present. 

Before the autism worker I had another support worker, who's still in touch with me. She taught me about taking baby steps. It was so hard for me to get to grips with that but I eventually realised that the less I did, the more I achieved. 

I fit the criteria for BPD up to about 15 years ago. So I knew I didn't have that and even when I assessed myself for it, I knew deep down it wasn't that, even though I fit the criteria.

In truth, we're none of these things. But the way we're wired up, makes us behave or experience the world in a way that's markedly different to the majority of the population. And then the big pharmas come and pathologize it. But it's helpful to know and as a human being, I identify as autistic. But really we're so much more than that and that's what I focus on.

Don't wait. Go and see your doctor. Tell them you want to try some ADHD meds. I know I don't want to wait for or even go through another assessment. I just want to get on with my life.  

You can decide now whether or not you want 2019 to be a turning point. I've made that decision. I'm ready. That doesn't mean I'm not scared. That I wouldn't rather just sit in my house all day by myself. But I feel sure that I'm ready. That it's time. Fingers crossed I get the Ritalin and it works like it did the other day. Fingers crossed you get what you want as well. We've come this far, despite the challenges, so let's not give in now. We might be closer to Nevada (whatever that means to each of us) than we think :) 

I will probably be waiting until at least June 2019 for my ADHD assessment, at least that is what LancUK said when I called them four weeks ago to chase up on my referral.

It was the same outsourced private company LancUK that diagnosed my Autism last year & since the Psychiatric Nurse that referred me for the ADHD assessment said that my symptoms were like a 'Red Flag', I am quite annoyed that LancUK never mentioned the subject of ADHD at all. When I said this to the Psychiatric Nurse, he just said that it was probably because being a private company they are only allowed to diagnose one thing at a time, i.e. they want to charge the NHS twice. He also said that whilst there is a large overlap between Autism & ADHD, people with both are harder to diagnose because Autism can effectively mask many of the more obvious ADHD symptoms & presumably vice versa.

I havent tried Ritalin, but having a good friend with ADHD (who may also be on the Spectrum but currently undiagnosed), I have tried Concerta several times which is just the extended release version of the main active ingredient Methylphenidate. Whilst Concerta does make me feel somewhat calmer, sadly I didnt have the strong reaction that you describe. My friend said that he could see a big difference, but as usual with every psychiatric medication that I have taken, I didn't notice any profound changes. The main difference seems to be that my head is a lot quieter, with much less of the constant inner dialogue of self criticism. As my friend said though, the fact that it only has a calming effect does seem to indicate that I almost certainly have ADHD as well, so I will just have to hope that LancUK agree when they eventually get around to performing the assessment.

A few weeks ago, I went along to an informal Manchester support group for adults with ADHD, which was very helpful & informative. Apparently it is quite common for people with ADHD to fall asleep after the first time they take Methylphenidate, because it is the first time in a while their brain has been able to properly relax. When I said that at one point I thought I had symptoms of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), they laughed & said "Not another one". One of the common core features of adult ADHD is 'Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria', which is often confused with the 'Fear of Abandonment' in BPD. The guy who created the group said that he made the same mistake many years ago after trying to diagnose himself on the internet. There were several people with a double diagnosis of ADHD & Autism there too, but they said that usually the ADHD gets diagnosed first.

I'm not very good at optimism nowadays, over the last 57 years it has been almost compeletly eradicated from my system. I would like to think that 2019 might actually be a turning point, but I suppose I will have to wait until June to see if it just turns into the usual farce.

I think it may depends on where you go for the assessment and the assessor, but not completely sure.

Btw, this might be of interest to you: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Whitwell%20Susannah%20-%20ASD%20CPD%20Updates.pdf

There also seem to be clinics that offer both, but it seems that you may need two assessments in the same clinic:

https://www.thetukecentre.org.uk/services/autism/

https://cambridgeadhdclinic.com

https://effraclinic.co.uk/about

Both within the NHS and privately at the Tuke Centre, York we have been told that the assessments are completely separate.  This in spite of there being some overlap between these diagnoses.  

The Tuke Centre also advised us against having both assessment processes concurrently because they felt it would be too much to go through psychologically.  What this meant was that our son chose to have the ADHD assessment first (still awaiting results) and he'll be going for the autism assessment in the new year.

That said, I think that if we were sticking with NHS services, we'd probably get referred for both because there are generally long waits and the chances of them both coming in at the same time might be low.  My own wait for an autism assessment ended up being over a year and a half, from initial referral to final diagnosis.

I think it depends on the centre/assessor. My assessor could have diagnosed adhd and dyspraxia (possibly other conditions too, I'm not sure) as well. I suspected adhd as well as autism but my assessor believed that my traits of adhd were down to autism, not adhd. He believed it was more to do with my interest level rather than a problem with concentration etc as I tend to be one extreme or the other.

I was told that my autism assessment was for autism alone and at that time (last year), the autism assessment was the most important so I focussed on that and thought the other stuff (ADHD and PDA) would fall into place. The PDA did, as my psychiatrist told me it wasn’t avoidance, it was self preservation, and when I got my head around that, the PDA is no longer a problem, but the ADHD is. 

However, I now can’t ignore the ADHD symptoms and a couple of days ago, I took a Ritalin tablet and OMG ~ I have never felt so calm!!! I was focussed, I started and completed what I had been trying to do for years and I felt sooooooooooo calm. So although I really don’t want to go back to my doctors, I’m going to go and ask for a prescription of Ritalin. It seems that there is a possibility that I could get a prescription without a diagnosis but if a diagnosis is required, then so be it because Ritalin is the best thing I’ve ever taken!