Published on 12, July, 2020
I had my assessment yesterday and im really struggling to understand it. I went in totally blind without reading any info about how the assessment may be.
They already had a 2 hr conversation with my mother over the phone abiut a year before my assessment. I had loads of questionnaires to fill out to take to my actual assessment too.
When i went in there it lasted 30 mins. She told me before we started that i would have this assessment today and have another app in 6 weeks. I asked her what the other app was and she said it was a app for the diagnosis.
I think my assessment went bad. She talked alot about useless stuff, asked me to discribe emotions, asked about bullying, friends, colleagues. She gave me 4 tasks. A task with a pattern i had to make and then asked what it looked like. A task showing her how to brush my teeth, a picture book task and i got given 5 objects to create a story with. She also gave me like a oldstyle radio and toys to play with whilst she caught up on her notes which i didnt touch.
I couldnt do the last task and she seemed to get very ticked off by it. I have no imagination anyway but when im nervous my mind goes totally blank and i just couldnt come up with some story about 5 unrelated random objects.
Im wondering if what im describing is normal? I went in hoping they would ask more about my experiences and my childhood and why i do certain things. I came out feeling like id been treated like a child and wasted 30 mins of my time. I feel deflated that i waited four years for a 30 min talk and im unsure how i can be diagnosed when theyve only spoke to me for 30 mins.
My ADOS assessment, which took three hours, was the same as others have described, including
As its an NHS assessment they don't know what your capable of doing before, therefore, the basic tasks make it more suitable for a the general population. It sounds like your NHS trust have decided that they don't need you to complete all of the activities to make an assessment.
I'm under the impression that the diagnosis is predominantly based on observing your behaviour and how you respond to the questions, not necessarily the words you use. For example, I tend to give statements in conversations rather than encouraging the back and forth that NT do. In regards to the friend's question I only have one and then my husband - this is very typical for ND women, thus exploring how I experience friendships would have told the assessor a lot. Your comment about the magazine is also revealing in regards for your need for up-to-date and factually correct info.
Most autistic people have a spikey profile, showing challenges in some areas and not others. For example, I was able to guess all of the expression correctly. I also enjoy making up stories so really liked the flying pigs tasks as it brought me a sense of joy I hadn't experienced since childhood
This is what worries me. Yours took 3 hrs and mine took 30 mins. She mentioned the pigs fly thing at the end but didnt ask me if i understood that expression. I have no imagination so i couldnt come up with a story but instead of just saying i had no imagination i told her i couldnt do that and when she got pissy i just kept telling her i couldnt.
She withheld pieces from me too and i just told her i couldnt finish it because pieces were missing. She did keep trying to have general chat with me, mainly about herself, which i found a bit unprofessional. But im guessing it was maybe another task.
I just cant believe that they can try diagnose me on a 30 min assessment and a couple of questionnaires.
It's a 30 minute charade. She wasn't really annoyed with you, don't worry, it was to see how you would react and the chitchat was to see if you would do a back and forth conversation with her. But I do understand why you are upset about it, I felt the same way after mine. I came away with the feeling .. used, manipulated and annoyed at the falseness of it all.
I found it quite irritating and false too. Looking through all of this, I'm wondering about the accuracy of the test.
I too lacked the desire to communicate when I didn't think it related to the test. However, the assessor came up with a strange "me too" story that just didn't ring true and seemed extremely unlikely. Also it seemed rather private and of course, the other assessor was there too. If the same thing had been revealed by, say, a colleague or acquaintance, I'd have engaged and asked questions and shared more thoughts on the subject. So it feels as though this was just testing how I responded within an entirely artificial situation.
The jigsaw test bothered me too. I was asked repeatedly whether I wanted some more pieces and I refused on the basis that I still wouldn't be able to make anything meaningful from it. Plus, if it was supposed to be a rocket, it was already good enough in my eyes.
I wonder how the NT response would have looked.