Published on 12, July, 2020
Today it was confirmed that the waiting time for my NHS assessment is going to be 20+ months. So I’m back to looking at a private assessment again.
I was wondering if anyone could offer an opinion on private assessments and the best person to be assessed by?
I have found two routes fairly local to me:
1 - A mental health therapist who is an accredited autism assessor who uses the ADI-R and the ADOS (found this person on my local Autism recommendations directory)
2- A Chartered clinical psychologist who uses DISCO and ADOS-2 (this particular psychologist is recommended by someone on this forum)
How do I know which route to take? Are all assessments valid when trying to access support (whether that be DLA, or therapy etc)
As they are private I dont want to spend money and then find it’s not an accepted diagnosis from a therapist for example? (If I am diagnosed that is) Or because they both have autism assessment training does it make any difference? Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
my private one was with a clinical psychologist, who is actually the same one the NHS use. So fully accepted and valid.
Could you perhaps email them/your GP to ask if their diagnoses are accepted by the NHS/other services
Thanks for your reply. I asked the MH therapist and she said she is supervised by a clinical psychologist and her assessments are the same as the NHS as she used to work for them too.
I dont know what services/support I would be looking at in order to check. Do you think just ask the gp?