Private Diagnosis - what type of assessor?

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.

Parents
  • I had my assessment done privately with a clinical pyschologist. A lot of clinical psychologists privately tend to do the assessments for the NHS as well. The only difference is it costs more but you can get it done a lot quicker. 

    When i had my diagnosis, she sent the letter to my GP so it was recorded on my medical records. Just as long as the diagnosis is official and comes from an experienced assessor/pyschologist it will still count as an official diagnosis. 

    One thing I would say is if you are to go down the pyschologist route, just use them for the diagnosis. I carried on seeing mine following my diagnosis and I ended up paying for sessions which were pretty pointless. She just kept asking me 'how i was' and there was no actual benefit from the sessions. 

    The best thing to do is get the diagnosis then have CBT or therapy to help with anxiety seperately. 

Reply
  • I had my assessment done privately with a clinical pyschologist. A lot of clinical psychologists privately tend to do the assessments for the NHS as well. The only difference is it costs more but you can get it done a lot quicker. 

    When i had my diagnosis, she sent the letter to my GP so it was recorded on my medical records. Just as long as the diagnosis is official and comes from an experienced assessor/pyschologist it will still count as an official diagnosis. 

    One thing I would say is if you are to go down the pyschologist route, just use them for the diagnosis. I carried on seeing mine following my diagnosis and I ended up paying for sessions which were pretty pointless. She just kept asking me 'how i was' and there was no actual benefit from the sessions. 

    The best thing to do is get the diagnosis then have CBT or therapy to help with anxiety seperately. 

Children