Autism assessment and transgender

Hello NA S66316

I am sorry to hear that your report is not what you expected.... 

Trogluddite has kindly answered and if you have any other questions, or wanted some advice, you may like to contact our Autism Helpline team. They can provide you with information and advice on your issue. You can call them on 0808 800 4104 (Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm, Friday 9am to 3pm).Please note that the Helpline is experiencing a high volume of calls and it may take a couple of attempts before you get through to speak to an advisor.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Lorraine Mod

My sympathies, that's a really rough way to get treated.

You're still just as welcome here, of course, so keep in touch if there's anything you need to talk through. Try your best to vent your anger as safely as you can, but the anger itself is perfectly justified.

Best wishes.

Well I have my report back and it was worse than I expected. She failed to mention the reccomendation of speech and language therapy in the report so how can I even go to the GP and ask for a referral when it's not in the letter and there was no email or number to ring like she said there would

Also the report didn't do justice with what I have been struggling with and the bullet points of wgat she said I said is completely wrong. I honestly feel like she twisted my words into something else, my mum thinks the same but she won't talk about it with me and I keep feelings to myself.

I just feel like hurting myself I've broken things with my anger and I have a small hole in the wall for throwing my phone at it before the assessment. 

 Not sure if anyone else has had the same experience? 

Thank you for replying. I'll wait to get the report (the letter) from her and see what I can do then. I probably should have talked about getting frustrated with people and getting angry, I do get the urge to hurt myself or hit something or break something when I'm home.

It's a shame because I had an LSA that was thinking I might be on spectrum (she didn't know about my anger issue to that extent) 

This is the second assessment I've had now. My first one was with CAMHS when I was 16 and they gave me an ADOS that was made for a 10 year old. Their letter said that the points or whatever would put me on the spectrum but because of my anxiety they wouldn't diagnose because they thought it was ' a white coat syndrome' moment and inflated the criteria. 

I waited 2 years for this assessment on the waiting list and for them to waste my time travelling to Sheffield twice to give me that answer was very hard. 

She did suggest going to speech therapy but said I'll have to go to my gp to be referred. 

I don't get how transitioning could affect an autism diagnosis. I told my psychiatrist that I'm a crossdresser, and told the rest of whoever deals with me at the East Brighton Mental Access Team, and yet I still got a diagnosis. I also have a nephew, that is trasitioning into my niece, that is also diagnosed with Apsperger's.

Best thing to do is keep getting re-referred, badger the hell out of them and don't give in until they give you the diagnonsis. If you're showing even the vaguest of autistic traits then that to me means that you are on the spectrum.

Welcome to the forum,

I'm sorry to hear that; it certainly doesn't seem very fair to me, especially given the indication of obvious traits and transitioning being given as the only reason. Do they bar menopausal women from a diagnosis? Teenagers going through puberty? I have very limited knowledge of transitioning, but hormonal changes don't seem to be a problem in those cases. Plenty of people get diagnosed while they're on psychoactive medications for depression, anxiety, etc., so medication, if that's how they classify your hormones, isn't a barrier per se. Nor do I know of any firm indication that transgender people are over or under represented among autistic people (I've heard of some indication that the proportion may be slightly higher, but with a group who are so often discriminated against, reporting and sampling biases seem as likely an explanation as any).

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of a second opinion in the NHS; you're free to ask for one, but it may be refused. I've never read of anyone who's tried it for an autism diagnosis, though; and with autism units so thin on the ground, it's possible there may be no-one available to get a second opinion from. So discrimination policy may be where you would need to look. If you get no joy with the autism people directly, I'd suggest getting in touch with your local Citizen's Advice Bureau - they often have staff who specialise in disability issues, and whenever I've used them, their competence has always amazed me given how hard worked they are these days.

Best of luck finding a resolution, and best wishes.