Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
As some of you may know I was diagnosed with ASD in 2009 by NHS CAMHS. The Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist referred to the ASD as a Learning Disability (LD), in the sense I have difficulties in learning in different aspects of my life and not soley in education.
My current Consultant Psychiatrist and she agrees with the LD statement made by my earlier Consultant; though I am High Functioning.
The current Consultant doesn't believe I apply to LD definition used within the Transport Act 2000. This is the law which governs the National English Concessionary Bus Pass for people with the defined disabilties.
My previous Consultant at CMHS agreed with the above definition and this helped me get the much needed bus pass originally.
The Act's definition of LD is "A state of arrested or incomplete physical development of the brain, which results in severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning" and you have an IQ less than 70).
I know on the NAS's website that for DLA purposes there is a similar defition used for Severe Mental Impairment (SMI) and that the NAS doesn't believe that IQ is an accurate tool to measure an autistic person's intelligance.
"People with autism may do well in abstract intelligence tests but sometimes cannot apply their intelligence in a useful way in the real world. An IQ test can give a misleading impression of 'useful intelligence'".
There is also some Case Law on this matter.
[Read More: http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/benefits-and-community-care/disability-living-allowance/ ].
I just don't know on how to convience my current Consultant on helping in my bus pass renewal. This is the last piece of evidance they require. I also don't get for two similar processess there is soo much discrepency in the laws.
The bus pass scheme would not only be benifical for people with ASD (all sides of the spectrum) but also those with Social Anxiety too.
I also have OCD and GAD but don't want to go down the mental health route as I'm not used to that and not comfortable with it.
The other option is that I try to convince my Consultant that Autism is also a Physical Disability (PD) as heighlighted by the same DLA thread.
The NAS has written that "Unable or virtually unable to walk because of a physical disability (autism is recognised as a physical disability because it is caused by an 'organic brain dysfunction'".
The NAS provide no further info on this or more evidance to back it up.
Any advice or sugesstions would be great
IQ tests really only test how good a person is at doing IQ tests.
The test usually used is the Wechsler which has different components in it some verbal, some non-verbal, some reasoning, arithmetic, memory, visual patterns, speed tests on linking items etc. etc. When they add up the scores they call it 'global intelligence'.
What gets me about this in relation to Autism is that if a person doen't have much language then they will likely do poorly on the so called "non-verbal" as well as the verbal because although they use pictures, they require 'real world' knowledge, aquired through language.
AS people can also score poorly due to not being good at speed tests, or having reduced "verbal working memory" (this is not the same as verbal ability).
A test that is not used much now is "Raven's Progressive Matrices" which is not time limited and is about seeing the pattern in a small set of shapes and the questions get progressively harder.
Most NTs score about the same on both but some Autistic people can be very low on the Wechsler but very high on the Ravens. Many ASs will score better on the Ravens unless you're one that has particularly good language skills.