Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi All
Looking for a wee bit of help and advice.
I recently went for an autism assessment and got my results back yesterday and not sure what do to now, if anything.
Basically, the assessor has advised that I am not on the autism spectrum and provided me with some of the reasoning behind that decision.
To give a little bit of background about myself, I am in my early 40s and a couple of years ago, my then 16 year old son was diagnosed as being autistic which made me start to look at my own behaviour over the years, so finally decided to get an assessment.
One of the issues I have with the results of my own assessment, is not the outcome in itself, but the reasons provided for the outcome.
They mainly focused on what I was like growing up, stating the fact that I had friends going through school and that I performed reasonably well in school and I didn't show signs or hand flapping or rocking back and forth and movements like that. The assessor mentioned that I was very likeable during the assessment as well.
One of my concerns is that my son doesn't present any of those traits either, had lots of friends at school, was really well liked by his teachers, can come across really nice and friendly, in general, but he is absolutely on the autism spectrum.
I was mainly expecting to be told I was autistic, I have stimmed most of my life, I have a very limited diet, I have no close friends, actually have very little friends at all and have struggled for the last 25 years in making friends and some other things as well.
So my question is, what should I do now, is there any point is requesting a second opinion from the same organisation that have already stated that they don't believe I am on the spectrum or just accept their diagnosis and try and move on and do what I can?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
I'm a diagnosed autistic and I'm still in regular contact with friends I first met at school. There is a clause in the DSM 5 diagnostic criteria that requires difficulties/traits to date back to childhood, but such problems do not have to include a complete inability to make friends. I received prizes for academic attainment throughout my school days, even though I hated and loathed school and had lots of social and sensory difficulties in school. I once had a tooth that was not painful extracted, just to have a few days off school, I hated it so much. My very real difficulties with school did not make me unintelligent or unable to learn, just very unhappy. I have never hand-flapped or rocked - I did other things like spinning and fiddling with mechanical objects. I really do not understand the point of view of your assessors, they seem to have confused 'having problems' with 'the inability to cope with problems'. I call this the 'Long John Silver effect', just because he could get around with the use of a crutch, only having the one leg had no effect on him . He definitely had problems, but was able to overcome them to a certain extent.
Personally I would push for a referral to other diagnosticians, as the people you saw seem incompetent.