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Adult Assessment

Hellbell


I'm due to have my assessment start online April 26th. 90 minutes for the first part. It’s through DAANA here in Devon.
I’m nervous, what can I expect as an adult? I know they will ask about childhood, but there are incidents in my life that are traumatic, do they expect you to talk about them?

Do they do any tests or activities? I have done so many online tests that are recommended for adults and my scores never change.

Do they consider that I’m female and a life long masker? What do I do if I go mute which I can do if overwhelmed by it all.

should I write out my memories and life history as an aid so I don’t forget important key points?

if anyone can answer these I would be so grateful, I’m getting moments of imposter syndrome and looking for some constructive insight so I know what to expect as they don’t tell you much.

thanks in advance, any DAANA assessed people I would like to hear from.

hellbell.Nerd

  • in reply to Hellbell

    No probs. You wouldn't imagine therapy can be damaging, but it can if not autism informed. Any way forward with the trauma needs to take account of ASD x

  • in reply to Dawn

    Thanks Dawn. Been through trauma therapy and made me worse, yes, I had the autism vs ptsd thrown at me too, autism is the core of my trauma due to naivety and not recognising when I was being manipulated when I was a teen and younger adult, the last incident was when I was in my 40’s.

    ok, I will do a historical account of myself and my behaviours as parents dead and I have no physical evidence but a photographic memory and memory filing system. Thru this I also discovered my father met the criteria when I re-examined his behaviour, meltdowns and appalling social abilities.

    I know about DISCO, ADOS, RDOS etc….I suppose each assessment is different depending on age bracket you fall in. I’m 63 now.

    thank you for replying and giving a bit of insight.Nerd

  • Hellbell said:
    incidents in my life that are traumatic, do they expect you to talk about them

    They might.  Some centres are experts in co-morbidities and will want to put any PTSD or anxiety you may have in proper context, particularly when they come to their recommendations.  Any treatment you'd need for any trauma going forward would need to be autism informed to be any use to you.

    Certainly, they are all looking for the best explanation for the difficulties you face.  To be honest by the time most of us self identify, we tend to know autistim is at the core of it all, but now and again the assessors might believe that something else causes the problem, in which case they should be trying to help you by pointing to whatever that is.

  • Hellbell said:
    should I write out my memories and life history as an aid so I don’t forget important key points?

    It's hard to say what it will be like as it will depend on which assessment methods they use.  I went with NAS diagnostic centre which uses the DISCO model, which is different to some NHS departments who use the ADOS.  You might want to google both for an idea.

    As for the memories, actually I'd write it all out in great detail and give it too them.  They still want you talk about it, but I'd say you wanted to be sure that they had enough to make an objective judgement and were afraid you'd forget something essential, then give them your notes.  Effectively I did this before mine and the assessors did say that it helped them.

    If you've got old school reports, old diaries or video of you as a child it might be helpful for them to see those too.  I went right through my archives scanning all this stuff.  There were so many examples of obviously autistic behaviours I'd never thought anything of and had often forgotten all about.