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Should I get a second opinion?

Kyle

Hi, 

I've already posted here recently but it was before I had my feedback interview so I have sort of an update on my situation. 

I recently received a result saying I didn't meet the criteria what I was initially understanding of. Today I asked this assessor who did my ADOS test why he thinks I scored low points. He said that because I could look at him for even a second when he was talking to me that anyone who is autistic wouldn't even acknowledge him. He also said that a sign was that he told me a joke and I laughed and that anyone who is autistic does not show any facial expressions. I told him that my special interest was video games at this assessment as I not only spend basically all my time playing games to the point I neglect important things, when I'm not playing games I'm watching video analysis of game design and looking up videogame trivia, he said that videogames aren't a special interest and they're just something that people get addicted to. He also said that if I was autistic my behaviour wouldn't change regardless of my surroundings so I would behave around my parents the exact same way I would around complete strangers who are making me anxious. 

At this point I sort of just felt like this assessment wasn't at all based on any kind of any ASD spectrum and just came down to that if you didn't show the stereotypical traits of someone who is low functioning then you're not autistic at all.

I know these are professionals and I'm not but I just personally feel like this particular assessor was basically using no intuition and just basing his decision off stringent guidelines made to only diagnose people who can't even function in everyday life.

I was just wondering what everyones thoughts on this were and if I should seek some kind of private diagnosis as I asked this assessor for an appeal and he said he wouldn't know who to go to and I'll have to return to my GP and start this whole 3 year process again.

Thank you if you read this. 

Parents

  • Where eye contact is concerned, masking can appear to override the legend of the no-eye-contact in ASC sufferers, the crack in the mask usually appears when you break eye-contact once you get into the flow of a rant/speech/answer. This crack is usually present, as the average NT will not notice it, and therefore you will not have needed to develop the camouflage further. 

    Part of mask can usually be making a facial contortion, that seems to sate the social requirement of an NT situation, such as laughing when a professional is fishing for a laugh for some reason. Autistic individuals systemise and find patterns in social interactions, the more social interaction you are exposed to, the more efficient your system.

    Autistic individuals are not defective, they are different, like an anthropologist on Mars would be different to Martians.  
    You may have found that you sated him, more than he sated you when it was your turn to speak about your interest, so I thing he was a bad study of you.  

    A lot of these guys are trained to find traits of mood and stress disorders in clients; or they are trained to find autistic traits in infants and not mature and life-experienced adults; or they (as you say) have prescribed notions of what autism looks like.

    Ultimately autism is a neurological condition, that can have psychological comorbidities, and ASC diagnoses have been uncommon in the past. There is a-lot of battling with psychologist that goes on for this reason.

    If require a diagnosis to satisfy yourself: You need to secure a timeline of your neurological differences from birth (ruling out childhood regression), you need to read up on ASC’s a little more to know the signs, and you need to find another specialist because you think he was in error.

    We are here if you need us, these issues are more common than you think, but awareness is getting better.

Reply

  • Where eye contact is concerned, masking can appear to override the legend of the no-eye-contact in ASC sufferers, the crack in the mask usually appears when you break eye-contact once you get into the flow of a rant/speech/answer. This crack is usually present, as the average NT will not notice it, and therefore you will not have needed to develop the camouflage further. 

    Part of mask can usually be making a facial contortion, that seems to sate the social requirement of an NT situation, such as laughing when a professional is fishing for a laugh for some reason. Autistic individuals systemise and find patterns in social interactions, the more social interaction you are exposed to, the more efficient your system.

    Autistic individuals are not defective, they are different, like an anthropologist on Mars would be different to Martians.  
    You may have found that you sated him, more than he sated you when it was your turn to speak about your interest, so I thing he was a bad study of you.  

    A lot of these guys are trained to find traits of mood and stress disorders in clients; or they are trained to find autistic traits in infants and not mature and life-experienced adults; or they (as you say) have prescribed notions of what autism looks like.

    Ultimately autism is a neurological condition, that can have psychological comorbidities, and ASC diagnoses have been uncommon in the past. There is a-lot of battling with psychologist that goes on for this reason.

    If require a diagnosis to satisfy yourself: You need to secure a timeline of your neurological differences from birth (ruling out childhood regression), you need to read up on ASC’s a little more to know the signs, and you need to find another specialist because you think he was in error.

    We are here if you need us, these issues are more common than you think, but awareness is getting better.

Children
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