Should I get a second opinion?

I wish you luck in your own assessment. I'm just currently waiting for private assessors to get back to me. Me and my parents have just be talking about the rubbish this guy said since yesterday basically.

Apparently because I could do the ADOS test without havings basically tics where I shout something completely irrelevant to the situation, that's also evidence I'm not autistic. I don't know what's wrong with this service because they said they use the usual guidelines but the things they are saying seem to only apply to autistic people with really high support or just completely outdated. 

Hi, I’m just so angry how you have been treated. Anxiety does affect a lot of autistic people from birth, it’s because we are born with autism at the same time! I will glance at people when they are talking to me, it’s for their benefit, not mine. How many times has someone said,” look at me when I’m talking to you.” I will laugh if someone makes a joke, sometimes, I have found it funny and laughed, other times I’ve laughed because I see others do it and know it’s expected. I’m very surprised they didn’t expect you to be mute and rock backwards and forwards, did they bring leaches with them? I’m so glad you have the support of your family, you have got to challenge this, it’s not how a team who specialise in autism should be  assessing people. The stress of waiting for 3 years is intolerable, it’s similar to competing at The Olympics, you wait and prepare as much as you can and it then boils down to one day, that on its own causes us to act differently and mask in front of strangers.Your parents have even demonstrated that your behaviour goes back to early developmental years. Please keep us all posted on how this all progresses.  I’ve got an NHS assessment coming up hopefully in the next year, I just dread that I will be treated the same.

Many gates, all of them leading to certain ‘No’ 

A couple of pros I spoke to recently told me that there's a widespread lack of funding and resources, and also tremendous backlogs/workloads; perhaps people are being dismissed simply to save money or because of low staffing etc?

It was the NHS. The name of the service was Manygates Clinic. 

Is it private, Kyle? Or NHS or the like?

I'm not sure if there's any terms and conditions saying if I'm allowed to post the name of this clinic or not if other people want to take a look. 

I completely agree. My initial letter basically just said "You do not meet the diagnostic criteria" "You no longer require this service".

They started talking in this feedback session and we were completely lost to what the results they were talking about were and apparently I was supposed to receive the written results by post but I haven't yet. 

I'm wondering why that clinic doles out so many 'refusals'. Is it simply a lack of professionalism, or something else? 

That is shocking and I am sorry you had to go through that. So much of what he said is just so wrong. It sounds like his only experience of autism was in his previous job as a PIP assessor, trained to reject everyone.

I think a complaint would be in order, to try and prevent someone else experiencing the same as you have. The NHS should not be using a clinic who employs someone so unprofessional. I know waiting times are bad but seriously who employed this person. If they had dragged a member of the public off the street to do your assessment they could not have done any worse.

From the reviews you have read it sounds like your experience is not uncommon. What about those people who do not have the inner strength and family support to be able to fight and seek a second opinion. Having their struggles dismissed and minimised could have a lasting negative impact on their mental health. Somebody who is already struggling badly could be driven towards suicide. 

He was in his early 30s and the other assessor was in her mid 20s.

My parents asked what their actual qualifications were and they said psychiatry but they never said anything about specialism in autism. 

I agree. I’m also curious what age this person was? Are they one month away from retirement or something and just not keeping up with… 21st century medicine? 

Don't his opinions make a nonsense of autism/autistic behaviours or traits being considered a spectrum? What's the point, then, of the famous saying "If you've met one autistic person, you've met...one autistic person"? If that assessor oversaw the entire population then, according to him, nobody would be autistic...

I’m new to all the background studies tbh but certainly from listening to Kieran Rose (who seems to be leading edge on this masking business) your own definition/understanding is the more correct one. It’s learned but reflexive, not something one can actively switch off with sheer force of will. To say that one cannot mask is absurd, since even NT people do it on a smaller, less taxing, scale in all sorts of contexts. 

If that was a Doctor diagnosing physical ailments they’d be struck off! It sounds comically bad, or would be if it wasn’t so serious

This assessor said that it's not possible to truly mask. He said the fact I even looked at him instinctively when he said my name was proof. I don't understand this tho as I've personally read about people who've had to make an active attempt to learn to unmask cos they have just instinctively learnt how to because they're adults who've been forced to learn how to act neurotypically due to work and education.

I can try to make eye contact with people cos I've learnt that's something people expect of you but after around a second or two of eye contact I have to look away otherwise I start to panic and get headache. Multiple hours of this leaves me going home drained beyond belief until I can't even keep up the act anymore. 

Aside from anything else, don't people like the assessor realise that a lifetime of social conventionalities means that many to-be-assessed people will be on their best, most self-restricted, 'normal behaviour'? This is ungrained in us. For example, if we meet a stranger, we try to be unexceptional in our words and actions. Very few want to present themselves as 'weird'. It's human nature. So maintaining eye-contact *can* be achieved...but at a cost. Afterwards, we pay the price: after speaking to my advisors, my stomach muscles just killed me, yet I wasn't aware of clenching them because of my forced rigidity during the appointment.

This is Kyle's recent thread:

community.autism.org.uk/.../264574

Haha, thanks for being understanding. I was initially quite upset when I all knew was that I didn't meet the criteria but after having this interview I actually feel better as this assessor just seemed so unprofessional to me. I've looked up the clinic I was diagnosed at and within the last year when they started doing the assessments, literally every review says that the person was told they don't meet the criteria and they just have anxiety. I know these are Google reviews so you can't instantly trust them but the fact these dozens of people had the exact same experience as me is just so strange. 

I’m no expert (though clearly neither is that assessor!) but surely ‘born with anxiety’ is a case for, not against. 

I can’t believe they’re getting away with that, I’m so angry on Kyles behalf so I can only imagine what it’s like for him. Why am I talking about him like he’s not here? Sorry Kyle!