Published on 12, July, 2020
I went to my Gp mid April to have a referral put through about autism, my Gp rang me today to say that the referral was gone through but then offered me today instead of going down this pathway if I’d like to take the route of seeing a psychiatrist instead as they think it might be a better pathway by the NHS for autism.
has anyone gone down this pathway before or have any idea why I would be sent to a psychiatrist route from the NHS instead?
I was diagnosed privately by a consultant psychiatrist. Personally, I think the psychiatrist-based approach to diagnosis suited me much better than what I have heard of the clinical psychologist or team approach. The psychiatric approach seems to rely more on patient history and less on tests or observation than the others. I suspect that the enormous backlog of people wanting NHS assessments has led to different approaches involving fewer clinicians being adopted. Just as well, as the standard NHS model for autism assessment is long, uses a team of clinicians and is therefore very expensive.