Worrying about assessment

Sorry what do you mean... The psychiatrist outranks the support worker? I've done the aq50 and then all the other questionnaires and I'm really concerned that I'm autistic. I really struggle with communication, social skills and the meaning of things, routine, rules, noises, intense fixations, I have no friends because I don't get what it means, I can't pretend play with my nephews. Then I have delusions, paranoid thoughts, lows and highs. I just feel all over the place at the moment. Everything is getting on top of me

Ok so the psychiatrist who diagnosed you outranks the support worker unless the support worker is also a psychiatrist which although not impossible would be very unusual.

I'm seeing a mental health employment support worker and autism was mentioned as its been noted that I seem to be having trouble with certain things related to autism along with the schizoaffective 

I’m autistic and bipolar. (I was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 50 and bipolar type II at the age of 53)

At the very worst they may question the diagnosis and perhaps suggest getting a second opinion from another psychiatrist but they can’t un diagnose the schizoaffective bipolar unless your autism assessment is being carried out by another psychiatrist, which would be very unusual, and probably not even then. (You would have been seen by two psychiatrists who came to a different diagnosis so the obvious next step would be to see another psychiatrist unless you were convinced one of the diagnoses was correct and the other one wrong.)

Equally they can’t remove your meds. Even if you are seen by a second psychiatrist and the psychiatrist thinks you would benefit from coming off the meds from a professional courtesy point of view if nothing else the new psychiatrist should discuss it with your old psychiatrist and you should always come off any meds anyway slowly under medical supervision unless your doctor says otherwise.

(During my bipolar diagnosis I don’t think my autism came up at all or if it did only in passing.)

I would go to the assessment. You have probably been waiting for a while for the assessment and if you turn this appointment down you may not get another appointment for a long time if ever.

Whoever is doing the assessment should already be aware of your schizoaffective bipolar diagnosis but regardless I think I would start the meeting by telling them that you have the diagnosis and that regardless of the outcome of your appointment you intend to continue to take your meds and that way everyone knows exactly where you stand. I imagine their response will be along the lines of of course, no problem.

ahhhh yeah schizoaffective stuff can have overlapping symptoms with autism so they may have to reconsider that and be its one or the other maybe...

what prompted you to go in for all of the things? i mean with autism symptoms you could pretty much ask for diagnosis on every single personality disorder really and likely pass all of them as all disorders overlap.

i dunno, i was gonna say go ahead with it anyway but if meds could be at risk then i dunno i wouldnt wanna say go ahead and then you lose your meds over it when they have to reconsider the previous diagnosis. but then again perhaps it wouldnt lead to reconsidering of previous but instead be a block to this diagnosis as any of those asd traits have already been used on the schizoaffective diagnosis and have gone towards that perhaps. so i think maybe at worse your previous diagnosis will just block this one rather than this one taking away the previous

I'm so nervous, I'm thinking about not going ahead with the assessment. I have schizoaffective bipolar disorder, I'm afraid that they will un diagnose that and remove my meds if they find I'm autistic. I need my meds. I don't know what to do, any advice? 

It varies depending on which service is doing it, so I can only share what mine was like (on the NHS in London). 

So it was two sessions on different days, less than an hour each and with two different people. They said they don't speak to each other about it until after the second one so they both go in with a fresh view. 

The first one was basically just an interview type thing where he asked me a bunch of questions about various things. Basically a more in depth version of the questionnaires you have to fill in before. 

The second one involved practical stuff, like tell me what you see in this picture, tell me the story of this picture book that doesn't have words, explain to me how to make a cup of tea, take a few objects from this bag and make up a story using them. And there was also more talking.

Between the second session and the one where they tell you their conclusion, they spoke to each other and came to a joint conclusion that I was autistic. And then sent me a more in depth report on each aspect of the assessments.