Published on 12, July, 2020
My son had a video autism assessment today with Psychiatry UK through NHS Right To Choose and the people assessing him said he does have a lot of autistic traits but not enough to "cross the threshold". The appointment lasted for less than 30 minutes. Does anyone know whether their decision can be challenged or whether he is entitled to a second opinion elsewhere. Advice please.
The nature of autism is that is has a range of traits, behaviours and sensitivities that are at varying levels for every autist, and the way the diagnosis works is you get scored on these depending on how bad they are for you.
There is a calculation performed (I assume each category gets a weighting depending on how much of an issue that behaviour etc is) and the level for it is multiplied by the weighting - then all the main categories are added up and a number reached.
If you reach the threshold for it to be disabling for you then you are given the diagnosis, but if it is not serious enough, you don't get that label as an autist - effectively it works out if it is bad enough for you to be considered disabled.
It sounds like your son doesn't qualifiy as badly effected enough to be given the diagnosis.
With the waiting lists of 3-4 years min most locations for NHS feferrals then I think you will have a long wait for a second opinion. I don't think they will approve of a second opinion from a private clinic however - they have done their duty and if you don't like the result then your only recourse is the slow procee I suspect.
Alternatively you can go privately yourself, but be prepared that they may come to the same conclusion so you will have waster thousands of pounds.
Thank you for your reply. He doesn't feel that they spent long enough asking the right type of questions to be able to come to the right decision on a diagnosis or not. Maybe I should have mentioned that I'm autistic, I was at the Lorna Wing Centre for a day and my assessment took a few hours, then I was given my diagnosis.