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Non Autism diagnosis

NAS89770
11 months ago

Hi folks,

Having a lot of problems during my life from being a child with being unable to mix socially and having terrible anxiety I decided at the an advanced age to ask to be referred for an autism assessment. 

I was given the same test as I believe a lot of others have gone through, book with flying frogs, asked to create a story etc 

I also filled in the quiz's as well, and was told they were borderline as regards the spectrum.

Anyway it seems I flew through the test with the flying frogs book and was told that it was a multi-disciplinary assessment and I was told I didn't have autism.

To be honest I was relieved about this, but at the same time concerned that these particular tests might not accurately be the right criteria to determine whether a person has autism or not for the following reasons.

1 I do believe that a good number of people if picked from a random number of people off the street might not have the creative ability to construct a story from these tests, and it could well be because of that would be diagnosed with autism, where in fact they are not on the spectrum.

2 Are autism people somehow not allowed to be creative?

3 from the age perspective even people with autism can develop a coping strategy as they get a lot older ( I certainly have) and because of this the tests might not accurately diagnose the condition.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the above.

Many thanks.

Parents
  • 11 months ago

    Presumably the decision also took into account numerous questionnaires, how you interacted with the assessors and perhaps interviews with people who know you?

    My assessment report noted a few things about the ADOS test:

    • I fidgeted throughout 
    • I didn’t make much eye contact with the assessor 
    • when items were placed in front of me for the tasks I focussed fully on them and didn’t look at the assessor at all
    • for the frogs thing I gave a very factual description of each page, didn’t say anything about the emotional state of the things/people and and throughout had a completely flat affect, both face and voice
    • for the thing where you have to make up a story I just completely messed that up
    • my response to the map part of the test was also very unusual apparently but I won’t elaborate so as not to give anyone ideas 
  • 11 months ago in reply to Amerantin (former member)

    That's pretty much how my assessment went.

    Thankfully I didn't have the story task (as far as I remember). I think that I would have either really struggled or made up a totally inappropriate story.

    I enjoyed the map and could have(and wanted to)  talk for ages recounting my experiences associated with the area of the map

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  • 11 months ago in reply to Amerantin (former member)

    That's pretty much how my assessment went.

    Thankfully I didn't have the story task (as far as I remember). I think that I would have either really struggled or made up a totally inappropriate story.

    I enjoyed the map and could have(and wanted to)  talk for ages recounting my experiences associated with the area of the map

Children