Published on 12, July, 2020
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.
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:
Very similar to all of that. I had a different book to the frog one, but the comment was that I talked about the characters thoughts but not their feelings or emotions.
Likewise with the story I made up from objects that they thought was creative/imaginative but didn't go into thoughts and feelings, I seem to remember veering off into talking about Keith Haring as one of the objects was a Haring coaster so my objects had gone to an art gallery.... Strong imagination and creativity skills are listed on my report as a strength.
There are defo things in the assessment that could be improved for people of different ages or women and people we know are being under-diagnosed.
It’s definitely a weird experience and from what I’ve seen online some people are quite offended by it because they think it’s designed for children. But I think it revealed what they needed to know about me.
I had also seen comments from people saying that they felt demeaned or offended by the seemingly child-like nature of the ADOS tests which did make me a little apprehensive.
However, I went into the assessment with an open mind and actually enjoyed the ADOS bit. Not sure if I would have reacted differently if I didn't have any idea of what was likely to be asked of me to do.