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.
I don't think any test has a %100 accuracy, but with that said there are people with a lot of Autistic traits that still don't meet the threshold for an Autism diagnosis depending on who is doing the assessment and what experience or medical bias they may have or if they keep up to date on diagnosis tools and criteria. And some people just plain have some traits but aren't actually Autistic. I was always described as having an active imagination and yet I got diagnosed as a kid in the 90's back when they didn't even know about all the other stuff they look for nowadays. So I suspect it's not a lack of imagination they are looking for but how you tell that story from your head the language used etc, since a big area of autism is the way we communicate differently than others.Going back to that first point I made though. There is a degree of overlap with other diagnoses, I know plenty people who are very what I call "sus-autistic" ie they can exhibit enough traits with regularity it could look like Autism if you didn't know that what you are really seeing is OCD, SPD, ADHD, PTSD agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, etc, and sometimes a combination of any of those too. It is possible you could not be Autistic but are experiencing overlapping traits from something else. If you really want to get to the bottom of it you could also ask for an ADHD/ADD assessment, discuss other possibilities with your GP, get a second opinion, go private and get another Autism assessment with someone else. This isn't the end of the line if you feel you need some closure on it all.
Thanks so much folks for your helpful replies and sorry for taking a little long to get back.
I quite enjoyed doing the test even the frog book one and was surprised and probably a bit relieved at the end when they said I wasn't on the spectrum.
But every now and again it springs to mind that if they had seen me when I was a lot younger or maybe in a real social situation ( I have been to many psychology assessments in the past and for some reason I tend to act in what I would regard as a normal manner) they might have taken a different diagnose.
But anyway I am glad I went and got the assessment done, now if anyone has any experience of using VR virtual reality headsets to deal with Social phobia and in particular eating around a table with people rather than cognitive therapy please let me know, I know its an ASD forum but I'm sure they wont mind a quick note slipped in on here.