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Autism assessment for 16 year old

NAS24905

My daughter now 16, was assessed for autism back in 2022. The outcome was she didn't meet criteria for a diagnosis but was suffering with anxiety.Although her senco at her school believed she has autism on first meeting her and reading her report said she definitely masked. Now she's at college and struggling to cope with homework as she has all through school. As well as socially, having spoken to her Tutor she has said she has surrounded herself with a small group of girls but tends to be on the outside of social interaction. She doesn't engage in class unless prompted to do so by her tutor. There are other family members with diagnosis including myself her mum and sibling.My question is it worth trying again for an assessment? Would be assess as an adult or child now? Would be beneficial for her to excess support for college.

  • Personally, I do not subscribe to the infallibility of every and all clinicians, especially when autistic people are very intelligent and have developed effective masking techniques.. If you wished to go down the route of autism assessment again I would do a number of things. Get your daughter to take as many autism tests as possible (can be found here: https://embrace-autism.com/autism-tests/), AQ (AQ50) and RAADS-R are the most prominent, but tests for autistic camouflaging/masking, systemising and monotropism may also be useful. Make an exhaustive list of all traits and past history of autism behaviour shown by your daughter, back to as early an age as possible and have a look at the diagnostic manuals - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) or the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11), available online. Try to fit your daughter's traits and history into the various necessary sections within the manuals for a diagnosis. Make notes on the specific ways she masks, such as appearing to look people in the eye, but actually looking elsewhere etc. Armed with a comprehensive document about your daughter's autistic behaviours, problems and history, that fits the diagnostic criteria, you should stand a better chance of a diagnosis.

    As an indicator of clinical fallibility, I recently suffered from months of distressing ill health, repeatedly consulted my GP, but to no effect. I eventually worked out that I was reacting very, very badly to a medication I was on. My symptoms suggested both type 2 diabetes and heart failure. After stopping the medication, a statin, I feel hugely better and all the most unpleasant symptoms have disappeared entirely.

  • NAS24905 said:
    My question is it worth trying again for an assessment?

    If the original assessment was performed by competent specialists then I don't think the results now would be different, so I suspect it would be a waste of money.

    It is worth noting that you can have autistic traits but not meet the criteria for a diagnosis. This is because the diagnosis is effectively a level where the traits are classed as a disability.

    She sounds like she is certainly "on the spectrum" but just not badly enough to merit the label as disabled.

    What she can do is learn more about autism and techniques to deal with the traits. We have loads of good threads and knowledgable people here who can help with ideas. Why not get her to sign up and ask some questions? It is all anonymous so no risk of being found out and embarrassed and she may even get some useful help.

    Kudos for reaching out on her behalf but for best results she should take some control and ask for herself, if nothing else because she can ask the questions unfiltered.