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What happens at a diagnosis assessment?

SarJakittenwizard

On Monday I received a text saying that my referral was accepted which I'm guessing means at some point I'll get a phone call or letter telling me when and where it'll happen, but I just wanted to know what would happen at the assessment. I guess it'll be asking me questions, but what else? I get quite nervous and I'd just like to know what will happen next. Also the message I received said that they couldn't give me an estimated wait time for an assessment to take place, but in you experiences, how long did it take?  Also, another question, where did it take place for you? Did it take place at a local GP or hospital or did it take place in a specific place such as a specific hospital in a city or something. I know all of your replies might vary but it'd be nice to know what your experiences might have been like.

Parents

  • My assessment involved an interview giving my general mental health and history. She asked a lot of questions and it was mostly a matter of giving factual information, although she did coax out details about some stuff that I didn't think was tied to mental health - eg about school friends, relationships etc.

    The next part involved a separate structured interview, which focused a lot on early years. I'd talked to my mum ahead of it to get her recollections and done a lot of thinking about what I remembered from playgroup, nursery school and infant/junior school. I did run a lot of my remembrances via my mum too, to ensure I wasn't imagining things! Fact finding on everything from your mother's pregnancy and birth experience onwards would be useful unless you have a caregiver attending the assessment with you.

    There were some questions about present day, what I do now and how I approach things. Also some ad hoc questions that threw me like about how I view/react to certain social interactions. It felt like these may have been asked to fill in blanks from childhood memories, but that's just my impression.

    It was via video call and the report (draft version as I'm still waiting for the final copy) included observations e.g. it noted I did some rocking back and forth while on the call, which I hadn't even realised I was doing.

    It was split over two calls, totaling  about 4.5 to 5 hrs across both appointments. The structured nature of the questions made it a lot easier than talking to mental health people, who are usually very vague and generalised in their approach. It also seemed to be skewed towards facts and evidence, rather than observation based.

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  • My assessment involved an interview giving my general mental health and history. She asked a lot of questions and it was mostly a matter of giving factual information, although she did coax out details about some stuff that I didn't think was tied to mental health - eg about school friends, relationships etc.

    The next part involved a separate structured interview, which focused a lot on early years. I'd talked to my mum ahead of it to get her recollections and done a lot of thinking about what I remembered from playgroup, nursery school and infant/junior school. I did run a lot of my remembrances via my mum too, to ensure I wasn't imagining things! Fact finding on everything from your mother's pregnancy and birth experience onwards would be useful unless you have a caregiver attending the assessment with you.

    There were some questions about present day, what I do now and how I approach things. Also some ad hoc questions that threw me like about how I view/react to certain social interactions. It felt like these may have been asked to fill in blanks from childhood memories, but that's just my impression.

    It was via video call and the report (draft version as I'm still waiting for the final copy) included observations e.g. it noted I did some rocking back and forth while on the call, which I hadn't even realised I was doing.

    It was split over two calls, totaling  about 4.5 to 5 hrs across both appointments. The structured nature of the questions made it a lot easier than talking to mental health people, who are usually very vague and generalised in their approach. It also seemed to be skewed towards facts and evidence, rather than observation based.

Children
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