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GP refused to refer me

Lou13

Struggling to navigate on how to get referred for an assesment on the NHS.. I have explained all my struggles to my GP which aren't new struggles these have been from a young child and I'm now 30! Things are becoming increasingly difficult. The GP got me to do a questionnaire and apparently I didn't score quite enough. This has baffled me how they can do one peice of paper and determine I shouldn't be referred. I struggled to answer alot of them and some questions didn't seem quite relevant to me for example one said have I got an intense interest? Which i don't have a particular intense interest although I seem to intensely obsess over many different things that end up consuming me but I don't have a particular interest as such as I obviously answered that one as a no. Is there anywhere to go from here? If the GP isn't wanting to refer me what can I do?

  • Unfortunately, some GPs have outdated ideas of what autism looks like, there are also differences between how males and females present and that isn't always considered. Of course, adults and children also present differently as adults have learnt to mask. I guess you have to consider that GPs have to know a small amount about everything and don't always specialise in the subject, however, if you can see another GP and get the referral, at least then you will be seeing specialists who know what they are looking for. The GP probably just looked at the numbers of the form rather than really read and discussed your answers.

    To use the special interest question as an example, if I had to answer quickly, I would probably say no, but if I look back on my life, I see I do have obsessions with finding out about things a lot more than some neurotypical people I know who take things at face value, so that could be a similar thing. The form is difficult, especially if you don't read between the lines on the questions, which is a autistic trait in itself.

  • I agree with Bunny re longer screening tests. Don't worry about going back. We saw 3 doctors at our practice before one agreed to refer my son.

  • Perhaps consider changing to a different GP. I took a questionnaire in from the company that do the right to choose, I believe it was a AQ10 and I’m sure the question you mentioned was on there. Maybe the answer to that question is a yes given there’s 2 ways of looking at it, I would say even if you have many interests that obsessing over them would be considered intense. I do understand that some of the questions are not specific enough and can cause confusion.

    Don’t give up, some GP’s don’t give a great deal of encouragement and just want to get you out of the door. It’s okay to disagree with their findings.

    Good luck

  • Hi and welcome to the community.

    It sounds like your GP might have asked you to complete the AQ-10 form, which is one of the screening tools that can be used in support of a referral for an autism assessment.

    You might find it helpful to complete the other form that can also be used for this purpose, the AQ-50. RAADS-R might also be considered helpful by your GP (although some recent research has thrown doubt on its clinical validity as a screening tool).

    You could use the website below for this. It includes some very useful commentary for each questionnaire (which might help with understanding them better), and enables them to be completed online, with scores calculated for you, before being saved as PDFs. If the results support your suspicions and you decide to ask your GP to reconsider, you can then also print them off to take with you.

    Embrace Autism - screening tests

    If you haven't yet done so, I'd also suggest reading through the resources in the NAS's diagnosis hub. They cover all stages of the process, with each section containing several articles relating to that stage:

    • Before diagnosis
    • Assessment and diagnosis 
    • After diagnosis 

    For example, they include:

    NAS - Signs that a child or adult may be autistic

    NAS - How to request an autism assessment