Relying on A.i for help..?

Hello merseymale

You're very welcome to the Online Community.

Here is a link on our website that you might find helpful: Deciding whether to seek an autism assessment. This outlines why people might seek an autism assessment, what benefits it can have, and what support people are entitled to without having a diagnosis.

Please keep posting here, asking questions and interacting with other Online Community users. You will find that there are many people who have been through the same struggles and they can share what helped them. 

Kind regards

Sharon Mod

Have you done the screening tests? (ASD & ADHD)

They are free and questionnaires. It will give you a better idea. A low score can rule it out, a high score means it's likely.

Privately, I met two clinical psychologists, one who thought I was autistic after a few sessions, the other who specialised in autism was pretty sure after an hour discussion (the rest was just gathering evidence).

Qualified people can tell, but a formal diagnosis takes some time.

I have used chatGPT a lot (and Gemini, am less keen on Copilot, Claude may not be optimised for this, I haven't tried). But it can't and won't diagnose you.

What you can use it for is to chat to. Just write how you feel, what you think, what happened, etc. without asking many questions. It is just data. It will comment. It looks for patterns. It spot behaviours that are consistent with trauma, ASD,  etc. it's free and has helped me e to identify things. You can then Google some items to check, ask for sources,check with another AI, start another thread cold (if you haveve memory off, which Is better) and check it gives a similar answer.

It allowed me to make much faster progress.

Be careful about confirmation bias. Try to disprove things and challenge yourself and it.

Hi merseymale 

merseymale said:

I'm seriously considering moving to the United States where I might get better help/treatment…?

Autism isn't treated by itself. Some co-occurring conditions may be.  Help you should be able to find in the UK if that is where you are.

I suspect the US wont have a great service unless you pay large sums of money. In that case, both places will have it.

For the UK, you could try a Psychologist specialised in Neurodivergence before trying a big change like moving countries. If needed, they can they hand information to a GP in the form of a report.

For example Psychology Today using your postcode (or not) and looking for the ones focusing on Neurodivergence or searching for keywords like Autism / ADHD.

merseymale said:

My only resource and assessment is Claude, an A.i instance BUT is this adequate Compared to a knowledgeable human professional?

 compared to a knowledgeable human professional?

In my opinion, a professional is preferred to an LLM, and an LLM may be preferred to no help at all. An experienced professional --but ideally not too old-- will be more knowledgeable and if you do face-to-face appointments the professional also has first-hand behavioural data.