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Parent reports in adult assessment

arcade58

A topic I have not been able to find much about. Can someone paint a picture in what way parents/relatives etc are involved in adult assessments? How much does a diagnosis rely on their reports?

  • My mother was involved in my assessment for Asperger syndrome, but to my surprise she could not remember very much detail about my childhood.  I remembered a great deal more by way of annecdotes that she and my father told me about myself as a young child.  My mother is 70 years old and she had six other children competing for her attention that were more trouble than I was, so I went unnoticed a lot as a child.

    I suspect that getting the perspective of someone who knew you as a child is as much a means of ruling out other conditions as it is a means of finding symptoms of Asperger syndrome. 

  • yes, that helps. i might have some difficulties in this area should i choose to go for an assessment, as my parents do not live in the UK, nor speak english. thats why i am worried. i dont know how far this can be bridged with translations or whether my parents have to see the psychologist face to face.

     that why i am asking how much they would be involved

  • When I was diagnosed I was told by the psychiatrist that he could only give a differential diagnosis as I had no living family members/teachers etc to provide supporting information about what I was like as a kid (although I did have some old school reports that decribed me as scatty, away with the fairies, argumentative and 'not an integrated member of the class'.) My partner attended my second appointment with this psych just to give his version of what I'm like to live with (which made for some uncomfortable listening!) but which I guess was helpful in enabling the psych to build a fuller picture.

    When I googled 'differential diagnosis' I found that this just meant that it was the 'most likely' diagnosis to explain my condition rather than being a definitive diagnosis obtained through set tests. It doesn't seem to have made any difference in the grand scheme of things - I still have a dx of aspergers that gets me some extra help at college etc.

    Hope this helps

  • It's because the symptoms of Autism can be symptoms of other disorders, and the key differentiator is whether one has had symptoms from early childhood or not.