Paying Privately for Adult Aspergers Assessment?

Hi, just to reply to the question about the NAS positon on this. Private diagnosis is covered briefly in our article about adults looking for a diagnosis. 

Our position is that adults may benefit from a private diagnosis, especially where this is something they want to obtain to understand challenges or difficulties they may face or to help explore concerns they may have had through life. 

However, beyond the financial implications, this is tempered for people who need to access important support services through social services and the NHS. The reality is that there isn't any guarantee that the NHS or social services would recognise a private diagnosis and for this reason we'd always encourage people to also explore diagnosis through the NHS. 

Without wanting to sound spammy we'd always encourage individuals facing problems with diagnosis to get in touch with our helpline, to see what help may be available to try and improve on what's often a difficult process for many people - 
http://www.autism.org.uk/helpline 

Obviously this discussion is focused on a number of different issues that it's interesting to see people exploring and sharing their opinions on - issues of ongoing relevance and importance to the autism community. With any ethical debate I think it's always important to be able to share personal opinions, which feels like what people are doing here. It may be a little further away from the original post but does highlight some of the views that people considering private diagnosis may face.

So, outside of causing offence, which I think as long as people understand this is a discussion of personal views, I don't think people need to worry excessively about this forum being dragged into ill-repute by an open and intelligent discussion.

However, always good to recognise everyone's views may impact on other people in different ways and try to be as open and clear as possible when expressing them.  

Hi, just to reply to the question about the NAS positon on this. Private diagnosis is covered briefly in our article about adults looking for a diagnosis. 

Our position is that adults may benefit from a private diagnosis, especially where this is something they want to obtain to understand challenges or difficulties they may face or to help explore concerns they may have had through life. 

However, beyond the financial implications, this is tempered for people who need to access important support services through social services and the NHS. The reality is that there isn't any guarantee that the NHS or social services would recognise a private diagnosis and for this reason we'd always encourage people to also explore diagnosis through the NHS. 

Without wanting to sound spammy we'd always encourage individuals facing problems with diagnosis to get in touch with our helpline, to see what help may be available to try and improve on what's often a difficult process for many people - 
http://www.autism.org.uk/helpline 

Obviously this discussion is focused on a number of different issues that it's interesting to see people exploring and sharing their opinions on - issues of ongoing relevance and importance to the autism community. With any ethical debate I think it's always important to be able to share personal opinions, which feels like what people are doing here. It may be a little further away from the original post but does highlight some of the views that people considering private diagnosis may face.

So, outside of causing offence, which I think as long as people understand this is a discussion of personal views, I don't think people need to worry excessively about this forum being dragged into ill-repute by an open and intelligent discussion.

However, always good to recognise everyone's views may impact on other people in different ways and try to be as open and clear as possible when expressing them.