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Rant about assessment process for adults/women

belles12345

I am feeling rather upset by the assessment process that I am in the middle of.  I have been told (as mentioned on other posts- sorry if you have read them) that my symptoms present subtly, and that diagnostic tests often do not address this.  I don't feel happy getting any family involved and so this is not possible, which I have been told is making the process tricky.  

I went for a third assessment which involved the reading eyes test- I have already done this at least twice online anyway to see if I could read eyes, failed the first time and then got ok the second time.  I can only imagine I passed the official test.  The test irritates me- if only we got a choice of 4 options and 10 seconds to study the expression in real life situations, how much easier it would be.  So I can pass this test but in real life I generally don't have a clue.  

Then I was asked about different situations involving people saying things that are insulting or making faux-pas.  Again, in a test I can see these but in real life things are much more tricky and complicated.  Also it is possible to learn responses to such situations, and as an adult with much life experience I have actually experienced many first hand.

I also had the ADOS which actually was ok to do, don't know how that went.

So now I have to wait and see.  I have basically been told that my difficulties are due to autism but I may not pass the criteria due to subtle presentation... is it not possible for them to overide this?  It is so frustrating to find the reasons why I have so many problems in my daily life but risk being denied an offical diagnosis and possible assistance due to a lack of suitable diagnostic tools.

Parents

  • Did you tell them you did the eye test before?  If it's the same test of course you are going to get better, because you will remember some of the right answers.  Can you remember the results you got in previous tests?

    It's probably a bit late for you, but a book I find useful is 'I Think I Might Be Autistic' by Cynthia Kim.  It has a chapter outlining the DSM-5 criteria, with a long list of questions to get you to think of ways they might apply to you. Maybe there's time for you to go through it and send your assessor a letter if you think stuff has been missed?

    Fingers crossed, it sounds like they think you are autistic and are trying to get the evidence together for you.

    The assessment situation is very frustrating.  My doctor was finally able to referr me recently... sort of!  Apparently she recently went to a meeting where they said they were setting up an assessment service for adults. But so far she hasn't got an official referral form: I'm not sure the service has actually started yet.  Apparently before then there was no-where in the area she could referr me, and I'm in London!  Sounds like I might be pretty early in the queue, but who knows what it will be like and when it will actually be running.

Reply

  • Did you tell them you did the eye test before?  If it's the same test of course you are going to get better, because you will remember some of the right answers.  Can you remember the results you got in previous tests?

    It's probably a bit late for you, but a book I find useful is 'I Think I Might Be Autistic' by Cynthia Kim.  It has a chapter outlining the DSM-5 criteria, with a long list of questions to get you to think of ways they might apply to you. Maybe there's time for you to go through it and send your assessor a letter if you think stuff has been missed?

    Fingers crossed, it sounds like they think you are autistic and are trying to get the evidence together for you.

    The assessment situation is very frustrating.  My doctor was finally able to referr me recently... sort of!  Apparently she recently went to a meeting where they said they were setting up an assessment service for adults. But so far she hasn't got an official referral form: I'm not sure the service has actually started yet.  Apparently before then there was no-where in the area she could referr me, and I'm in London!  Sounds like I might be pretty early in the queue, but who knows what it will be like and when it will actually be running.

Children
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