Failed ASD assessment - need a second opinion

NAS18906 said:

Hi rk1103,

Welcome to the forum. You have come to a good place - I suspect that you may well benefit from a diagnosis. You may well have enough autistic traits to give you a significant problem that needs to be addressed.

You have some strong views about a couple of things that may arise from the way your mind works. We suffer from "rigid" thinking and you need to be aware of this before sticking to a particular course that you have decided upon. We are not good listeners and I hope that you can listen to the thoughts i am going to challenge you with!

You are on meds and are refusing psychological intervention. This is in direct opposition to the current thinking on how you deal with autism. Psychological interventions can often fail and you have not benefited from these. Psychological interventions that take account of autism, and that are undertaken by a willing and engaged patient, are much more likely to succeed. Please open yourself to the possibility that a psychological intervention might be a good way forward.

You believe that a diagnosis will help you get a job. I wish this were true but I do not believe that this is the case. I have a diagnosis but have still got great difficulty in getting a new job. I have worked in IT for many years and have considerable experience of the problems that an autistic person can have in that career and also have experience of the almost total ignorance of autism in all of the firms I have worked in. I have tried declaring my autism to prospective employers (even ones that declare a positive benefit to disclosure) and have had no success with this. I have tried not-declaring and also have struggled. The key is to work out how to be good at interviews and to really understand what employers want. They do want people like us who can engage with the gritty detail of some jobs, they do want people who think differently, they do want people like us but we have to be able to sell the benfits without highlighting the difficulties. IT is a good career for people with autism but there are almost no employers who really understand autism and even fewer who are on the lookout for people like us.

Finally, a scond opinion can be obtained - have a look at the threads returned by this search community.autism.org.uk/.../"second opinion" and you will find a lot of examples of what to do and how people have engaged with the system - try to engage with the system rather than fighting the system! The benefit of a diagnosis is to get the right intervention - I really don't thionk that the protection of the equality act is worth a great deal for many people with autism.

Hi recombinantsocks,

Thanks for the suggestions. Psychological intervention helps if it deals with the problem in question ...... the problem I have is that because of my failed diagnosis, I will not be treated as an aspergers case so their approach to my problem will be different. I have had countless therapy sessions since the age of 15 or so (Im am 30 now) .....a lot of them speciifc to OCD as it has been a serious problem from the age of 8 when I was too young to understand what it was . Now I am better at dealing with that speciifc problem through experience rather than therapy. Social anxiety has been a problem all my life and so has depression but I have found meds help the latter to some extent (I have had severe reactions to meds in the past for which I couldn't take them). 

There are a lot of companies (a lot in the IT sector) which are autistic friendly - some of which give a guaranteed interview ...a believe autism is classified as a disability. Some companies also only hire candidates who have had a positive autism diagnosis. My background is in scientific research and have a keen interest in programming and anything with patterns/ number crunching etc - although I hate pulbic speaking and dealing with customers/clients or even speakig on the phone with people. In fact, people speaking in an open office environment would make me feel uncomfortable (I am more than happy to be locked up in a small side office and do work). Basically, what I am saying is that a positive diagnosis gives me the option of disclosing it if I think it would help ( a lot of it depends on the person employing you of course). At the moment, I do not have that option. I do not want to be 'labelled' as someone with autism but a positive diagnosis would give me a sense of relief and something else to fall back on. 

I didn't understand your last point - surely to get the appropriate treatment and support, I would need to have a positive diagnosis ?  The psychologist and GPs have now referred me back to the same type of treatment focussing on the problems that I have had addressed previosuly but have failed. It seems they have an unconsciouis bias with regards to th people they assess - i..e if they do not see the classic viusal autistic signs like shaking back and forth then one does not qualify even though one can score highly (overall) on all the tests. I just  got classified as someone who has a 'social anxiety' problem and not apsergers but isn't social anxiety a symptom of aspergers ? This is the problem with subjective assessmenets as its too dependent on the assessor - I am suprised there is no quantitative approach available through scanning ones brain for example. 

NAS18906 said:

Hi rk1103,

Welcome to the forum. You have come to a good place - I suspect that you may well benefit from a diagnosis. You may well have enough autistic traits to give you a significant problem that needs to be addressed.

You have some strong views about a couple of things that may arise from the way your mind works. We suffer from "rigid" thinking and you need to be aware of this before sticking to a particular course that you have decided upon. We are not good listeners and I hope that you can listen to the thoughts i am going to challenge you with!

You are on meds and are refusing psychological intervention. This is in direct opposition to the current thinking on how you deal with autism. Psychological interventions can often fail and you have not benefited from these. Psychological interventions that take account of autism, and that are undertaken by a willing and engaged patient, are much more likely to succeed. Please open yourself to the possibility that a psychological intervention might be a good way forward.

You believe that a diagnosis will help you get a job. I wish this were true but I do not believe that this is the case. I have a diagnosis but have still got great difficulty in getting a new job. I have worked in IT for many years and have considerable experience of the problems that an autistic person can have in that career and also have experience of the almost total ignorance of autism in all of the firms I have worked in. I have tried declaring my autism to prospective employers (even ones that declare a positive benefit to disclosure) and have had no success with this. I have tried not-declaring and also have struggled. The key is to work out how to be good at interviews and to really understand what employers want. They do want people like us who can engage with the gritty detail of some jobs, they do want people who think differently, they do want people like us but we have to be able to sell the benfits without highlighting the difficulties. IT is a good career for people with autism but there are almost no employers who really understand autism and even fewer who are on the lookout for people like us.

Finally, a scond opinion can be obtained - have a look at the threads returned by this search community.autism.org.uk/.../"second opinion" and you will find a lot of examples of what to do and how people have engaged with the system - try to engage with the system rather than fighting the system! The benefit of a diagnosis is to get the right intervention - I really don't thionk that the protection of the equality act is worth a great deal for many people with autism.

Hi recombinantsocks,

Thanks for the suggestions. Psychological intervention helps if it deals with the problem in question ...... the problem I have is that because of my failed diagnosis, I will not be treated as an aspergers case so their approach to my problem will be different. I have had countless therapy sessions since the age of 15 or so (Im am 30 now) .....a lot of them speciifc to OCD as it has been a serious problem from the age of 8 when I was too young to understand what it was . Now I am better at dealing with that speciifc problem through experience rather than therapy. Social anxiety has been a problem all my life and so has depression but I have found meds help the latter to some extent (I have had severe reactions to meds in the past for which I couldn't take them). 

There are a lot of companies (a lot in the IT sector) which are autistic friendly - some of which give a guaranteed interview ...a believe autism is classified as a disability. Some companies also only hire candidates who have had a positive autism diagnosis. My background is in scientific research and have a keen interest in programming and anything with patterns/ number crunching etc - although I hate pulbic speaking and dealing with customers/clients or even speakig on the phone with people. In fact, people speaking in an open office environment would make me feel uncomfortable (I am more than happy to be locked up in a small side office and do work). Basically, what I am saying is that a positive diagnosis gives me the option of disclosing it if I think it would help ( a lot of it depends on the person employing you of course). At the moment, I do not have that option. I do not want to be 'labelled' as someone with autism but a positive diagnosis would give me a sense of relief and something else to fall back on. 

I didn't understand your last point - surely to get the appropriate treatment and support, I would need to have a positive diagnosis ?  The psychologist and GPs have now referred me back to the same type of treatment focussing on the problems that I have had addressed previosuly but have failed. It seems they have an unconsciouis bias with regards to th people they assess - i..e if they do not see the classic viusal autistic signs like shaking back and forth then one does not qualify even though one can score highly (overall) on all the tests. I just  got classified as someone who has a 'social anxiety' problem and not apsergers but isn't social anxiety a symptom of aspergers ? This is the problem with subjective assessmenets as its too dependent on the assessor - I am suprised there is no quantitative approach available through scanning ones brain for example.