Adult assessment - still waiting after over a year, any signposts to affordable private testing?

Hi, I saw my doctor over a year ago and asked about ASD testing. I had  been in a relationship with someone with a diagnosis, who suggested that I might also be on the spectrum. After many years of struggles with anxiety, depression and ocd, and having great difficulty fitting in, often misreading social clues, having certain somewhat obsessional interests, and being really sensitive to environments, and feeling excluded, thought this might make sense. Did a screening test at the gp's on which I scored quite highly, but as it's taking so long would like to find out about testing privately. I'm keen on reliable and accurate testing - through my experiences with my daughter's struggles with camhs (she was diagnosed with ADD at one time) and their need to not diagnose anything - as this requires extra funding for extra support - I'm wary in case anything like this exists with adult testing. I just would like to know and trust the result. Any thoughts would be helpful, thank you.

Parents
  • Are you a man or woman? You don't have to tell me, it's just that some centres specialise in assessing women. Also, are you happy to travel? Do you have a limit that you will spend? How detailed do you want the report to be? Will you be looking for aftercare? Do you want the report/diagnosis to be put on your medical records?

    If you're clear on what you want, it might then be an idea to talk to NAS on their helpline, for suggestions/recommendations or at least, take it from there. For example, if you know you're not prepared to travel, then that narrows down your choices. If you don't require specialist female testing, that widens the search, etc etc and when you've got some possibilities, you can see if you can find any reviews or talk to them, have them answer any queries etc that you have, etc etc. It all depends on how thorough you want your search to be.

    Best of luck with it. How long is the wait now, on the NHS list? 18 months seems to be the average waiting times for NHS assessments. They should be able to give you a loose indication of how long it will be before you're offered the NHS assessment.

  • Thanks for the replies. Am male aged 60 living near Brighton Sussex. If a positive diagnosis would help with my understanding of own difficulties and might help with dwp stuff. Not sure I need aftercare but main thing is to trust whomever is doing the report. Can travel. First one I looked up was £2500, which is a lot? Any suggestions for places I can look up will be helpful as know little about where to look. Will try the helpline also. 

  • I think you get them cheaper than that. I think the help line might give you the best advice. And in terms of the diagnosis, it is certainly helping me to understand myself and carve out a happy life due to the added understanding. I needed help to understand and accept it though and I’m still learning.  

  • Yeah, I can relate to that :) 

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