Psychiatry uk assessment - why the focus on childhood?? Partway through and likely to get discharged because I’ve not enough evidence as a kid?

IrishInManchesterUK said:

I’m very suspicious of thier true intentions and I suspect malice, corruption and malpractice

It's perhaps unwise to make unfounded and potentially libellous accusations here. 

As I explained in my original reply in this thread, it's entirely normal for autism assessments to include a focus on childhood history.

I totally and utterly agree with this. I'm of the same stock and from Liverpool so saw it to a much lesser degree.

I just don't think that it has leaked through to Autism assessments. I really don't.

Coming from an Irish Catholic background in the 1970’s there was so much corruption and so many children were brutalised under the Irish system at the time by the Irish state 

Recording any personal experiences of childhood bullying that you personally remember is also vital, as well as the responses from the adults around you, including but not limited to your parents, it could be the neighbours, teachers, police Seargant, parish priest, shopkeepers etc - given my own personal childhood experiences, most of us lived through a lot of corruption in our childhoods but we never realised it at the time and it was only in later life that we finally realised that none of this was “normal” if adults at the time or later on said that you invited or attracted such bullying behaviour to yourself by your own behaviour and actions, I would also record these regardless of whether or not they are deemed by others to be correct 

I have to respectfully disagree with you. I see no ulterior motives for them looking into childhood years. On the whole, these are people just trying to help people and aren't working for The Man.

Like others have said, this isn't a trial. My parents were no longer around and I didn't think my sibling would be suitabley unbiased. My wife helped them, as well as my therapist at the time (she was supportive of me, though didn't know much about autism). If none of this is possible either then like others have said, your own recallections will suffice. Pick your brains for these. I'm still remembering these long after my assessment under the light of my diagnosis.

This sounds so convenient for them to only focus on childhood, so that they have an easy excuse to deliberately not help any further - because it was decades ago, official records would have been destroyed as there would have not been the same protections around data that we have today (although today they could still “accidentally” delete data by various means) - another thing was that in times past, people heavily used hidden, euphemistic language to talk about, discuss and describe many things, including about mental health issues, especially if they were out of kilter with the accepted social norms of that time and this included people like doctors where such euphemisms crept into official documents, obscuring the true meanings, making it virtually impossible to prove anything even in court - since Covid, when many of these historic cases resurfaced, I’m very suspicious of thier true intentions and I suspect malice, corruption and malpractice, especially as they are banking on the fact that your elderly parents have no memories of what happened so long ago - childhood issues may not have even been recorded if it had been considered “deemed” not sufficiently serious to record such issues - if there is any avenue on which you can reasonably assess yourself that you challenge it then I would do so and the simplest way to do this is that if there is any evidence from adulthood, it should be submitted 

Just had my assessment with Psychiatry UK last week. I found that it was an equal balance of adult and childhood. I had my partner who has known me since 13 complete the informant report as my parents aren't suitable for that kind of thing. When discussing childhood it was mostly around social interactions and experiences with other children, and any special interests and collections. I was unable to answer a lot of the questions on the form about early development milestones and that was completely fine. 

One of the requirements for an autism diagnosis is that there is some sign that problems were noticeable from early childhood. It does not need to be 'court of law' style evidence, something you remember yourself should be sufficient. For me, with both parents deceased when I had my assessment, it was remembering being told by my mother, and remembering some of my distress at the time, that I was selectively mute at school for 3 months when I started at four and a half. Also remembering that I would often spend breaktimes spinning round and round on my own in a corner of the playground. It does not need to be memories of earth-shattering events, things like: liking to hide away in wardrobes and cupboards as a small child, difficulties telling the time, not answering when strange adults asked you questions, tying shoelaces, anything a little odd will do, but the assessors need something.

Hello 95170,

So here's (potentially) the key question for a mite like you, at a point like this.......If you think you had started to understand yourself a bit better within the context of autism....but now that others have become involved, you are starting to doubt yourself (and that self-understanding).......so which outcome do you think is more/most likely to be correct?  Do you mask efficiently/ extremely efficiently?

I can't answer these questions for you.  All I can do, is perhaps, phrase a couple of relevant questions for you?

Desperation is the mother of invention and/or enlightenment.  The difference matters!!!

Stick around for a while?

I've been here for quite a while, and whilst there aren't many of the "cases" at the moment in the active forum, I have noted MANY, MANY here in the recent past who have either received a mis-diagnosis or non-diagnosis.....to subsequently be changed in their thinking or outcome at a later point.

We are a friendly bunch.

I wish you well - but most importantly, I wish you continued sanity and resolve.

Yours

Number.

Part of the categorization process. They want to know if you well behaved or a complete and utter... "toss her to the side of the road, she's a weirdo" ever hear that as a child? then maybe you are autistic. Autistic children get a lot of taunting. If you can remember, just recall all the times of being awkward and social faux pass, and how mistreated you were. That should do it. Me, I remember hella stuff from childhood. Excuse the obscure west coast slang. I'm hella biionic with the tism, ya smell me

i dunno im 34 and i can say alot about my childhood and remember it for how bad it was at school and how i was bullied by everyone and a outcast, how after school i pretty much self isolated and shut in for years which all match the autism criteria.

if you cant remember your childhood then perhaps thats a memory issue that may tick some criteria of something as alot of disorders do have memory issues.

Welcome to the community! I'm sorry to learn of your frustrating predicament - and have a suggestion below.

Firstly, just to clarify, assessors definitely take adulthood into account, but the guidelines for diagnosing autism do also refer to symptoms being present during childhood. 

• Under the DSM-V criteria (which Psychology UK used last year when assessing me): "Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life)." 
  
  
• Under the other major guidelines, ICD-11, essential / required criteria include: "The onset of the disorder occurs during the developmental period, typically in early childhood, but characteristic symptoms may not become fully manifest until later, when social demands exceed limited capacities."

I have similarly limited memories of my childhood. One thing that helped me enormously in preparing for my assessment was requesting a copy of my full medical records from my GP. After some initial miscommunication, they eventually provided me with photocopies of all of it, including everything from my old, archived paper records.

This helped in two ways. Firstly, it prompted various forgotten - and relevant - memories to resurface. Secondly, it provided hard, third-party evidence from various stages of my childhood. To share just one example: there was clear evidence of sensory sensitivities that had proved an issue during physical examinations.

It probably won't be possible to obtain your own records before your follow up appointment, so it might be worth asking Psychiatry UK to postpone if you think that getting and reviewing your own medical records might prove helpful for you.

Seems a bit mad to me, I'd be in the same position as you, with little or nothing to show of my childhood. They really should take adulthood into account and show more understanding about the difficulties of assembling information from decades ago. They're also assuming that memories from parents will be acurate and supportive.

Maybe this is something you could bring up with them and maybe an advocate can do it too, maybe someone from NAS or MIND?