I’m wondering what other people experiences were like.
I called a number of psychiatrists who specialized in ASD when I started to have questions, but none of them were focused on adult diagnosis or therapy. The first psychologist I saw didn’t think she was qualified to make a diagnosis in adults, and referred me to another who I had to pay out of pocket because he didn’t accept my insurance. It left a bad taste for me because it felt like there is a scarcity of resources available for adults.
I’m not surprised to see downvotes on the comments saying you don’t need a diagnosis, but I completely agree with them. I googled “neurodivergent therapist” and found a local practice that had an autistic Psychologist who focused on assessments. I reached out to schedule and she said “I guess you could get a diagnosis of high functioning ASD, but why do you want this”. I told her I was sure of my self diagnosis but wanted the validation. She said a therapist could do that without me paying thousands for the full assessment. She strongly discouraged me from the process. It was disappointing but after watching countless YouTube videos of people who had gotten their diagnoses, told family/friends, then revisited the subject months or years later, there was a resounding consensus that the diagnosis didn’t change anything. There are also drawbacks to an official diagnosis, especially when it comes to emigration and child custody. If you feel disabled by ASD and want to try to get benefits, it would probably be easier and cheaper to go to a regular therapist and get the alphabet soup of diagnoses that we tend to get from those not sufficiently trained in neurodiversity (bipolar, depression, anxiety, OCD, BPD, ODD, etc). I’ve started receiving helpful accommodations without saying I’m autistic by telling people, I have auditory processing issues, so I need to be somewhere quiet, or telling my boss I burnout really easily and needed to reduce my hours.
It felt like there is a scarcity of resources available for adults.
Thats because there is.
I was assessed by someone here in the twin cities area, if you’re in MN, DM me and I’ll give you more specifics.
I feel that, I am currently on a waiting list for an official diagnosis I managed to organise with the help of my current psychiatrist. For me, here in Germany, I searched for “adult autism diagnostic” on maps, and it gave me a clinic with a department a few kilometres away in a big city, with their waiting list being roughly a year long.
Resources for autistic adults are super scarce, considering how many undiagnosed people have gone undiscovered from lack of awareness in the past decades.
Spectrus Psychological Services near Dallas, TX (closer to Denton). They said they have clients come in from all over the country to get diagnostic testing done, though I lived in the area. Set an appointment, came in for seven and a half hours of testing, and got my autism diagnosis about a month later, easy peasy.
Where I live, adult diagnosis’ start in the thousands, never mind the constant therapy sessions afterwards that aren’t covered.
It’s too expensive to be officially diagnosed …
So you are forced to go to therapy sessions if you get an autism diagnosis?
It depends on how messed up you are. I definitely need them. Heh. Might not be so bad I’d you don’t. But the initial diagnosis is still nothing to sneeze at.
UCLA medical center when I was a kid.
Self diagnosed… Old enough that there is no known benefit to a professional diagnosis.
Yeah I didn’t find out until a close friend found out she was, and we had a lot of the same stuff in common. I started watching YouTube videos on it like “20 signs that you might be autistic” and I’d have 18 of them. When I started asking friends and family they were like “how did you figure it out?”.
The fact they already knew, and that in didn’t even know it ran in my family until I started asking was a mix of both relief and anger nobody said anything. I had been struggling my entire life needlesssly for a very long time.
I cannot think of any reason at this point to get a professional diagnosis, but I understand if someone else would want it.
I talked to my therapist, and she referred me to a doctor in her clinic who specializes in educational neuropsychology. I know I’m lucky to have been able to see someone so easily, and my diagnosis was pretty quick.
