PDA - not possible to receive a diagnosis

[everychildmatters]

I left primary teaching after 20 years last year and now work as EOTAS Tutor. Best job ever!

Just curious to ask regarding the above as I understand it is not possible (UK) for a child to be given a diagnosis of PDA:

PDA is not clinically recognised (it does not appear in the international medical manual, the ICD, nor in the American medical manual, the DSM), which means you cannot receive a standalone diagnosis of PDA (NAS).

Interested to hear thoughts/experiences surrounding this.

My daughter was diagnosed at 3 years old with autism and her profile of autism is pda. They don’t diagnose pda, autism is the diagnosis, pda is under the umbrella of autism. It would be so helpful if it was classed as a diagnosis because there just isn’t enough people trained in pda and us parents have to self teach everything to do with pda. Teaching yourself about autism is ok but there is a lot of autism training that doesn’t work with a pda child.

That’s right. It isn’t a diagnosis in its own right.

Some just have ASD in their diagnostic report. Some have ASD with a PDA profile in their diagnostic report. And some have demand avoidance, rather than PDA, included in their report - although some autistic individuals have demand avoidance traits without having a PDA profile.

The NAS have some good information on their site

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/demand-avoidance