Official diagnosis for severe anxiety

[Helpmegod]

Ds (8 yrs) has HFA and suffers from severe anxiety . He wants to control just about everything in school and can have big meltdowns over things that happened ages ago ( thanks to his memory ) . If things have agitated him then he can also wake up in the middle of the night and start crying / shouting out .
The school always undermine his problem and take it very lightly and think I am a hyper mom trying to overuse anxiety .
Is there an official diagnosis of severe anxiety and if so how do I go about getting it ? Also , will it help me in the annual review where I am pushing for him to have 2 afternoon off from school to do some 1 to 1 work at home? Thanks

We do not have a formal diagnosis of anxiety BUT it is clearly written in Part 2 of ds2's statement that he has huge school related anxiety and his first objective is "To feel safe in his environment at school". So if you don't already have something like this you could try to get the statement amended to include. We are trying for a change of placement because school admits that they have exhausted their options to reduce the anxiety.

My DS has dxes of "anxiety leading to rigid obsessive behaviour" (given before his ASD dx) and "high anxiety" (given alongside his ASD dx). I am never sure whether they "count" as a proper dx, iyswim, as they seem just to re-state the symptom rather than give an explanation for it. At one point, when we thought he would not get a dx of ASD, the possibility of a GAD dx was discussed - however I get the impression an anxiety disorder would only be dxed in the absence of another diagnostic explanation for the anxiety - which ASD is seen to be.

Sorry that's a bit rambling and I'm not sure how helpful it is!

My ds has a primary diagnosis of aspergers, and was also diagnosed with severe anxiety. I find it useful to be able to tell people that. It doesn't affect him so much now, because we are better at helping him to deal with the reality of his autism. But it's very useful to be able to say to people that a consequence of him not being in a supportive environment, is that there is a strong possibility the anxiety will be triggered.

We saw Daphne Keen, who diagnosed him privately.

Sounds like the school don't understand HFA. As Polter says, it is part of the condition.

And you can have a diagnosis for severe anxiety: my son has that, alongside Tourettes and OCD.