Adult ASD assessment procedure.

[tellmesomethingtrue]

Has anyone gone through an adult neurodiversity assessment process without an ‘informant’? I genuinely haven’t got anyone who knows me from my childhood that can do the second ‘interview’ with me.

I’ve had a sister be an informant as their parents were deceased. You’d be surprised how much they can remember (when they’re asked the right questions), plus it’s not just about childhood, it’s about now so if you’re sister is happy to do it then I’d recommend she be part of it.

I hope you get the outcome you want. My mum has actually gradually come to accept my diagnosis; she even asked some quite polite questions about it and didn't immediately dismiss it and just pretend I'd never mentioned it (unlike that fact I don't eat meat, which she still hasn't fully accepted).
She is very into 1950s dancing & fashion, and dresses pretty much exclusively in vintage and replicas from vintage patterns. She wouldn't be seen dead in a pair of trainers.
I don't think she has any cutlery preferences whereas I am still using the cutlery from my grandparents house, but only the small forks and teaspoons

I wasn't required to have someone who knew me in childhood. My parents & sibling don't know about my diagnosis. My DH of 20 years was asked to complete some questions about me - arguably he knows me far better than my family anyway.

I’ve had the first part of the assessment. I hated every second of it. The assessor was very relaxed. He kept wanting to know what was doing with my hands whilst we were talking which was annoying.
I had to describe how feelings felt. He spend ages on this. I’d like to know the difference between how a NT person describes happiness compared to a ND person. It was really hard and I didn’t know if I was getting it right. I said it’s like a nice warm feeling in my tummy that rises upwards. How would other people describe happiness?
What if I’m autistic but I have learnt how to speak in a neurotypical way?
He asked what I do that no one else does. I could have said loads of stuff but ended up saying something really dumb - I zoom in on maps so I know where to park. My god of all the things I could have said and I don’t know why that popped into my head.
The story telling was stupidly and embarrassing. I felt like a stupid kid and didn’t feel like I represented the real me.

I got an ASD and an ADHD diagnosis and I didn’t have an informant that knew me since childhood. My DH did it instead but he has only known me since my 20s. I still got the diagnosis, because I could demonstrate I met the criteria and I answered my childhood questions myself (I have an unusual memory and can remember vividly from when I was a toddler, common in ASD apparently).

Special interests aren’t just hobbies as such, they are topics or things that are all consuming and you know everything about. I’ve had to take time off work before when I literally didn’t sleep for 2 days researching and watching videos about something that was happening with mine. It is normal to read a few books a week or know the characters and actors in tv series. It’s not normal to know everything about all the flags of the world for example, talk about it at every opportunity and get ‘lost’ in the research so you miss multiple nights of sleep (not my special interest but an example).

Please don’t worry. They aren’t asking trick questions needing trick answers. They are getting a feel for how you approach things, what’s easy, what’s hard.

Your discomfort with the process is probably useful information for them.
You aren’t auditioning. You aren’t performing. You’re just working together to find out how something works.

They didn’t ask me how I was feeling about the process or assessment

@tellmesomethingtruewell done for completing the first part of the assessment. I’ve carried out adult ASD assessments and they can be difficult (a bit like a therapy session). There will be a range of questions asked that explore different parts of the diagnostic criteria so those questions were very typical. There’s no right or wrong answers so try not to worry. How long do you have to wait for the outcome? When we do them we make sure we have all the information before the client interview so that we can give the outcome on the same day.

He also said that I wasn’t giving eye contact. Erm, it’s a screen.

Next assessment meeting in a week then I’ll have to wait for the report. Thanks for replying all

How can you possibly tell what someone is like through a screen for an hour? He doesn’t know me at all and didn’t ask me questions so I could tell him everything I’d hoped to say

Should I have told them I have AHDH?

I didn't need to directly get anyone else to speak to them, I just relayed what I had heard or got the impression of from husband, family etc.

I mean ADHD!!

I went on my own to the assessment. I put a lot of effort into putting lots of detailed memories into the pre-assessment questionnaires. Luckily, I can remember pretty well everything from the age of 4 onwards and some things even before that. My assessors told me I had made their job very easy by giving them so much detail.

When I had mine the assessor later told me she was able to tell I was autistic within the first 30 seconds so I think they are looking for things that we are not aware of that we do or say. It is a very unsettling process and I would recommend you don't read the resulting report because it is very deficit based and upsetting to read about yourself in that way. I would just take the diagnosis and then do whatever you need to do with it but just file the report away.

We always think we behave in very normal ways but we do in fact behave very different ways to neurotypicals and that is all they are looking for when they are talking to you but because the assessment process was originally designed for children it is utterly excruciating to go through.

I did mine online during covid and had similar concerns to you about how could they tell through a screen but they really can.

Apparently one of my biggest tells was that she mentioned her holiday and I didn't ask her anything about it. For me it was an annoyance because I felt we were on a professional call with a professional purpose and she was distracting from it by talking about her holiday which I felt was very unprofessional but apparently a neurotypical person would have asked her about her holiday.

I had that with the holiday thing. She mentioned her holiday and I didn’t understand the relevance so ignored it as I didn’t know what to say. Then when we were talking about my special interest, which was the only time I really got into the conversation, she mentioned one of her holidays that was connected with that and I talked about it with her for ages. That was mentioned in my report.

We only carry out face to face assessments. But honestly if someone is autistic I can usually tell within the first 10 minutes. I’ve been carrying out these assessments for 15 years.

Yes you should have told him you have AdHD. It’s really important and could negate your assessment. One of the criteria is that your presentation cannot be explained by anything else- mental health, learning difficulties, trauma and other neurodevelopmental disorders. I would email them and let them know. Equally I would ask for a copy of the AdHD report. It can be used as additional evidence.

whilst I said it was like therapy, it’s not a therapy session so there isn’t often time for you to say everything you want to say. The clinician is looking to see if they have enough evidence to meet the diagnostic criteria. I use a certain interview schedule but if I feel I have enough information already I won’t ask some of the questions as it won’t necessarily add anything.

I’m neurotypical, as far as I know, and I’d have also ignored the holiday comment. Why would we discuss their holiday on a medical call? I find that to be an odd marker of whether or not someone is autistic.

It’s not as a stand alone point though, it’s in conjunction with lots of other things that add up.

Do you still have your school reports? If you do, they might have comments in, that with the benefit of hindsight might or might not describe features of autism?

@Nosleepforthismumit’s not typical though to not a acknowledge a comment made by someone. If someone said, ‘ I went on holiday to Spain in April with my husband and we it was so hot’, and the other person said ‘sounds lovely, I went on holiday in April too’. You would sort of expect the other person to say ‘oh where did you go’. Not ignore it. Even a smile, that’s nice etc. it’s not really a medical call, it’s more like a conversation