Being assessed for autism age 36 - what can I expect?

[TheBerry]

I’m having an NHS assessment for autism next month. I’m 36. I actually want to be diagnosed with autism because it would be a relief to have a name for what has been wrong with me my whole life.

I’m worried I’ll panic and misrepresent myself. Can anybody tell me what to expect?

They will also interview my mother as somebody who has known me since early years. I’m worried about that, too, because I’m not sure how well she actually knows/understands me. Also, she is getting assessed soon for autism herself aged 75!

They don't have a huge amount of time to interview you relative to all the experiences from your entire life (especially as you may feel that you want to explain each of these in detail...), so they will 'just' ask you why you think you are autistic and then listen to your answers, adding supplementary questions/redirecting you as they require to check they have covered all the main areas for the diagnosis in your replies.

You are likely to need to fill in some quizzes and possibly a brief medical history (to indicate differential diagnoses or frequent comorbidities) in advance - do not be concerned if you end up feeling as if some of the quiz answers require extra annotation due to lack of clarity in the questions!

Due to said panic about misrepresenting oneself, anecdotally, having felt or succumbed to the urge to create a giant emotional support folder of systematically indexed supporting evidence in advance of the interview does seem to correlate fairly strongly with eventual diagnosis! (not because the diagnostician takes it as a shortcut but because a) concern about being misunderstood and b) the fond conviction that more data will help this are both quite usual with autism!)

PS: Do not worry too much about your mother's answers, especially if your concern is that they might be of the "she was always perfectly normal, exactly like me/everyone else in our family" type.

PPS: Disappointingly the adult process doesn't seem to involve plastic dinosaurs - my son was asked to continue a story in which a model brachiosaurus chased a model police officer to try and eat them, inevitably leading to a corrective lecture on the dietary preferences and relative timeframes of said dinosaur/officer.

It’s usually a two hour form filling exercise, unless it’s so obvious you have autism (like me) where they can diagnose you and quickly.

@BestZebbiethat makes me laugh. My daughter is being assessed - I spent 6 hours filling out one free text form and still worried it wasn’t enough detail. I also spent about the same amount of time going through the school app to analyse behaviour points by type / lesson to support my argument to the school she wasn’t just naughty…..someone suggested I may also be ND.

I have adhd so I’d probably forget to turn up.