British? Undiagnosed/awaiting diagnosis? Please respond!

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I am in much your position and han help tell you how i got a referral for testing. I'm still being assessed, so i can help British people with how to approach their Doctor and hopefully get results. (I have NO idea how nonbritish medical systems work.)

I can also tell ANYONE from ANYWHERE what my psychiatrist appointments are like, if that will help. Similar;y, if anyone from anywhere is approaching or mid-diagnosis, I;ll be happy to talk to you if you have questions or just need to offload to.

Feel free to PM me.I want to help if I can.

Julie

My doctor refered me to the local Mental Health Team for a diagnosis and they turned me down saying that i didn't fulfill their assessment crieteria. My doctor seemed quiet supportive of me though but i don't think he knows anything much about AS. Any suggestions??? I have no money to go private.

The only advice I can give in this situation, is ask your doctor if there is anywhere else he can refer you to. You say he is supportative, so he might be able to do this.

I've been vetry lucky-I spoke to my doctor afyter sending him a letter on 13 june, and got a referral date for 13 July. i now have a further meeting on 10th of august.

Does your doctor know any NHS Learning Disabilities psychiatrist specialists, as that's who I've been referred to in my area?

What are the Mental Health team's criteria for assessment? If you can find that out, and it's on the symptoms of AS perhasps you and your doctor can work together to write an explanation of how you DO fit the criteria, and send it to them. It's worth a second try. the worst they can do is refuse again (although that is bad enough! Idiots!)

Did they tell you HOW you don't fulfuil the criteria? If not, perjhaos ypu or your doctor could write and ask, and you can (hopefyully) prove them wrong. What jerks they are for assuming they know you without even seeing you!

i hope this helps. If there is any other way I can help, please let me know. For example, I wrote a 3-page logically set out document for my Doctor, explaining why I wanted to be tested, and showing how some of my problems fitted the "triad of iompairments. I didn't get on with him, was scared he'd still reject my request but he called me in and told me her was "very impressed" with the research I had done and the way I had set out my arguments. If you think a copy of thios would help, as a template for you to set out your own case, I can Email you a copy.

Julie

Thanks

How aspies our we!! !

I wrote out a 6 page list of things that felt i did that could be contributed to AS, like my social problems, my obsessions, stimming etc. I gave this to my doctor who forwarded it with my referal, i think!
I suspect the Mental Health team didn't want to assess me because the percieve me as having no actual signifacent problems and they'd rather i went private and saved them some money. Also they said something about not currently having an AS disagonsis template. I should push it I suppose. It's just hard, who knows i might not even fit a diagonosis, i can't remember much about my childhood and i can't ask my mother, she's very like me and will have a hard time working out if i acted unusually or not (my family is very eccentric). I was very quiet at school and stuff, so i don't think that teachers would have noticed. And maybe my As is mild.
But i'm sure there's something wrong with me...i am very different all my siblings and they were brought up by my eccentric parents!!
Thanks for all you suggestions and offers of help. Its very nice to have someone from the uk to talk about this stuff.

If i were you, i would push. If they use the "no template" argument again, then tell them to refer you on to a team who have! Tell them that someone you know in London is having no problems with gettuing a referral, so what's their problem? Keep trying, keep pestering them about it-they might end up assessing you just to shut them up!

If they still refuse, threaten to lodge a complaint. If your doctor thinks there's a valid reason to send you for testing, you should NOT be fobbed off like this. You have rights-remind them of that-and threaten to take the complaint as high as it needs to go. That might also scare them into acting. They have not given you any valid reason to deny you the peace of mind you may gain from knowing if the problems you have had are attributable to AS. I'd say it should be in their intests to test you-my social problems caused me to get depressed and threatened mny mental health.

Try contacting the National Autistic Society, too. they might be able to tell you where to complain or another way to get referred. They sent me a list of 3 specialist centres, but you do need a consultant (not a GP) to refer you at one of them (I don't know about the other two.) Maybe you could say to the mental health people that if they won't test you due to this "no template" sh*t, to send you to this place. They would then apply for PCT funding. (I think that's the name).

Hope this is a help.

Julie

The question that comes to my mind is, why bother getting a diagnosis? If you are sufficiently self aware to have made your way to this website, then that should mean you are in a position to address your life and why bother getting some doctor to tell you what you already know.

I am choosing to be diagnosed so that I KNOW, not just suspect. Also, some of my relatives wouldn't trust a self-diagnosis, and some employers, if you need certain aid, may not offer help if you're self-diagnosed.There are also services available to aspies that can only be accessed if you have a firm diagnosis.

For me it is,

1) Knowing for sure that As is why I am how I am.
2)Having access to certain services if neccessary

It is up to each individual to try for a diagnosis if they wish, or to not. Everyone is different. Everybody's reasons are different.

Julie

Hello there

I am in South East London and currently diagnosed with "obscure auditory dysfunction", which is another way of saying "auditory processing disorder (APD)".

I have some autistic traits, though I don't think I fulfil the criteria for AS. I also have some mild dyspraxic traits.

I want to go for a full neurological run down as I want to know which of my difficulites are related to my APD and which aren't.

I've been unemployed for four years, and hopefully am going back into work this September, so could really do with a diagnosis so any necessary adaptations to my working environment can be made. I really don't want to leave another job because I've melted down again.

Robin

I would push harder for a DX if i thought there actually were any specialist services or help available for adults.

I got a six week course of counselling via Occupational Health at work. It didn't require a diagnosis and I found it very good.

All I got from my last visit to a psychologist was 'you have to get out more'.

Sounds like your psychologist needs a slap and a bit of educationn re: Asperger's.

Julie

I was at university in Glasgow when I decided to see about it, so I went via the university's health facilities, who took it pretty seriously and did a couple of interviews before referring me to an NHS facility at a place called Carswell House. This actually took a few months to get round to. From there, I did another interview - pretty much the same - then started on a series of tests involving assesing my responses to various tasks, and the result of that has given me a tentative result that my responses were consistent with someone with AS.

I've been seeing an NHS counsellor for therapy for OCD, but she referred me to a psychologist at the hospital for an assessment about the other difficulties I explained I had. I told both the counsellor and the psychologist that I very strongly suspect I have some degree of autism or AS, and the psychologist said it was 'possible', but told me there's nobody in the Lincolnshire NHS who's qualified to diagnose me. I ended up calling the national autism helpline, who've given me the name of a doctor at Leicester hospital who specializes in adult autism, so I want to try and get my GP to make a referral.

I went to my GP at my university. They said I can be put on the waiting list for one/two years or go private via the NAS.

AS is the only thing that describes me well. So I decided to learn as much as I could about it. I developed coping strategies and have started to meet other atypical people. At school all the atypicals ended up together as social outcasts. Its just that now I needed the help of books to find others like me, and it's working. I can spot the stims and other traits, I can now find people that I can put up with.

I've decided that I don't need a diagnosis. I'm managing to stumble through life ok enough.

One thing I am interested in know is: How different is it being diagnosed? Apart from being able to tell people that you have an ASD, would it be any different from me having read all the Autism/AS books in a university library and having picked up a few coping strategies?

neilgr makes a very valid point - why is diagnosis so important?
I found I have AS after I had spent my life trying to swim uphill. It was not until my son went through diagnosis for autism that I began to realise the explanation for a lot of the crap I had been through was now staring me in the face.
Tony Attwood's book on Aspergers was a revelation - after reading it I knew where the root of all my problems lay. Formal diagnosis is not important - it will not tell me anything I don't already know, nor will it unlock any magic doors which will benefit me now.