WhoTo Turn To For Diagnosis

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Hello All-

I am brand new here but looking for some help. I have a 7 year old son who has been a very difficult child to raise. After talking withhis teacher at his conference a few weeks ago it has become more apparent that he displays many signs of aspergers. I amnot sure one way or the other but know that he is unhappy right now and struggles with social interactions and life in general.

My wife and I would like to have him diagnosed but don't really know where or whom to turn to. His pediatrician when asked said she does not do that and he would need to see a pscyologist. The school said to see his pediatrician that they can not make a medical assessment at school and did not have any one qualified either. He does not have a conselor or psycologist that he is working with right although we have been talking about and looking for one.

Who should we go to, and have the diagnosis done through? Does insurance pay for this or is it out of pocket?

Thanks so much in advance for you help. We are pretty desperate and at whit's end right now.

Chris

You want to find someone who is trained to perform the ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule). Not just any child psychologist will do. Look for someone certified as either a "developmental" psychologist or developmental pediatrician. If there is a children's hospital or teaching hospital in your area, they often have groups that specialize in diagnosis and treatment of autism. Or contact your nearest autism support group and ask who to go to for a diagnosis.

Some people just rely on the school psychologist to determine the child qualifies for help based on "autism-like characteristics". Whether this is a good idea varies a great deal on whether you are in a district that is very supportive and proactive or not.

Our insurance covered the testing, although we had to go to someone out of network and pay 60%. I think it was about $750 out of pocket, but would've been about $1800 without insurance. What I did was ask what billing code would be used for the testing, then I called my insurance to find out if that billing code was covered.

In CA, having a diagnosis is helpful, because insurance is then required to pay for speech and OT, and soon for ABA.

ichibanda, it would be helpful to know where in the world you are: first, are you in the US? Are you near a major metropolitan area, or are you rural?

In the US, public schools do in point of fact diagnose children on the spectrum and provide services, and this is free of charge - the problem is that public schools are generalists, not specialists, so they may "miss" kids who are higher-functioning. Even if your child is in private school, you can request special services from the public school system.

After no less than 4 separate diagnoses including the school's, all of which pointed to one of the acronyms (ADHD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS) but none of which offered us information on what specific deficits my son needed help with, we went to a multi-disciplinary program run by a local hospital led by a developmental pediatrician and a pediatric neurologist. We found this program by doing a search of "pediatric neurologist" and "developmental pediatrician" on our insurance plan: insurances tend to be very conservative, and thus the doctors they pay most for tend to offer proven therapies and tests.

They did an ADOS, which took several months to schedule and 4 hours to complete - but we got more information from the consultation after that test than we'd had in 10 years of parenting our child and seeking help. They suggested that my hyperverbal child might have a deficit in pragmatic speech, something that NOBODY had figured out up to that point, and scheduled a test for that.

What I liked about this program was that they offered a variety of different perspectives and interventions all in one place: Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Psychiatry, Neurology, Psychology, Social skills classes, etc. If there was a particular concern, they had a specialist who knew how to work with kids on the spectrum that dealt with that. We've since moved on from there, as DS needed focus on social skills and we found a nearby service organization that offers it - but I will be forever grateful to this program for finally pointing us in the right direction.

Momsparky is absolutely right. If you are in the U.S., the school district is legally obligated to provide you with a free diagnosis. (The teacher may not know this, and it can be hard to squeeze services--even a diagnostic test--out of a school district with budget issues.)

http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... ptoms.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... of_Son.php

Above, you can see a discussion of autism symptoms from my free website.
You can also see a copy of my older son's records, including both school and medical records. (Personally, I go to the page with Google Chrome. Then I click on the first document in the bottom slideshow to enlarge. Then I click on the YouTube video of the records in order to get sound to go with the records. I don't read the records in the YouTube video word for word (which is of poor visual quality due to my own error), just point out a few of the highlights.

The school didn't want to do a full assessment on my son, and I had to call the school district central office, tell them I was a lawyer, tell them that I was unhappy with the lack of help that I'd gotten at the school, and demand justice.

The first person who actually diagnosed by son was his pediatric neurologist. I decided to see a child psychiatrist for a second opinion, who also provided a diagnosis. Prior to all of this, he'd been diagnosed with severe receptive and expressive speech disorder by a speech pathologist. My son's pediatrician is the one who sent me to the pediatric neurologist. I just researched on the net and did a whole lot of phone calls to come up with the child psychiatrist.

It took months to get an initial appointment with the pediatric neurologist, who was on my child's insurance plan. I got a quick appointment with the pediatric psychiatrist because he doesn't take insurance. I was fine with paying $ 300 for an initial appointment without having to wait for months. (Here, in Austin, there are not enough psychiatrists who take insurance. You often have to wait months for an initial appointment, and whomever you get may not be highly qualified.)

Anyway, you might also want to check out the following links:

http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... _Tips.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.com/Therapy.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... Links.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... uides.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... roups.html
http://www.freevideosforautistickids.com/Site_Map.html