Traumatising experience of the diagnostic assessment

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This is just getting worse and worse. You were treated as a training opportunity? Whose needs were being served here? Did they seek your permission? This is appalling, especially for a person who may be on the spectrum.

Glad to hear your complaint has been lodged -hopefully they'll give you another, more suitable, assessment swiftly.

I think it's fairly common for trainees to be invited to at least some interviews (not sure about full diagnostic procedures) but I definitely sympathise with the experience - when I moved areas, I was given an appointment with a psychiatrist, a social worker and a medical student. Like you, they did give me the option - but I was just about to walk into the room and they were already seated with notepads out.

I found it very intimidating. My first appointment at CAMHS was done with a trainee too, but it was organised much more discretely and wasn't intimidating at all.

Hey, so I thought I should update this as I just received a call from one of the psychologists that saw me that day. (She was second observer so we didn't actually interact but her role is also that of services manager too so her duty is to tend to the complaint.) She was nice and said she agreed with some of the points in the complaint and they will definitely not be subjecting future 'clients' to so many people (six were involved in my assessment) and will look at the use of child-like props. She listened to what I had to say and was keen for me to come and see her and discuss feedback. She thinks I meet the threshold for a diagnosis of high functioning autism. I'm going to go and see them in early April to explore and discuss how they came to that decision and discuss my complaint in more depth.

These sound like really positive developments.

Your effort in complaining may result in a much better experience for all those who come after you. That's a great accomplishment.

Good luck with the rest of the process.

You did well. Good for you

I was diagnosed in August of 2014. I was initially referred to CAMHS for acute anxiety and when I got my first appointment my mum was given a questionnaire to fill out and so was I. I was also interviewed by a mental health nurse. A few weeks later we received a letter stating I was to be given an assessment for Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which was an absolute shock (this was all in March 2014 by the way), I thought it was all wrong until I researched Autism. Anyway I was assessed through, I think, three 2 hour meetings. They were very informal and it was pretty much just a clinical psychologist asking me and my parents about my developmental history and my life in general growing up and now. The SEN at my school also contacted the psychologist assessing me. The final part of the assessment was a meeting with the clinical psychiatrist, just to rule other things out. My entire assessment was just me and my parents talking about my life and the struggles I've always had. I was lucky enough to get my diagnosis so quick because apparently they had just "cut down the waiting lists". My experience with diagnosis was not so much traumatic but just confusing and weird. It was a massive revelation because I just thought I was crazy. I think I have been lucky.