Why do people here assume all ASD diagnoses are correct?

Post Reply New Topic

So we have all been discussing the possibility of autism being over diagnosed, the legitimacy of an official diagnosis, and the legitimacy of a self diagnosis. I figured I would throw some more fire in the pot by providing an article expressing concern over how with the new ASD diagnosis people are being bumped off the spectrum.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/ ... sm-numbers

"Of the 6,577 children who were classified as having an autism spectrum disorder under the old diagnostic criteria, researchers found 5,339, or 81 percent, would have kept their diagnosis under the new guidelines."

So that's a 19% drop.

My diagnosis came from the "new" ASD way and I personally feel dropping people off it is kind of wrong. I view that based on so what are these people supposed to do now? Will they lose benefits? Will they lose support? I guess the answers to that would be based on that communication disorder (isn't is basically aspergers?) and how much support is provided for that.

What are your opinions?

One of the differences between self-diagnosis and professional diagnosis is that self-diagnosis does not give the person enough observations of themselves from the outside. It is verry merry berry hard to leave one's own head. Watching a video of oneself is not enough, hearing other people talk about oneself is not enough, I am still inside my head when these things occur. Meanwhile, the diagnostic criteria are written to be matched from the outside by someone who is not inside the mind of the person being evaluated for autism. For eberryone, there is a lot more stuff going on inside than can be broadcast to the outside, so matching these torrents of inside data influenced by all kinds of inside processes up against rather vague outside criteria has significant potential to produce false positives. It is bester to have someone else with detailed understanding of the vague criteria and diagnostic eggsperience with different people match up the outside data with the outside criteria. The process also includes matching up inside data with inside criteria in the form of self-report questionnaires.

Saying things like this and my earlier post about professional diagnosis is not a hate-filled attack on people who are self-diagnosed, and neither is the opinion that self-diagnosis is generally not as valid as professional diagnosis.

I personally do not trust psychologists because they failed to see earlier a lot of my issues stem from my handicaps as a "root cause." It was my own experience that taught me that. I believe many psychologists in fact are not trained to deal with the emotional needs that stem from handicaps or other minority issues..

That being said someone may come here for support and community over diagnoses as they are pretty high functioning and being within their 40s -80s+. They may still feel and observe stress but diagnosis may not change this the quality of life. But community support may help though.

Also, people in their 40+ years have pretty good hindsight too and this lends into their
"insights" into their own behaviors. Psychology takes this same process and "pulling" out understanding of behavior after all only in a formalized setting.

^^^^

I concur this frequently happens. On top of that, we know that people go under diagnosed in the US due to $$ issues etc or barriers to healthcare. Plus, we know that many people were born before high functioning autism was diagnosed.

As to more people being diagnosed currently yes this is to be expected as there is more awareness and public recognition. In turn people begin to see their own behaviors in context and receive help if needed.

This is true for any described diagnoses within DSM etc. For example, we don't go around saying depression is over diagnosed.....or post traumatic stress is over diagnosed...learning disabilities over diagnosed (US/Canada definitions)....

I too spoke to people who know me well....

Self diagnoses does not mean their diagnoses is wrong too.

Each person must decide if an official diagnoses is worth it given their circumstances etc and also their money situation.

I believe too this is why "sell-diagnoses" is an option on these boards. The mission statement is in regards to neurological differences...diagnoses or otherwise because these differences can sometimes be not accepted in the greater society frequently.

Kudos to Alex and Team about these considerations into this area. )

I dont wanted to say, that self diagnozing will have the same rate of assurance as an professional diagnose. But whyever someone self diagnosed himself, there will be reasons behind it. Nobody diagnoses himself with autism for fun, so yes someone diagnosing himself might be wrong, but there will be definitly specific reasons for him to do so.

In the end I think the important part of the forum, is when people are asking specific questions. "I happen to have this and that specific problem: What kind of solutions do you see?" And if someone is helped, I dont see the reason why to argue about if someone "only" has a social phobia causing him to have similar problems or "real" autism.

The rest of the forum is gossip to me, that I use because I like to have some kind of communication to others, but are in real life simply disabled about it, because of my treats.

A professional diagnosis sure gives the affected one more assurance of the issue, then an self-diagnosis. But it does not make someones oppinion superior or better or whatever. There are tons of reasons, why many people simply cant have diagnosis that easily. In my country the only specialist centre for autism is in the capital city, and I needed to do 4 visits at their place, one time including with a parent of me. While parts of my diagnosis costs could have been refundend by health insurance, stuff like an hotel, food, travel costs, ... would not have been included. If I lived far away from our capital city and had minimum loan, paying all that sidecosts would have been rather impossible. As well that if I would have done it as much as possible with the health insurance, that it would have lasted about a year longer, because only very few psychiatrists working by insurance, so I had to have waited about a year until someone could have counceled with me.

And my country is western europian, so I definitly dont wanna know how far worse it might be in other countries, having worser medical standards and support.

If someone has the possibility to do an diagnosis, I´d go for it, simply to reassure yourself. But if its whyever not possible for someone, then its the way it is.

am a supporter of our fellow self diagnosed members being treated as equals in the autistic community,however if was to think about it-people can state they have x,y or z traits/difficulties because they are what someone experiences but technicaly they cannot say they have x,y, or z disorder/syndrome/disability, these are just formal diagnostic labels that are purely existant due to the pyschology industry; the icd and dsm for starters,and for diagnosis these obviously require a professionals support.
they are just labels,someone doesnt need one to know they have social/communication difficulties,the question we shoud be asking is why such a wide and differing autistic community is so divisive and elitist if people within it [or out] dont conform to criteria,if anything that is doing exactly what NTs are constantly blamed for doing,we cant act superior to a group of people whilst demanding NTs stop doing the same thing,it is being a hypocrite.