My issue with "self diagnosis".

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Sheesh. You mean I went through the time and trouble and expense of getting a professional to interview me and my father (to get an idea of my developmental history and to find out when I hit my developmental milestones) when I could more easily have an equally valid self-diagnosis? Or I could have just got another poster to validate my belief and saved myself all that trouble and money?

Pah. Who needs professionals when there are laypeople specialising in the diagnosis of ASD?

At this stage this is interesting from a psychological point of view. That wasn't 'well put'. It was a strawman with a false dichotomy and you're capable of understanding those concepts yet you persist with your belief. Can you analyse why other people's self-diagnosis has any effect on your subjective impression of your own diagnosis? Can we talk it through? I'm interested.

They're invited to do research studies = self-diagnosed applicants are invited to do research studies. AASPIRE accepts candidates and provides that information to people who are doing research studies.



And I pointed out there are people who accept self-diagnosed autistics for research. Draelynn described one such study that seems to be a bit more than just done for political purposes as you tried to say earlier.



That's because not all researchers require the ADOS and ADI-R. However, not all researchers require a formal diagnosis either, as they will evaluate you per their own standards before you're officially part of the study.



Your argument makes no sense and has no visible logical basis. Self-diagnoses are often valid. Remember, you are arguing with someone whose diagnosis was confirmed only a few months after self-diagnosis, so the argument that I was unqualified and probably wrong has no validity. And I am far from alone, as I've pointed out quite a few members of this forum have gone through the same process. Also, this means that I'm one of those who counts as "those of us who were diagnosed by a professional qualified to undertake such a diagnosis," and I would appreciate it if you did not speak for me, or generalize your distaste so broadly, as I know many professionally diagnosed autistic people who do disagree with your perspective.

You will have to go well beyond simple assertions to demonstrate that self-diagnosis actually causes this kind of harm.



You misunderstood me: You discounted researchers that accept self-diagnosed participants because AASPIRE's political, etc. Or basically, you dismissed the existence of researchers who accept self-diagnosed participants. I said that your argument was that all researchers only accept professionally diagnosed participants, and that you were actually ignoring the fact that some researchers do accept self-diagnosis, and that this is convenient to your mistaken or false assertion. I am not talking about the researchers' convenience, but the convenience to your argument, which is rather lacking in logical and factual foundation.



Yes, I did, but I did not say that AASPIRE does the research. Please do not try to hold me to arguments I didn't make, and don't try to insist that I stick to those arguments I didn't make.

I have a professional diagnosis of Asperger's and I accept people who are self-diagnosed as perfectly valid, especially since I've recently started questioning my own diagnosis a little.

A question you never answered: Why must they be challenged? You haven't even established how self-diagnosis ruins your professional diagnosis.

Second question: Why is a false claim (those who self-diagnose are never wrong) described as "well put?"



Again, no one is making these claims. Why argue against claims no one is making? No one has said that a self-diagnosis is the same as a professional diagnosis. No one has claimed that they validated their self-diagnosis just by talking to random posters on an internet forum. Most posters here aren't claiming that they can diagnose as well as any professional, although many are accurately stating they know more about ASDs than their doctors. This is not a controversial claim. I certainly know more about ASDs than my doctor, and this is something she agrees with - but she also didn't diagnose me, someone who knows more about ASDs did, although she admitted I knew things that she did not, and she made a point of mentioning how thorough and accurate my research was, as I described some of it for her.

What did you need a professional diagnosis for, however? I can tell you I needed mine to support my application for SSI (although I suspect that my ASD diagnosis will not be sufficient by itself to get me SSI, but it's also not my only diagnosis). But are you using it to access services? Are self-diagnosees somehow interfering with your access to services? What exactly is it that self-diagnosis is getting people that is causing you so much angst over your own diagnosis? You seem to be making self-diagnosis about you in some profound and incomprehensible way.

Are you wanting to generate income for medical establishment?

These threads appear every 2 weeks and are a real issue for me.

Many members here on WP have sought professional help only to be disappointed and bitter after their quack experience. I have been around therapists and councillors for most of my adult life, and desire little their influence due to bullying, poor performance and screw ups

Last edited by Surfman on 27 Dec 2011, 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly.

And here's the real problem - there is no test or definitive that a trained doctor can do to determine AS. They ask YOU a million questions, since you are the expert on YOU. If you have parents around they also want to ask them more stuff about YOU, but if you don't, they just take your word for your life experiences.

Because I would be paying to go to someone who would then ask me for my expert opinion about me, it's sort of ridiculous to put much weight on a doctor's diagnosis.

After 40+ years of suffering and thinking I'm the only weird person out here, I was told by a school counselor that my son most likely was ADD or Autistic. She went through the signs for both, gave me some papers to read and I went racing to the web and started learning about these problems to try and help him. I read "Pretending to be Normal" and lights just came on all inside my head - it was the most amazing thing ever. I was giddy with excitement to learn that other people feel the weird things that I feel and think how I think and I AM NOT ALONE. My son is not alone - we talked and talked and talked about the book and more things as I learned them and he opened up to me, sharing stuff he hides also because he thought he was "too weird".

We've gotten closer, really understand each other now, I am so much happier with my life with this understanding and I have been able to work around my weirdness much more easily instead of lying about it, hiding it, pretending I don't feel or think this way.

Remember too that there is no 'cure' for AS, no pill, no procedure, so getting an official diagnosis only tells me I now have a lot less money (from paying a doctor or doctors), and I was right. I don't need another person to validate when I'm right, especially when the issue is the one thing I know better than anything in this world - me.

I'm not happy to have Asperger's but I'm thrilled to understand it since I have it. It has really helped me to embrace myself and be calm and okay with who I am.

Maybe "self-diagnosed" is not the right term, Surfman. I agree. I feel like self-enlightened might be better.

The only problem is, considering "an appropriately trained mental health professional" as any better than a witch doctor requires faith, too. What's that you say? They have science on their side? Well, if witch doctors were allowed to run the science that investigated their powers, they'd have science on their side, too...

Excuse me if any of this has already been mentioned, I did not read the entire thread closely.

"Dia-" means apart. "Gnosis" is knowledge.

Putting it together "diagnosis" means knowing one thing apart from another; discernment.

"Self diagnosis" is self knowledge, discerning self apart from others, or discerning what self is and is not.

There is nothing in the etymology of this word to suggest that a "qualified professional" is required for diagnosis.

To discredit or dismiss the ability of people to know themselves is the most fundamental power play in human history. It is the underlying basis of all acts of manipulation.

A "wrong diagnosis", is not a proper diagnosis at all. It is a lack of discernment.

YES!

Well said.

Verdandi, I never said that AASPIRE was political. Stop attributing to me words and phrases that I did not use.

Here is my quote about AASPIRE:

Yes, Draelynn. They accepted you as self-diagnosed, not professionally diagnosed.

Taken in the context of medicine, self-diagnoses are worth exactly what the patient pays for them.

"diagnoses (dg-nsz)
The identification by a medical provider of a condition, disease, or injury made by evaluating the symptoms and signs presented by a patient."

How about that? And from the same web site, too.

Those are all political functions. Lobbying, applying pressure, interest, and self-advocacy? All political. Why do you keep saying things and then denying they mean anything?



Which counters your assertion that researchers don't accept self-diagnosed autistic people for the purposes of research. So which point of yours does this prove?

Also, they did a five hour evaluation with her, which is more than sufficient to determine whether she's on the spectrum, and probably more rigorous than many of the official diagnoses listed on this forum.



When it comes to receiving accommodations and/or services, yes. It's not worth much except to an individual's peace of mind in terms of self-knowledge and self awareness. Where has anyone claimed differently?

Last edited by Verdandi on 27 Dec 2011, 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What's funny about all this god-like reverence being given to doctors and their diagnosis - in the last year I have been officially diagnosed with 2 physical health issues. One has no cure and I was told to expect crippling pain from now on for the rest of my life.

BOTH WERE WRONG.

I have those official diagnosis on paper - official paper - signed by my doctor. I paid $150 CASH for each of those office visits (and up to $3,000 CASH for the tests that led them to their results)

BOTH WERE WRONG.

More money out to a specialist has proven that those were totally wrong. My problem is much less of a problem, is curable,and I'm thankfully not in pain.

Funny, I didn't get one dollar of my money back for all that bad professional advice. If my car mechanic messes up my car and diagnoses the problem wrong, doesn't fix anything, I can make them redo it or sue them for not providing a service. But the doctor just gets to say ANYTHING and keep the money.

Last year I had a lithotripsy done to bust up a large kidney stone. I was told my blood work was Normal, everything was fine, blah blah blah. When I looked at my own blood work test results I saw clearly that I was severely anemic. I pointed that out to the doctor and he was surprised and huffed and shuffled a bit and left the examining room. He told his assistant to transfer me to a "blood specialist for anemia" and that our follow up appointments were "done". So I caught a glaring error on his part and he didn't want to talk about it, or see me again.

Doctors are just people - that's all. They are not magic. They may have training but even in cases where the tests are concrete and the evidence is tangible, they make mistakes everyday.

In the case of diagnosing something like Asperger's where there are no concrete tests - it all goes to the information that is provided by us. We are our own experts on ourselves. Everyone needs to know that and embrace it - you are your own expert. You have to pay attention to your body and yourself and know yourself better than anyone. Someone who does not know you and is not inside your head and your body does not have magical powers to know you better than you know yourself.