Depends. Do you have problems in your daily life that you need help with? Typically, autistics will have trouble with taking care of themselves (either simple stuff like remembering to eat, or more complex stuff like keeping a job and managing the paperwork); and with understanding other people (conversations, non-verbal communication, reading other people's faces and voices, keeping up friendships). As a 28 year old living on my own, I get services that include help with school (testing, communicating with professors), and help with some of the more difficult parts of living independently (finding an apartment, doing paperwork, managing my time, handling unusual situations and emergencies).
If you have problems like that, or some other sort, with which you need help, advice, education, services, etc., then you can get that with a diagnosis, either autism or some other label. The best place to start is your family doctor: Briefly outline your problems, one or two sentences, and ask for a referral to someone who might be able to help you. The nice thing about having a name for it is that it opens the way for you to do research on it for yourself, to learn more about yourself, and possibly to solve some of those problems on your own. However, just having a name is nowhere near enough. You need to look at the things that have led you to suspect you might have autism, figure out which of them are things you like about yourself and want to take advantage of, which of them are neutral things that are just different and that you need to learn not to be ashamed of, and which things hurt you or annoy or hurt other people and are thus problems to be solved. Much of the difficulty of living with autism is that your skills and abilities don't really match what society expects of you, so you need to fill in the gaps. You probably have a lot of
The best person to evaluate someone for autism is probably a developmental neuropsychiatrist or a psychologist with a specialty in adult autism, but not everybody can find someone with that much specialized training. Many psychologists are trained in autism simply because it's so common, and can recognize it when they see it, at least in children. Others have less specific training but are willing to educate themselves. Either find a psychologist who can refer you to someone who knows about autism, find a specialist, or find a generalist who either knows about autism or can find out about it.
26 Apr 2012, 4:44 pm
