Curious about ASD diagnostic methods. About to "make it offi

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Hello my fellow NaTs. I was wondering, from someone who has undergone formal diagnosis, what the procedure is like. My self evaluation put my AQ at 42 & I know definitely that I have HFA, but have been urged to seek a formal diagnosis.

Another query I was pondering is this: what actual benefit is there to having a formal diagnosis? When the last person I talked to about it suggested a diagnosis my reply was "Why? Will it change everyone else?"

Since then I have pondered it & the main reason I now want a diagnosis "on paper" is so I can ask for the help (read: allowances) I may need to finish college. I have tried repeatedly to complete my degree, but some of nt instructors were not very accomodating, & some were borderline hostile about some things.

More than once I was reprimanded by one instructor for doing what the instructions said to do instead of "what [they] meant for me to do". I also needed (literally) a few more hours on a final, which was denied me (very harshly). I'm not throwing a "pity party", just trying to illustrate my point.

I came from a family of ivy league graduates & prestigious scholarship recipients so it really pains me to have not completed my degree. I almost wish I could just skip the remedial stuff & get right to the actual learning bits. Unfortunately, this is precisely the design of "higher education" in this country: memorize, regurgitate, repeat...if it's not horribly tedious & boring, then it's not school.

I'm curious to know too. I was diagnosed with ADD back in high school, but the more I read about it, the more confident I feel that I likely have Autism. For the last few months, I have been meaning to get a referral from my GP, but I just can't bring myself to take that step. I imagine my tendency for procrastination and just lack of overall ambition is to blame for that.

I can only speak for myself - I was diagnosed at age 49, just as my 30+ year career was running out of track, and at age 50 shifted to a new category under the SS regs, which allowed me to qualify for Disability. Without that, I would be homeless right now (actually more likely dead). So, to my way of thinking, a diagnosis is like a gun for self-defense - better to have one and not need it, than to need it and not have one.

Besides, there's no law I know of that says you have to tell everybody about it if you don't want to.

No, it won't magically give you social skills, like some gift from The Wizard of Oz, or defend you from discrimination (though it should), but it can't hurt to have it on hand, just in case. And yes, it might help you qualify for other sorts of assistance, as well.

Oh, as for diagnostic methods, from what I've observed here on WP, that can vary widely, depending on the psychologist doing the evaluation. For me, it was the Minnesota Multiphasic written test, then a whole battery of other things, like Rorschach blots, free-association, puzzle-solving, personal interviews and so on. Took a couple of days. Others here have described very different experiences.