Curious for those who have been tested for Asperger's.....

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How long did testing take? I took my son to the Children's Hospital for testing yesterday and he was only back there for a little over an hour.

Then they had me fill out all these questions for autism/asperger's while he was being tested.

But they won't give me an appointment for the results until the end of February.

They recommended speech/language & pediatric developmental evaluation before I come back?

I can't remember, my childhood is mostly a haze.

From what I can gather it varies greatly from one person to another.

The Autism Research Centre in Cambridge usually allows a day for diagnosis of adults, including time to speak with someone who knew the adult as a young child.

My diagnosis only took 4 hours, but I had submitted around 50 pages of written information about my childhood first.
I was given a diagnosis immediately after my consultation, but another person who attended an appointment at the same clinic was told that the team would have to discuss her case and get back to her in a couple of months with a diagnosis!

I think the best thing to do is to give as much information as possible and also arrange the evaluaitons that they recommended to you and forward the reports on to them. Any other relevant evalutions would be useful too, although I appreciate that undergoing multiple evaluations can be very stressful for children.

Ha, two years for my psychiatrist (that went from AS to autism); the first several minutes at Attwood's for AS out of a one hour appointment.

The extremes for me.

I had filled out paperwork the first time I went about my concerns. The inital meeting was just to discuss what I expect from them.

Then I went back for testing. While he was back there I filled out questions for several books. One labeled Autism.

He didn't score high out of that book. It dealt mostly with unresponsive children.

the Asperger's booklet.....he was through the roof on.

I don't know why it's going to take 2 months to get results.

It shouldn't take that long - all I can think of is they must have a big backlog of paperwork. When I had my interview, it took the psychiatrist 5 minutes to suggest I have Asperger's but I did submit about 15 pages of background information too.

I don't remember how long it took when I was diagnosed (it was so many years ago), but I had another evaluation over the summer that took a couple hours. It probably would have been quicker, but I just have my way of complicating things.

I haven't been dxed yet, that will be next year. But I spoke to the dr who will do it and he said it takes about 90 minutes to dx an adult. They also would like to talk to someone close to you (another hour) so about 2 1/2 hours. This is with the questionnaire and interviews. An expert in the field will not need more than that.

That's what I think too. Mind you, experts on autism can be rare in many places in the world.

About an hour for my first child - then only about 20 minutes for me. (It's easy when they have already established the genetic evidence).

We're taking my other child to a different doctor so that we can bounce ideas/questions off both. The other doctor is arranging a 7 hour test.

Don't quite know how a 4 year old is supposed to cope with that.

My diagnoses was long, about and hour or two (I think) on the first day and then several hours the second day and then a month later they sent results, though I wasn't there specifically for AS, it was more of a trying to figure out what was wrong with me mentally overall, and then they figured it was AS.

When I was a kid I was tested for stuff I was too young to understand what. But I know that after finding out (almost 2 years ago) my mom looked at all those test results and one letter from a neurologist decribing what he saw in me at the time couldn't have been clearer unless he had said "This child has Asperger's", which he didn't so the phsycholgist (or pshychiatrist whichever can percribe drugs ) wrote it off as ADD because I could sit and talk to him for hours with no evidence of social problems ('cause he was an adult, duh, not a peer big difference!). Ironically enough the concerta I've been talking for my "ADD" all this time treated some of my AS symptoms (and still does, man do I know it when that stuff wears off) like toneing down the anxiety and panic attack episodes (though they still happened). It wasn't until I saw a new pediatrician (a lady 'cause of "girl" stuff) same office just different doctor, she was in the room with me for no longer than 15 minutes and she takes my mom outside and tells her about aspergers and says she thinks I might have it. My dad was skeptical so he got online and looked it up...Describes me to a tee. So I don't know if that's considered an official diagnosis or not (PLEASE TELL ME) I had the tests the doctors just failed to see it and when ritalin helped a little they "confirmed" ADD and that was it... except it wasn't it. Anyway, as I've said in several posts tonight I'm in a VERY talkative mood right now and sleep is prolly not an option without the help of a sleep aid (over the counter nothing big ). K, I'll stop now.

I guess my answer to the question is it depends on if they are specifically looking for Aspergers or not if they are diagnosis will be a lot faster than mine I can tell you that much.

I was referred to a psychologist for severe anxiety problems, by the second session she was asking some questions I thought somewhat extraneous to an anxiety problem, by the forth session she asked if I had heard of Asperger’s; we then spent two hours going through a more detailed assessment. So all up I went in with anxiety and 6 hours (over 6 weeks) later I was labelled with AS!

Actually whilst it was a shock, it was a great relief finding a label that explained the mental anguish of the last 50 years.

I took three days over two weeks. I got a complete psychologicial test done. I have been studying special education in graduate school, when I read about High FUnctioning Autism and Aspergers. I had thought that fit me better than auditory and memory processing disorder, ADD, and dyslexia. Plus my dianosis was last made in 1990, two years before it was published as a disorder.

If you know you may be an Aspie, tell your doctor, and they can usually come up w/ dx much faster. Many PA and Drs don't know about Asperger's and need to be told about it so they can research and confirm with other professionals.

Best,

Idaho Aspie

It took about 4 days full of testing, though I don't know how far into it when they realized. It had to take that long since it was testing for accommodations for school (when I was pretty young) and that's including a visit to the pediatrician for a physical.

@KRIZDA88 - as for what's an official diagnosis I think that would count, after all, all medical doctors get some psych training. I mean if it needed to be really "official" official it would have to be written down and documented by a psychologist, but they probably wouldn't do that unless you needed it documented in order to "prove" it to someone (school accommodations etc)

My GP sees my Asperger's, well, she told me she did. Basic stuff like a lack of eye contact, an odd posture and a voice that's lacking in emotion.

Many doctors will know the stereotypical presentation of Asperger's (mainly because the stereotypical presentation is the most common).