Adult Autism Assessment

hyperbole Ella here and welcome back to my channel today I'm going to talk to you about what happens in an adult autism assessment so this is a video that I've wanted to make for a while but I did already talk about my assessment as an adult when I first started talking about autism right after I was diagnosed and I'm gonna link to that video with a card above now however when I made that video I was very recently diagnosed I was new to youtube I was filming all in one take and I was using my iPad balanced on a stack of books so I really wanted a chance to revisit this topic with you now that I've had time to reflect on that diagnosis so like many autistic adults I was diagnosed when my child was diagnosed right after my child was diagnosed this is a common thing for parents who have an autistic child to find out that they are autistic too it's a story that we hear often in the media and it was exactly the same for me so my eldest child was diagnosed when she was 8 and in year 3 at school and she is now 13 and in year 8 at school so time has passed by she was diagnosed in the February and I was diagnosed in the June so we were both diagnosed and flung into the world of autism in that year I was 36 now I'm 41 so time has gone by and I can say that being diagnosed as autistic has only been an incredibly positive experience for me I'm not saying it hasn't come with some challenges but on the whole I feel like it's been overall a positive experience for me to receive that diagnosis so to start at the very beginning my child was diagnosed after school recognized symptoms of autism in her and we went through the diagnostic process not long after she was diagnosed and having done some research and having more knowledge about autism I was out with her and excuse me those of you have heard this story before I was out with her and we had decided that we'd go and have a drink in a cafe together I would try to make sure that I spend a little bit of one-on-one time with all three of my children and this morning was her time so we derived Caffe and when I got there the space that I'd intended to park in had been changed to residents only parking which means you have to have a special permit to park in that space so when I realized it was residents only parking I drove around the area trying to find another space but the whole area had been changed to residents only parking and I was unable to find a space and I ended up as was often the case at that time having a meltdown because what I had expected to happen couldn't happen and due to my lack of kind of skills in reinventing plans and ideas when I when I got a fixed idea in my head I didn't know what to do next and I got into a panic and as I had this meltdown some part of me said you're autistic I know this sounds kind of crazy maybe a little bit neurotic but in that moment all my difficulties with mental health and difficulties with social skills and meltdowns kind of came together and made sense under the heading of this diagnosis I thought maybe I was a little bit crazy neurotic trying to diagnose myself with something you know so I decided that I would talk to some people about it so I talked to my husband and I talked to some friends and they all supported the idea that yes actually what they had seen we struggle with could make sense under the heading of autism and that it was worth me trying to get an assessment so I took myself off to the GP and this is a stumbling block for many people who haven't found themselves supported when they've gone to the GP they've gone to the GP and they've said they think they might be autistic and they've been told don't be ridiculous you're too old to need to know anyway you can make eye contact you can't be autistic you've held down a job you can't be autistic etc etc but I was really lucky the GP that I saw was kind and sympathetic and I had gone in with rather a long list of the reasons that I thought I might be autistic and I had got a long history of engagement with mental health services showing that I had struggled so he took that information and decided that he would do a referral and he referred me to the local adult autism assessment team here in my local city and not only did he do that but he phoned me afterwards to let me know that he'd done the referral and that the referral had gone to the place I needed it to go to which I thought was kind of extra considerate because he had taken the time to realize that I would need that reassurance that what I'd asked to be done had been done and I found that particularly thoughtful of this GP and then I waited and about two months later I got a letter saying that I would be accepted onto the waiting list to receive an assessment and the bit I want to talk about most is the actual assessment itself so I'm gonna skip the weight and take you to that appointment so I was finally given an appointment to be assessed at the base where the local adult autism team run their assessments and I was assessed by a doctor called dr. Peter carpenter who was actually part of the team who put together the nice guidelines for diagnosing adults with autism so I was particularly lucky to see someone who really knew his stuff and I took mr. purple with me to the assessment so the assessment was held at a local mental health centre and I had to get there wait in a waiting room and then I was seen in a small appointment room with just me the doctor and my husband but the first thing that happened now looking back does make me laugh the doctor came out to greet me in the waiting room and to take me through to the assessment room and he went to shake my hand and I'm not very good with things like greetings that aren't just saying hello shaking hands giving hugs all of that kissing on cheeks oh goodness no all of that stuff is really challenging for me so I probably gave him some kind of really weird half I remember it being a weird handshake that I gave him and he did actually mention that in the letter post assessment letter that I hadn't given him a very typical greeting so we went into the assessment room my husband myself and this doctor and first of all he spent about an hour taking a very detailed history he asked me questions like how do I cope with Ewing would I sit and watch a sunset just sit and watch a sunset how do I cope with friendships do I have any particularly intense hobbies those are the questions I remember him asking me but I know he asked me and my husband a bunch of other stuff so it was really helpful to have someone there with me who knows me really well because I feel like it helped me to remember things as I was being asked them because my processing speed can be a little bit slower and it helped me to kind of prompt me to know what to say and it also helped me because it was someone else saying yes LR is like this yes Ella does do that kind of giving what I was saying some weight I feel so we answered a load of questions about me and about how I deal with situations how did I do at university how did I do at school how did I do with becoming a mother what were the mental health difficulties that I had how did I get treatment for them how do I cope with things not going as planned all of these things were questions that they asked me so if you scan through the last minute and a half of this video you can write down a list of the stuff that they asked me in case that's helpful so I answered all of those questions very honestly and not knowing what the right answer was I hadn't done a huge amount of research I've researched autism because I now had a child that was diagnosed but I hadn't done a huge amount of research into the presentation of women I didn't really know a lot about the differences in terms of presentation of women with autism I hadn't done a lot of research into adult presenting autism so I went in there and I thought that was a good thing because it meant I went in there and just gave my instinctive response to these questions so after we've done this full history the next thing that he did was some aspects of the a dose test so the a dose test is an autism test that is designed to reveal autistic traits and there are a few different versions of the a dose test depending on age and intellectual ability so I'm presuming that the tests they did on me were for an adult without learning difficulties so the first thing that he did was he gave me a bag with about ten different objects there was a matchstick car there was a - toy soldier there was a matchstick there was a bunch of different things and he asked me to choose three of those items and tell him a story which I did and to be honest I felt like I had aced it I feel like I can be quite creative in storytelling the next thing that he asked me to do was to look at a picture book that he had and to tell a story now those of you who are familiar with the a DOS test will know this particular book it has frogs and it has clocks and the flock the frogs can float and that's all I remember of it but it's a very distinct book and I've spoken to other people who have also been assessed using this book it's a very strange book so I had to make up a story but again because I feel like I'm really good at storytelling I felt like I'd aced it and to some extent that I wouldn't be diagnosed with autism because I was so incredibly creative so I told him the story he at that point said to me and my husband that he needed to go and consult with some people before giving me a final opinion on the end of this assessment so he went off for about 15-20 minutes to talk to his colleagues about me about what he'd found out and about what they thought that he should do next at this point I was super super nervous they took us back out to the waiting room to wait and I was incredibly nervous that either I would be diagnosed with autism or I wouldn't be diagnosed with autism and I wasn't sure which one was going to be better I guess I kind of felt like if I was diagnosed with autism I would at least have an answer and a path and a plan moving forward and if I wasn't I would still be in the position of not quite knowing what to do about the difficulties I was having so I suppose I was slightly leaning towards wanting to be diagnosed but I wasn't sure he came back about 20 minutes later and he took me back to the appointment room with mr. purple and he told me that he had no difficulty at all in diagnosing me with autism which was a really big moment for me I guess finally after all these years of struggling I had named for I was experiencing and there were other people like me experiencing the same things and that was incredibly cathartic at the same time a lot of grief for what I could have been for what I could have done if I'd known this sooner and been appropriately supported there was a whole term all of emotions in the year following that diagnosis but today I really just wanted to tell you about the assessment process it was two hours in total I was speaking to dr. carpenter I did ask him afterwards how come you diagnosed me when I gave you such fantastic stories and he told me that with the ADA's tests the little figures and things I hadn't changed any of them a lot of people when telling a story would change the match into a person maybe for example I had made the objects be exactly what they were and told his story with them and when it came to the book he said yes yes you told a really fantastical story but you didn't tell it to me you were sat next to me and you didn't look at me you didn't engage with me you didn't it wasn't like you were reading me a story it was like you were reading a story and I just happened to be there after the assessment probably about six weeks after the assessment I did receive a full three-page letter detailing the information that he'd gained from me during that assessment and what had caused him to draw the conclusion that I meet the criteria for a diagnosis of autism specific spectrum condition so that was Ryu SFIL and its really useful now if I'm ever wanting to think about it a little bit more I might go back to that letter and I might read it I know that some of the things that stand out there for me in that letter were that although I give a lot of gesturing and fantastical facial expressions they're not quite they don't quite fit with what he would expect from what I'm saying so I guess my expressions and my gestures don't necessarily fit what I'm actually saying not something I've particularly noticed do you leave me a comment if you've noticed this about me because that did weird me out a little bit like am I getting that wrong so yeah that's about it really that was i adult autism assessment I'm not saying that everybody's assessment is gonna be exactly the same as that but I thought it might be useful for me to talk about this again to give you an idea of roughly what to expect from an adult autism assessment one thing that I will mention in regarding that is that it is known that the a dose assessment is not really designed to show the signs of autism in women and girls it's a very male oriented test and this would also cover non-binary or trans people too it's not really designed for us and a better test to be using is the disco which is an assessment that they use at the Lorna wing Center where they are specialists in diagnosing women and I know that a lot of people have been let down by adult autism assessments which are focused on male oriented assessment techniques and they're not in a category that that would suit and they haven't been diagnosed and they feel that this is a wrong conclusion to draw having used the a dose test and those people have my full support and sympathy I was lucky I did receive the diagnosis just despite being assessed in a very traditionally male way and for that I'm truly grateful and that's why I'm sitting here wanting to offer my support to those people who haven't been so lucky because I really do believe that some people are missed by these tests I just wanted to add that because I know that those of you that sit in that position must feel kind of alone and kind of not included in this community sometimes and here you are included anyway if you've enjoyed this video and you'd like to keep up with my videos I produce content every Friday I talk about disability I talk about autism I talk about whatever I feel like talking about and it would be great if you could subscribe to me if you like the video do give it a big thumbs up and I will see you next week thanks for watching bye bye

Channel: Purple Ella

Views: 185,676

Rating: 4.9437022 out of 5

Keywords: adult autism assessment, adult autism diagnosis, assessment adult autism, autistic adult, autistic woman, autistic girl, aspergers, autistic spectrum, neurodiversity, neurodiverse, Purple Ella, Lauren Wolfe, The Aspie World, Yo Samdy Sam, TheCHESTERFIELDROYAL

Id: mPPIv2nILS4

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020