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Notes from my post-diagnosis webinar

Angular Chap

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
I attended an extremely good post-diagnosis webinar 2 weeks ago and I slowly condensed down some of my notes to share here. Other things I'll probably get to mentioning in due course.

It was presented by the same clinician at the clinic that handled my diagnosis. Someone with a long list of credentials and a career going back decades and in multiple countries. He clearly had massive passion for what he does. He offered to share the webinar presentation slides with the attendees, so I e-mailed him after the webinar and he sent me the slides.

He covered so much, from core autism features, historical perspectives, the biological basis, the psychological basis, theories and frameworks. Way too much to cover in one post, so I'll try to distil down my notes to the most relevant general things:

1. It is important for each individual to develop their own journey and framework for understanding themselves and learning about how to live in their own situation.

2. The diagnostic process should be transparent and accommodating as possible. Many people have a horrendous time with their diagnosis. The clinician explained why they use the flying frogs story as part of the assessment.

3. When it comes to looking up resources, there is no "autism police" and no border guards saying "no, only people from the UK can access UK autism resource websites" for example. Free internet resources are open to all.

autismcentral.org.uk was recommenced by the clinician as one of the best autism resources. The first fully funded peer education program, developed in partnership with autistic people and commissioned by the NHS.

Autism Central for Parents and Carers | Autism Central

The historical perspective part of the webinar had a few familiar names, others I hadn’t heard before, Gary B. Mesibov and Victoria Shea.

Books mentioned for a historical perspective were:

Lorna Wing, 1996, The Autistic Spectrum: a Guide for Parents and Professionals, 25th Anniversary Edition.

Mesibov and Shea (2005): The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders.

The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders : Mesibov, Gary B : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The chapter on the culture of autism was discussed.

The Culture of Autism - Autism independent UK

One of my favourite parts of the webinar was learning about ecological modelling with regard to autism. Again, way too much to go into in depth, but it’s well worth Googling. The general idea is that autistic people struggle more and more the further from the middle of the digram we go.

This is a simplified diagram, but I found the more in depth diagrams and research to be fascinating:


ecologocal model.png



The spectrum is a circle, not a line.

circlenotaline.jpg



Then there is of course the importance of differentiating other conditions from autism, but also look at co-existing conditions and their relationship with autism. For example, anxiety is almost a built in feature of autism, where as depression usually develops later and is more reactional and situational. People need to understand how each individual experiences autism interwoven with other conditions or to what degree there is more of a separation.

Lastly, I've been looking into the psychological basis, with the trifecta of theories, mostly out of interest:
- theory of mind
- central coherence
- executive functions

What Is Theory Of Mind In Psychology?

Central coherence was visualised in this bell curve graph, with autistic people hovering around the first vertical line:

centralcoherence.jpg


Thanks for reading!
 
Thank you very much for sharing all of that with us. I'm still in the process of trying to find somewhere that I can get an official assessment done.
 
I love the graphs - especially the circle. It's a great way to examine yourself by keeping issues organized in your head by category. It's very useful. Thanks for sharing it.
 
I'm still in the process of trying to find somewhere that I can get an official assessment done.
I spent months meticulously researching many different methods and clinics before making my choice. All the research I did paid off and I had a great experience.

Good luck with everything! Hope it all goes as well for you as it did for me! :)
 
I spent months meticulously researching many different methods and clinics before making my choice. All the research I did paid off and I had a great experience.

Good luck with everything! Hope it all goes as well for you as it did for me! :)
The problem I have is being dubious of the outfits that do virtual appointments. I have a couple on my radar that I'm reviewing before I reach out. I unfortunately live in a rural area so there are no qualified people within about a 350km radius that do adult assessments. Just kids.

But my work accepts the self-diagnosis so an officially one is more for my own interest and tax purposes.
 
The problem I have is being dubious of the outfits that do virtual appointments. I have a couple on my radar that I'm reviewing before I reach out. I unfortunately live in a rural area so there are no qualified people within about a 350km radius that do adult assessments. Just kids.

But my work accepts the self-diagnosis so an officially one is more for my own interest and tax purposes.
I was the same, quite skeptical of some places. The price was about the same all over the UK, so I could have easily paid a lot of money just for a sheet of paper that said "You are autistic" but for the same cost I got a professionally conducted assessment, hour long feedback and diagnostic session, 18 page report (also sent to my GP), information pack, invitation to a webinar and after care. All via Skype, Zoom, e-mail and phone.
 
The problem I have is being dubious of the outfits that do virtual appointments. I have a couple on my radar that I'm reviewing before I reach out. I unfortunately live in a rural area so there are no qualified people within about a 350km radius that do adult assessments. Just kids.

But my work accepts the self-diagnosis so an officially one is more for my own interest and tax purposes.

Understandable, I had a virtual appointment for the first one and I couldn't get the idea out of my head that it was a diagnosis mill. So I got an in-person appointment.
 
I was the same, quite skeptical of some places. The price was about the same all over the UK, so I could have easily paid a lot of money just for a sheet of paper that said "You are autistic" but for the same cost I got a professionally conducted assessment, hour long feedback and diagnostic session, 18 page report (also sent to my GP), information pack, invitation to a webinar and after care. All via Skype, Zoom, e-mail and phone.
The two I'm looking at come highly reviewed and also provide a person with fairly detailed reports. My next hitch is they are currently full up and not even taking people on the waitlist, that's how far behind they are. So I figure I'll just keep checking back until I eventually get a hold of someone. I'm in no rush.
 
Actually just heard back from one of those outfits and I think I'll pass on their 3 hour $4500 (Canadian) assessment. The other place I was looking at indicated the process would take several interviews and likely upwards of 12 hours to complete, and I think was in the $2900 range.
 
Actually just heard back from one of those outfits and I think I'll pass on their 3 hour $4500 (Canadian) assessment. The other place I was looking at indicated the process would take several interviews and likely upwards of 12 hours to complete, and I think was in the $2900 range.
I paid £1800 for mine. I spend a whole day on various assessments on the clinic's web portal, from questions about childhood to questionnaires on anxiety, sleep, mood, food and masking, all at my own pace before I booked the appointment with a clinician. The assessment via Skype was an hour and a half.

That's another thing about autism, the diagnostic process seems to expose flaws in health systems, no matter what country.
 

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