Turned down for diagnosis.

[Mary Lyn]

Hi, l have been going through the diagnosis process for 18 months or so, and was told this week that the Autism team do not think l have it.

I cannot accept that as l KNOW l am an aspie and have all of the problems talked about so much on this site. I know l am high functioning but still have serious problems coping, and now that l am heading for my 70's, find that things are getting worse with the normal process of aging affecting my brain function. Executive function is worse plus memory and concentration are worse and it does not help that l have multiple health issues including CFS.

Apparently l performed well on tests for imagination and held eye contact normally. I asked for a review and am awaiting an appointment. Do you lovely people have any advice for me? Thank you.

 

[Misery]

Well here's a question: the eye contact, were you forcing yourself to do that specifically for the diagnosis process? Like, to be polite or something? I mean, I *can* hold eye contact if needed, but that's usually just so that new people I meet wont feel insulted (usually cashiers). It's still stressful and out of situations like that I wont do it. Do you normally maintain eye contact in day-to-day situations, or no?

....Also what the heck is a "test for imagination"?

 

[Streetwise]

Hi, l have been going through the diagnosis process for 18 months or so, and was told this week that the Autism team do not think l have it.

I cannot accept that as l KNOW l am an aspie and have all of the problems talked about so much on this site. I know l am high functioning but still have serious problems coping, and now that l am heading for my 70's, find that things are getting worse with the normal process of aging affecting my brain function. Executive function is worse plus memory and concentration are worse and it does not help that l have multiple health issues including CFS.

Apparently l performed well on tests for imagination and held eye contact normally. I asked for a review and am awaiting an appointment. Do you lovely people have any advice for me? Thank you.

Just consider this there are thousands of women in the UK that are still not diagnosed ,we are still considered hypochondriacs, autism is still seen as the male condition five years after it was inferred that I was a hypochondriac I was diagnosed with autism if what you’ve noticed is your whole life and it doesn’t make any difference if they think it isn’t My mother sat in hospital for two weeks after she admitted herself with what I presume was a gruesome headache ,her speech was becoming slurred but she was kicked out of the hospital, collapsed and was taken in again that night ,she had to pay for a diagnosis herself,That’s the NHS doing things as quickly as possible, this is the NHS strategy you go to a GP they tell you to go to casualty ,you go to casualty they tell you to go to a GP ,nobody wants to Know ,Why do the job if you don’t want to do it ,let people do the job that want to do it,it would be better if they give us the money we pay for the NHS and we could pay for care ourselves .Then you could pay for a psychologist who wanted to take the time ,i’m still astounded that they said yes to me ,I thought their policy was get rid of people. I also find it very strange that only took an hour and a half, after you hear about people on this forum taking days.

 

[Sarah S]

Hi, l have been going through the diagnosis process for 18 months or so, and was told this week that the Autism team do not think l have it.

I cannot accept that as l KNOW l am an aspie and have all of the problems talked about so much on this site. I know l am high functioning but still have serious problems coping, and now that l am heading for my 70's, find that things are getting worse with the normal process of aging affecting my brain function. Executive function is worse plus memory and concentration are worse and it does not help that l have multiple health issues including CFS.

Apparently l performed well on tests for imagination and held eye contact normally. I asked for a review and am awaiting an appointment. Do you lovely people have any advice for me? Thank you.

If you have gone thru 18 month of evaluating and they conclude you dont have it id say the odds of you dont have it is very high.

what you have to take in to account here is also youre age + if youre that worried and concerned that things have gone worse with youre exetuve funktions im afraid i would advice to take a Alzheimer evaluation (you describe pretty much how my om started her road to Alzimers WAY earlier i should add (she got diagnosed 65 ) and even way before that she got worse in said executive funktions

 

[Mary Lyn]

I was tested during the evaluation for those problems so they must be very mild. It is not Alzheimers because it is coming on slowly. It is not vascular dementia either as there would be some significant events. It looks like the normal aging process. They will have allowed for that in the testing.

 

[Mary Lyn]

Test for imagination was I had to make up a story for pieces of odds and ends like a toy car etc.

I am uncomforatable with eye contact but have learned to do it. I would rather not.

 

[Streetwise]

I was tested during the evaluation for those problems so they must be very mild. It is not Alzheimers because it is coming on slowly. It is not vascular dementia either as there would be some significant events. It looks like the normal aging process. They will have allowed for that in the testing.

do you have memory problems to the extent that you go blank? you can have mild dementia not Alzheimer’s which can be treated by taking vitamin b .

 

[Sarah S]

I was tested during the evaluation for those problems so they must be very mild. It is not Alzheimers because it is coming on slowly. It is not vascular dementia either as there would be some significant events. It looks like the normal aging process. They will have allowed for that in the testing.

Very well then i agree with youre conclosion of normal aging. However Alzheimer sneeks up on you slowly but then moves faster as the diagnose progress . BUT in youre case if this was the case they would have found it so again i agree.

 

[Raphael Outcast]

...and it does not help that l have multiple health issues including C.F.S.

Apparently l performed well on tests for imagination and held eye contact normally.

Well here's a question: the eye contact, were you forcing yourself to do that specifically for the diagnosis process? Like, to be polite or something? I mean, I can hold eye contact if needed, but that's usually just so that new people I meet wont feel insulted (usually cashiers). It's still stressful and out of situations like that I won't do it.

Also what the heck is a "test for imagination"?

I have a pet theory that C.F.S. is a typical product of Asperger's, so this mention of C.F.S. is in itself suggestive to me.

I remember the imagination test. It was a facile farce. Fortunately it was a facile farce I scored badly in, so it accidentally worked for me.

The eye contact thing is very significant. Totally agree with Misery: if you think you have Asperger's then you try to remember to behave in a not-too-Asperger'sy kind of way, and the constant effort is colossal; and of course if you're trying hard enough, a witless mental health professional won't see that it doesn't come naturally to you and it's costing you all the energy and concentration you can muster.

I think it may be called "masking", and maybe you've been masking too well?

The so-called specialist team who diagnosed me managed to miss more features of my Asperger's than they identified. The ensuing report was almost, though not quite, completely useless: I did find the "neuropsychological" section very illuminating, though, perhaps because the lady who did the psychometric test was more intelligent and switched-on than the buffoons who were in charge of the rest of the process. When I pointed out to my Community Psychiatric Nurse that the report missed more Asperger's stuff than it included and it was a miracle the team had actually succeeded in diagnosing me with Asperger's at all, she pulled a face and said this was alas typical in her experience.

I have known a psychiatrist refuse to even refer a blatantly autistic friend of mine for the diagnostic assessment. And the last psychiatrist I saw, after a grand total of 55 minutes at most, emphatically assured me none of my problems had anything to do with Asperger's at all; he even seemed faintly amused by the very suggestion. This was in 2017; his attitude was consistent with that of the psychiatrist who laughed me out of court in 1998 when I diffidently attempted to suggest an A.S.D. diagnosis.

So I would not trust a mental health professional to diagnose whether or not it was raining outside: I'd go to the window and have a good look for myself! They can be unbelievably purblind and unbelievably hasty and unbelievably slapdash, and they do not like having their actions or pronouncements questioned.

Part-way through my Asperger's assessment, I was so alarmed by all the relevant questions the professionals weren't asking and all the pertinent problems we weren't discussing that I took the desperate decision to start "vamping up" some more visually observable signs of A.S.D.: I deliberately started doing the kind of stuff I'd only normally do when alone, or else when extremely upset and distracted. Sure enough, that stuff found its way into the report! But the psychometric test cannot lie (or I'm not clever enough to fake Asperger's in a psychometric test), and that furnished incontrovertibly genuine and useful evidence, even if the professionals managed to overlook so much else.

So maybe the question you have to ask is: how much do you care what the so-called professionals think? Is there any practical advantage to getting a diagnosis? There were certainly advantages for me, so I'd always recommend trying to get one, but how much hangs on the diagnosis in your own personal case?

 

[SDRSpark]

Test for imagination was I had to make up a story for pieces of odds and ends like a toy car etc.

I am uncomforatable with eye contact but have learned to do it. I would rather not.

I have a phenomenal imagination and I still think I'd fail that test...not because I'm incapable of making up a story, but because I don't feel comfortable being put on the spot like that and I'd clam up. I'm also not sure how well I'd do making up a story involving a bunch of random objects, because I'd be too busy overthinking it or thinking about how stupid this is to be able to perform.

I actually have a real life experience like that...A senior coworker was trying to evaluate my training ability, by asking me to train him on a process that I was running. This worked for about 2 minutes...then I remembered that he was the one to have trained me on this process a year or so ago. I said "Hey, wait a minute, you are the one who trained me on this!" He just kind of chuckled and said "just keep going" but I couldn't keep up the farce, because now I knew it was a farce.

I have a pet theory that C.F.S. is a typical product of Asperger's, so this mention of C.F.S. is in itself suggestive to me.

I remember the imagination test. It was a facile farce. Fortunately it was a facile farce I scored badly in, so it accidentally worked for me.

The eye contact thing is very significant. Totally agree with Misery: if you think you have Asperger's then you try to remember to behave in a not-too-Asperger'sy kind of way, and the constant effort is colossal; and of course if you're trying hard enough, a witless mental health professional won't see that it doesn't come naturally to you and it's costing you all the energy and concentration you can muster.

I think it may be called "masking", and maybe you've been masking too well?

The so-called specialist team who diagnosed me managed to miss more features of my Asperger's than they identified. The ensuing report was almost, though not quite, completely useless: I did find the "neuropsychological" section very illuminating, though, perhaps because the lady who did the psychometric test was more intelligent and switched-on than the buffoons who were in charge of the rest of the process. When I pointed out to my Community Psychiatric Nurse that the report missed more Asperger's stuff than it included and it was a miracle the team had actually succeeded in diagnosing me with Asperger's at all, she pulled a face and said this was alas typical in her experience.

I have known a psychiatrist refuse to even refer a blatantly autistic friend of mine for the diagnostic assessment. And the last psychiatrist I saw, after a grand total of 55 minutes at most, emphatically assured me none of my problems had anything to do with Asperger's at all; he even seemed faintly amused by the very suggestion. This was in 2017; his attitude was consistent with that of the psychiatrist who laughed me out of court in 1998 when I diffidently attempted to suggest an A.S.D. diagnosis.

So I would not trust a mental health professional to diagnose whether or not it was raining outside: I'd go to the damned window and have a good look for myself! They can be unbelievably purblind and unbelievably hasty and unbelievably slapdash, and they do not like having their actions or pronouncements questioned.

Part-way through my Asperger's assessment, I was so alarmed by all the relevant questions the professionals weren't asking and all the pertinent problems we weren't discussing that I took the desperate decision to start "vamping up" some more visually observable signs of A.S.D.: I deliberately started doing the kind of stuff I'd only normally do when alone, or else when extremely upset and distracted. Sure enough, that stuff found its way into the report! But the psychometric test cannot lie (or I'm not clever enough to fake Asperger's in a psychometric test), and that furnished incontrovertibly genuine and useful evidence, even if the professionals managed to overlook so much else.

So maybe the question you have to ask is: how much do you care what the so-called professionals think? Is there any practical advantage to getting a diagnosis? There were certainly advantages for me, so I'd always recommend trying to get one, but how much hangs on the diagnosis in your own personal case?

I've been to several mental health professionals and gotten several different diagnoses...I've gotten varying degrees of the brush off when I brought up Aspberger's every time. (I think the last time would have been different if I'd had the knowledge to understand exactly how much it affects my life...but I was still mistaking meltdowns for anxiety attacks because I'd never had access to the information about autism and sensory issues, and I only learned on my own years later.)

I'm always kind of amazed (and saddened) when in certain circles people insist that if you're not officially diagnosed, you don't have autism (like getting a diagnosis is like flipping a switch that suddenly imbues you with autism lol.) I've even seen people questioning others' documented diagnosis because they weren't "evaluated correctly" and "that's not how an evaluation works. You need to go back and get a REAL evaluation."....it's wild.

After being misdiagnosed with 3 cluster B personality disorders (because they refused to listen to what I was actually telling them, to the point of insisting on documenting things in the wrong chronological order despite being corrected multiple times and never bothered to look at how toxic the people around me were - if they'd had, they'd see my relationships were unstable because I was falling victim to some seriously damaging people, not because I'm inherently unstable. Either that, or I'm the first person in history to just...get over cluster B personality disorders with no treatment whatsoever lol.)...I have precisely zero faith in psychiatry in general. It seems that 'science' is something akin to ever evolving guesswork. I hope it doesn't remain that way, but currently it seems to be that way.

I'm on a tangent lol. OP I think honestly, the name given (or not given) to you by psychiatrists is largely irrelevant, unless you're being forced into harmful treatment or denied supports that you need. In which case, you need to push for a second opinion.

In the case of supports, you may be able to get what you need without a diagnosis, especially at your age - I'm not sure it really matters if you need supports for "age related" reasons or "autism" reasons, if the supports are more or less the same.

 

[Raphael Outcast]

I have a phenomenal imagination and I still think I'd fail that test...not because I'm incapable of making up a story, but because I don't feel comfortable being put on the spot like that and I'd clam up. I'm also not sure how well I'd do making up a story involving a bunch of random objects, because I'd be too busy overthinking it or thinking about how stupid this is to be able to perform.

Yup, this rings a bell with me. The people carrying out that test never bothered to establish a rapport, and the test happened in a room I wasn't comfortable in, in a hospital I had unhappy memories of, and I didn't have the Support Worker I was supposed to have to help me get to the appointment without having a panic attack and getting flustered etc.

I remember saying, "I'd be able to make up a story if I could go outside and roll a joint first." This comment went over the heads of the people carrying out the test...

I've been to several mental health professionals and gotten several different diagnoses...I've gotten varying degrees of the brush off when I brought up Asperger's every time. (I think the last time would have been different if I'd had the knowledge to understand exactly how much it affects my life...but I was still mistaking meltdowns for anxiety attacks because I'd never had access to the information about autism and sensory issues, and I only learned on my own years later.)

After being misdiagnosed with 3 cluster B personality disorders (because they refused to listen to what I was actually telling them, to the point of insisting on documenting things in the wrong chronological order despite being corrected multiple times and never bothered to look at how toxic the people around me were - if they'd had, they'd see my relationships were unstable because I was falling victim to some seriously damaging people, not because I'm inherently unstable. Either that, or I'm the first person in history to just...get over cluster B personality disorders with no treatment whatsoever lol.)...I have precisely zero faith in psychiatry in general. It seems that 'science' is something akin to ever evolving guesswork. I hope it doesn't remain that way, but currently it seems to be that way.

OP I think honestly, the name given (or not given) to you by psychiatrists is largely irrelevant, unless you're being forced into harmful treatment or denied supports that you need. In which case, you need to push for a second opinion.

Yes, I've been through a similar pantomime with the mental health profession, between 1995 and 2017. It would be some kind of a world record if I actually had all the conditions I've been diagnosed with. The "professionals" don't like listening, and they seldom bother to establish a rapport and get to know you, so you hardly ever get as far as talking about any of the most important and most relevant stuff, which is probably the stuff which made you and your doctor think you were on the autism spectrum in the first place and ask for the referral for the diagnostic assessment.

A wise comment from one psychiatric nurse circa 2011 was: "The trouble is, psychiatrists of Dr X's generation don't like diagnosing anything they can't prescribe medication for, and there is no medication for Asperger's, so Dr X ain't going to want to diagnose you with it."

So, good luck with your quest, if you still feel the quest is worth going on!

 

[Kalinychta]

Test for imagination was I had to make up a story for pieces of odds and ends like a toy car etc.

I am uncomforatable with eye contact but have learned to do it. I would rather not.

I have always had a huge imagination and been fantasy prone, but I wouldn’t have been able to come up with a story about car parts on the spot like that. No way. Few could. Actually, if you had been able to come up with a story, I would have classified that as evidence against your having autism, not the other way around.

About a year ago, I told my neurologist about my autism diagnosis, and he dismissed it in about 15 seconds despite that it isn’t even his area of expertise. He said I just have anxiety (um, yeah...most autistic people do). And he said I have good eye contact,...so case closed apparently, right? Nevermind that the psychologist who diagnosed me has been studying autism for years and even writes books on the matter. I didn’t bother to tell him that I do have trouble with eye contact; I just usually make myself do it because people expect me to, even though it makes the problems I have with verbal communication worse. And furthermore, not everyone with autism has trouble with eye contact. Some have no problem with it at all.

So, doctors have a tendency to be about as useful as a fart in a windstorm. But if you’re at all able to afford a psychologist in private practice who specializes in autism, go that route. There’s a better chance that she’ll actually know what she’s doing and will understand masking and how diverse autism is.

 

[Mary Lyn]

I need the diagnosis foremost to get help. I need a social worker to give me a report saying my housing situation is unsuitable as being social housing, there seems to be a higher risk in my flat complex, of anti social males being housed here. I have had various problems with such who bully me.

It will also confirm me and give me validation regarding the lifelong problems l have had, all very common here. But of course l will survive without a diagnosis and will continue to say l am on the spectrum where appropriate. Unfortunately l come across as very capable because of my intelligence.

 

[Kalinychta]

Just consider this there are thousands of women in the UK that are still not diagnosed ,we are still considered hypochondriacs, autism is still seen as the male condition five years after it was inferred that I was a hypochondriac I was diagnosed with autism if what you’ve noticed is your whole life and it doesn’t make any difference if they think it isn’t My mother sat in hospital for two weeks after she admitted herself with what I presume was a gruesome headache ,her speech was becoming slurred but she was kicked out of the hospital, collapsed and was taken in again that night ,she had to pay for a diagnosis herself,That’s the NHS doing things as quickly as possible, this is the NHS strategy you go to a GP they tell you to go to casualty ,you go to casualty they tell you to go to a GP ,nobody wants to Know ,Why do the job if you don’t want to do it ,let people do the job that want to do it,it would be better if they give us the money we pay for the NHS and we could pay for care ourselves .Then you could pay for a psychologist who wanted to take the time ,i’m still astounded that they said yes to me ,I thought their policy was get rid of people. I also find it very strange that only took an hour and a half, after you hear about people on this forum taking days.

Ha! Hypochondriacs... I call it hysteria, the diagnosis that used to be slapped on any woman who was unhappy staying home making Jell-O molds and ironing her husband’s socks. Or basically any woman who wasn’t “normal.” The hysteria diagnosis is alive and well despite being removed from the DSM in 1980 (not sure when in the UK). I did research for a paper once about how often women’s pain and symptoms are ignored by doctors. It’s staggering. We’re unofficially diagnosed with hysteria, given anti-depressants, and booted out the door. So it makes perfect sense that so many women are denied autism diagnoses. We don’t have autism; we’re hysterical.

 

[Streetwise]

Ha! Hypochondriacs... I call it hysteria, the diagnosis that used to be slapped on any woman who was unhappy staying home making Jell-O molds and ironing her husband’s socks. Or basically any woman who wasn’t “normal.” The hysteria diagnosis is alive and well despite being removed from the DSM in 1980 (not sure when in the UK). I did research for a paper once about how often women’s pain and symptoms are ignored by doctors. It’s staggering. We’re unofficially diagnosed with hysteria, given anti-depressants, and booted out the door. So it makes perfect sense that so many women are denied autism diagnoses. We don’t have autism; we’re hysterical.

My grandmothers doctor regularly had whatever complaint she visited him with .It appears to be if you have any mental health problem ,doctors have no interest, she was pregnant in 1959 and he is a male so it’s one thing he couldn’t have. it’s strange as a lot of the men in our family have mental health problems !but youre looked down on if you consume alcohol,Woe betide you’re going to a doctor if you’re mentally ill.

 

[Raphael Outcast]

I need the diagnosis foremost to get help. I need a social worker to give me a report ... It will also confirm me and give me validation regarding the lifelong problems l have had

These are good & compelling reasons to continue with your quest, and so good luck.

I persisted for not dissimilar reasons, although the ensuing diagnostic report failed to spell out some of the stuff I really needed it to spell out, and thus has since been wilfully misinterpreted and played down by cynical bureaucrats whose purpose was to deny the severity of my problem and the extent of my needs. Still, my doctor takes it very seriously and writes good letters fighting my corner, and I can confirm the "validation" aspect is wonderful—even more so than I'd ever anticipated or hoped, actually.

Insist on a Wechsler psychometric test, if you haven't already had one, and demand a full & unexpurgated copy of the findings: that was the most useful bit of the process for me, at least.


.

 

[Sarah S]

One thing we HAVE to keep in mind here is that the criterias for diagnose of especually ASD have been drasticly higher due to the simple fact that ASD = Autism diagnosis were widely over diagnosed in the past so i actually think its good that the diagnose criterias have been stepped up (i should add this is also the case with ADHD that dramaticly overdiagnosed young boys in the 90`s as soon as they were slightly over active )

Its also a fact that Autism or ASD dont have anything to do with IQ just as in life we come both in lower (like me ) or higher IQ or even Ord levels .

Lastly if youre indeed not ASD then thank youre lucky star and be happy as in my case all my diagnosis have done is to shatter what ever dreams i once had of geting a ordinary life . NOT saying you dont have it not saying you do either.

All im saying is not all the psychiatric faculty is all bad and dont give a ..... About us thats wrong to state as we all know there are good as well as bad ones out there. And if you belive this evaluation is wrong then indeed ask for another one but maybe this time ask fore more wide evaluation for possible similar diagnosis . You shouldent get to absorbed or locked by the posibility or beliefs you have Asbergers and thats it . You might have other closely related diagnosis for example.

And for the record my generation and those before me (born 71 ) dident know diddly about any of this kind of diagnosis so naturally we dident get much help then either. Since our time they have made massive Discoverys in this area and how to help.

If you look at my Signature you see they have between finding more and more diagnosis on me for every evaluation i have takend since i was 4 & its not that uncommon in general that this is the case.

 

[Streetwise]

One thing we HAVE to keep in mind here is that the criterias for diagnose of especually ASD have been drasticly higher due to the simple fact that ASD = Autism diagnosis were widely over diagnosed in the past so i actually think its good that the diagnose criterias have been stepped up (i should add this is also the case with ADHD that dramaticly overdiagnosed young boys in the 90`s as soon as they were slightly over active )

Its also a fact that Autism or ASD dont have anything to do with IQ just as in life we come both in lower (like me ) or higher IQ or even Ord levels .

Lastly if youre indeed not ASD then thank youre lucky star and be happy as in my case all my diagnosis have done is to shatter what ever dreams i once had of geting a ordinary life . NOT saying you dont have it not saying you do either.

All im saying is not all the psychiatric faculty is all bad and dont give a ..... About us thats wrong to state as we all know there are good as well as bad ones out there. And if you belive this evaluation is wrong then indeed ask for another one but maybe this time ask fore more wide evaluation for possible similar diagnosis . You shouldent get to absorbed or locked by the posibility or beliefs you have Asbergers and thats it . You might have other closely related diagnosis for example.

And for the record my generation and those before me (born 71 ) dident know diddly about any of this kind of diagnosis so naturally we dident get much help then either. Since our time they have made massive Discoverys in this area and how to help.

Have to add the autism Society in the UK!, used to be called the Society for autistic children(very telling), it appears to be! that if one of your siblings was classed as severely autistic !they seem to notice whether you are autistic!, before the 1990s!, apart from that ,you were left swinging !in the breeze.
Thanks !to Dr Lorna Wings Daughter she started to study autism more intensely !and then realised mild autism was not being dealt with, there is still a clinic in London ,sadly Lorna Wing is no longer alive.

 

[Raphael Outcast]

It's also a fact that Autism or ASD don't have anything to do with IQ

This is true and I'm not going to disagree with it. In fact I wouldn't disagree with any of the points Sarah S has made, so I'm guessing some parts of her IQ may actually be somewhat higher than her overall "Average" grading, because these are all pretty good points (if I may say so).

However, just to clarify, although the Wechsler test will produce an IQ score, that is not the value of the test, for our purposes. It is typical for someone with Asperger's to come out with a very "spiky" graph, i.e. notably good at some things and yet really bad at others, much more variation between abilities than in a "normal" person.

I'm looking at a report dated 14th April 2014 from a psychologist who seemed to know more or less what she was doing. She carried out my Wechsler test. There's an IQ score in each of four different ability categories, plus a total which (I guess) is an average derived from those four different scores. The variation between the lowest and the highest of my four separate scores is forty IQ points! And the psychologist's explanation of how that wide discrepancy affected my development, my life at university, my ability (or inability) to cope with certain kinds of stuff etc. was unbelievably illuminating, plus also validating once I'd begun to digest it.

Even within the four different ability scores, some of my sub-scores were wildly at variance with one another. Apparently a neurotypical person would be expected to emerge with a much more consistent set of scores. So although the diagnostic team, as a whole, overlooked huge amounts of Asperger'sy things in my case, the psychometric test was both unarguable and surprisingly useful. And so this is why I would advocate having a Wechsler test.

I am not a shareholder in the Wechsler organization, by the way!

 

[Sarah S]

="Raphael Outcast, post: 652013, member: 23403"]This is true and I'm not going to disagree with it. In fact I wouldn't disagree with any of the points Sarah S has made, so I'm guessing some parts of her IQ may actually be somewhat higher than her overall "Average" grading, because these are all pretty good points (if I may say so).

" Why thank you "

However, just to clarify, although the Wechsler test will produce an IQ score, that is not the value of the test, for our purposes. It is typical for someone with Asperger's to come out with a very "spiky" graph, i.e. notably good at some things and yet really bad at others, much more variation between abilities than in a "normal" person.

" A okey then . I had those tests again every evaluation since i was 4 "

I'm looking at a report dated 14th April 2014 from a psychologist who seemed to know more or less what she was doing. She carried out my Wechsler test. There's an IQ score in each of four different ability categories, plus a total which (I guess) is an average derived from those four different scores. The variation between the lowest and the highest of my four separate scores is forty IQ points! And the psychologist's explanation of how that wide discrepancy affected my development, my life at university, my ability (or inability) to cope with certain kinds of stuff etc. was unbelievably illuminating, plus also validating once I'd begun to digest it.

" Its also a well known fact that IQ tests are NOT suiteble nor accurate fore either ASD or ADHD ( im either remarkably below or Severly below average on all the Executive funktions fore example and same on all sub tests "

Even within the four different ability scores, some of my sub-scores were wildly at variance with one another. Apparently a neurotypical person would be expected to emerge with a much more consistent set of scores. So although the diagnostic team, as a whole, overlooked huge amounts of Asperger'sy things in my case, the psychometric test was both unarguable and surprisingly useful. And so this is why I would advocate having a Wechsler test.

" Well explained indeed "

I am not a shareholder in the Wechsler organization, by the way!

" HAHAHA thats okey neither am i "