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From what I’ve seen, here are some of the arguments against self-diagnosing:
- Allistic people using autism as an excuse for their behaviors/difficulties, then denying the difficulties that actually autistic people experience and misrepresenting autistic people.
- Narcissistic and psychopathic people pretending to be autistic to manipulate others, including actually autistic people.
- Misdiagnosing themselves when their difficulties are actually related to other root causes, such as prolonged childhood abuse.
In the first two arguments, the problem with self-diagnosing is the social impact it has on others, including the autistic community. I can see why some people are against self-diagnosing since it could make their lives harder, especially autistic people. The last one is more about helping the individual properly understand them-self and developing a proper course of action to improve their lives, so it’s an argument rooted in care.
I am not entirely against self-diagnosis. However, I think it could be re-phrased to “self-identified” since “diagnosis” is a medical term. It would be like a person saying, “I’m self-diagnosed with depression.” That person isn’t diagnosed with depression, though they very well may be depressed. It’s really just a pedantic issue from my perspective. Regardless, I don’t really care one way or the other because I understand what they are saying and think that an actually autistic person self-identifying as autistic is valid enough. Still, while I wont invalidate someone for self-identifying by gatekeeping autism, I tend to be a little cautious at first because of my experiences with people pretending to be autistic. In this case, I think the issue is that some jerks just can’t let us have nice things.
I think that the biggest issue is that in many places (the UK is a personal example), the services are so utterly over stretched and overflowing capacity that there is literal years long waiting lists in some parts of the country.
In York area, unless you become a priority case due to being a risk of self/other harm then they have a waiting list of over 4000 people, with the capacity to only process 160ish per year. I’ll let you figure out that maths by yourself. It’s fucking hopeless. So with an official diagnosis effectively impossible to self ‘diagnose’ is your only option and you have to hope that the people around you are supportive enough to trust you and help regardless.
Not to mention the difficulty in even getting a referral to an assessment for the diagnosis. The steps in place are practically brick walls to us with the requirements needed to fulfill. You need to get an appointment with your GP (good luck since it’s not an emergency), then you need to hope they have some understanding/experience enough to identify if you would be suitable for a referral, then you need to convince them you need a referral, then you have to wait for the specialist to pick you up and be put on the wait list, blah blah blah.
Why go through all that energy when you can just ‘diagnose’ yourself and carry on with struggling the way you always have. After all, as long as you keep your routine it’ll be fine…right?
Except it fucking isn’t, but what other choice is there?
Ah, that makes sense why people feel so strongly about advocating for self-diagnosis. It also makes sense why some people are really concerned that they weren’t autistic enough at their assessments because re-evaluation could be near impossible. That’s such a disservice to the autistic community. What do they expect people to do while they wait for assessment? It’s not like people are doing great and think, “Maybe all my success is because I’m autistic.” If this comes up, there are probably some considerable difficulties going on for someone to consider they’re autistic. I was not aware of that and sorry you’re in that situation. Thank you for sharing.
If you have the energy to endure the process, it might still be a good idea to get on the wait-list. Three years are going to go by whether you’re on it or not. However, I could see being pretty distraught should the GP be invalidating by denying a referral and potentially having that in your national medical record. Another idea would be to maybe find a way to save up little by little to see a private provider, even if it takes a few years.
BTW, I want to be clear that I’m thinking of ways you could get assessed only because the diagnosis was very helpful for me to make sense of things and access proper autism services.
I’m currently not sure how I feel about a proper official diagnosis at this stage. With the stigma around mental health illnesses 8 worry it’ll just be used against me. My journey with this is still very young (read: days) so a lot of stuff I’m finding out quite fresh and this particular nugget of info was as soon as this very morning.
There are other routes you can go through such as charities, the main one being ‘Right to Choose’ who support you with how to approach your GP, templates for letters, what to say to the various people you need to speak to and such. They also act as a tool for you to find support groups, specialists etc etc.
Sounds amazing, right? Hell yeah. Except they’re so utterly overflowing they’ve been closed to new referrals/applicants since the end of August.
2 weeks too late. Honestly, man. You can’t make this stuff up.
That sounds incredibly frustrating. Feel free to reach out to the community if you want! There is a hunch of helpful people on here, and we even have a chat going that you can reach via the sidebar.
For the first two things, there’s always going to be manipulative assholes that grasp onto anything they think will garnish sympathy. Rather than targeting otherwise innocent behaviour that goes along with manipulation, we should be educating people about what manipulation is and how to avoid it.
For mental health issues, it comes down to, your mental condition might explain your behaviour but it doesn’t excuse it. If your behaviour is causing me harm, I don’t need to accept that for any reason. All a diagnosis does is provides you with more information about how to manage your shit.
If someone uses a diagnosis to justify their behaviour, they are essentially saying that this is the way they will always be, which IMO is even more reason for others to take their own steps to mitigate those behaviours, which might mean cutting them out emotionally, cutting them out entirely, or getting help from others to do those.
Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm and stop letting them manipulate you.
The term “identified” is used as an insult, particularly when referring to transgender people, to imply that they aren’t really correct. I don’t think it’s appropriate to use that in the context of autism, because many of the people who do believe themselves to be autistic do go on to get professionally diagnosed. I became interested about 20 years ago in the possibility that I may be autistic, as I met all of the criteria, but only recently did I actually get the resources to pay for a diagnosis. It cost me nearly $3500.
The problem is that self-diagnosis IS valid, when it is valid, and is not valid, when it is not valid.
The term “identified” is used as an insult, particularly when referring to transgender people,
I haven’t heard that before. Is the current progressive trend to avoid using the term “identify” entirely? If so, let’s say I was completing an interview, and I needed to ask someone what ethnicity(ies) they identify with, how would I ask that?
It varies in practice. Most people I see using identify, including many trans people, are well-intentioned and think it’s the preferred polite language without thinking too hard on the implications of it.
However there are definitely anti-trans people who will use it pejoratively, which I presume is where that wording originated.
“What is your ethnicity?”
“Hispanic”
You need a third party to evaluate it.
It’s almost impossible to be truly objective when looking back at your own actions and how you reacted.
My mother has mental health issues which I personally think are due to BPD. She thinks her problem is just that she pulls her hair and feels stressed, and has absolutely no awareness of her other abnormal behaviours.
It’s kind of on the opposite side of self diagnosis but I think it’s still relevant, because ultimately her internal logic makes all of her actions seem normal to her and she can’t view it objectively.
Who wrote this rubbish? Doctors aren’t willingly recommending abuse, and most of them refer to specialists.
Depends how long ago. There’s still an old ped in my city that doesn’t believe in autism and ADHD.
Or where geographically. Some places are more backwards than others.
For real. The “works for me so you are a liar” vibes in this comment section is making me sad.
If he or she is still licensed, report them to the state medical board. They should be referring people to a psych specialist anyway.
I am not in the US.
And no, that’s not our system, a ped will consider the information provided by a psych, but generally someone from allied health or a GP will have already referred to various professions before they see the ped.
Doctors aren’t willingly recommending abuse
Boomer doctors aren’t dead yet, and haven’t learned anything since the 70s.
But seriously, think about whatever industry you’re in. Surely there are the ‘old guys’ who haven’t kept up with the progress, but are still around kind of doing a poor job of things. Not all old people, surely, but a fair number. At least, that’s how it is in IT.
Boomer doctors aren’t dead yet, and haven’t learned anything since the 70s.
Apparently you have never heard of required CME’s.
That still doesn’t mean they recommend “abuse.” Every doctor in the US must renew their medical license every few years and that means taking continuing medical education classes. Nobody is recommending therapy from the 70s anymore.
Also, it’s still vague about what this “abuse” is so it’s hard to debunk a vague accusation.
ABA therapy. That is the abuse being referred to.
This article is really really good, I think it deserves to be a post of it’s own. This quote is the best description of the way I experience being verbal that I’ve found:
When you are autistic, talking can be exhausting. Even if you are extremely verbal like I am – adults praised my precocious vocabulary as a child, and I have often been called a “chatterbox” – vocal speech is draining. My well of words may be deeper than that of most other autistic people, but it is not bottomless.
Also, it’s still vague about what this “abuse” is so it’s hard to debunk a vague accusation.
So you’ve already made up your mind that it’s something that needs to be debunked before you even know what “abuse” refers to?
It’s shit like this that keeps hurting credibility of anyone defending established practices, right or wrong.
I have a distinct recollection of professors at a UNC Chapel Hill department cocktail party comparing notes on their psychoanalysts in the late 2000’s.
Psychologists are not the same as physicians or psychiatrists. Your 20 year old anecdote isn’t proof of anything, sorry.
It was a poor attempt at humor. Sorry. EDIT: oh, it’s you. Hello Newman. Destroyer of humor. Psychoanalysts can have MDs. They’re a relic of one aspect of health that mainly and rightly died out in the 70s. There.
ABA is abuse and very commonly recommended to autistic people (or more often, forced on autistic kids by parents).
Oh is that what ABA stands for?
I thought it stood for American Bar Association. I still do, since no other definition was offered. I would disagree that the American Bar Association is abuse.
It refers to Applied Behavioural Analysis.
It’s funny that someone is so triggered by implications that ABA even exists that they downvoted you for factually pointing out what the acronym stands for.
Please show me where a currently licensed doctor is referring people to it.
I just searched “aba therapy near me” and “aba therapy clinic” and got dozens of results. They’re not close-but-not-exact matches, either. These are places that literally describe themselves on their home page as focusing on delivering ABA services to children.
Considering referrals issued by a licensed doctor are considered confidential, and illegal to share without patient consent in many areas, the ability/inability to present such a referral as evidence is not a good criteria for whether it happens or not. But the prevalence of specialists that offer these services certainly indicates that specialists are finding it a profitable business model. I suppose it is possible that the vast majority of their business does not come from doctor referrals, but that seems unlikely.
A lazy google search you didn’t even bother to cite is not proof. You’re not going to find licensed MDs or DOs endorsing this practice, because it’s outdated and warned against in CME (ergo anyone who has a current medical license had training on what the actual therapies are), though I can’t speak to psychologists as they run the gamut of modern medicine to neo-Freud.
You’re letting your prejudices against doctors override the reality of todays healthcare.
What you say is probably true for your country or region. It is not global. Variations are extreme.
Way to double down on your hypocrisy.
As I pointed out, your demand for examples of licensed doctors providing formal referrals as the only acceptable proof is ridiculous. In the US that is covered by HIPAA, and illegal to share without permission from the patient. You’re essentially saying “the only proof I will accept is anecdotal evidence provided by a patient willing to share their confidential medical records.” The fact that you skipped right over addressing that when it was pointed out suggests that you are operating out of a position of emotional investment, rather than actual interest in discussion.
The fact that I actually provided you the google searches I used, then to have you not only refuse to bother trying then but also pretend that I never supplied them in the first place (pro-tip: “I googled the phrase ‘aba therapy clinic’” is functionally the same as “https://www.google.com/search?q=aba+therapy+clinic”) just makes it more hilariously clear that you started with a position (that doctors are reliable and would never do anything abusive), and are simply approaching discussion by looking for ways to immediately discredit and dismiss any and all statements that don’t agree with your preconceived worldview.
The funny part is that I don’t even know if ABA is “abuse”. There’s certainly a lot of literature about how it was, but more recent material claims that the most egregious elements of abuse have been removed. I only chimed in to point out that ABA is absolutely a current thing, despite your hilarious attempts to insist otherwise. Your imaginations of my own “prejudice” mixed with your mewlings about “the reality of today’s healthcare” only add to the humor of your clownish responses.
Picking a random location (New Haven Connecticut), here are some clinics advertising ABA therapy: https://www.achievebeyondusa.com/locations/connecticut/ https://cultivatebhe.com/locations/connecticut/new-haven/ https://www.autismlearningpartners.com/locations/connecticut/new-haven-county/new-haven https://www.autismspeaks.org/provider/proud-moments-aba-new-haven (of course the ultra-shitty “Autism Speaks” currently endorses ABA!) https://www.abrandnewdayaba.com/
Here’s a couple of “top 10 ABA therapy providers in New Haven”: https://beaminghealth.com/aba-therapy/new-haven-06510/all https://m.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Aba+Therapy&find_loc=new+haven%2C+ct
But yeah, let’s just go with “ABA doesn’t exist any more because no one is showing me an actual physical referral from a doctor specifying ABA on it” so you can pat yourself on the back and feel safe from being wrong on the internet :D
Did you even bother to read your own links? The first one has no physicians and doesn’t need a referral by one, they said ABA is given by “Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and highly trained Behavior Therapist (BT) or Registered Behavior Technician (RBT).” Those aren’t doctors.
Once again, your anger is misplaced; I never said ABA doesn’t exist but I said you don’t see licensed physicians referring people to it. Go back and read again since you must have missed that in your anger. You’re insisting on a Google search without understanding what you’re looking at. HIPAA is not an excuse when the therapies are publicly advertised, and you have failed to prove your claims. Have a nice day.
I looked for a diagnosis. Called lots of providers and, in summary, they only providers that could accept me were expensive and lengthy. I don’t have light or sound sensitivity (which isn’t required) so I don’t need accommodations. I don’t have trama and have worked through most of my issues so I don’t need therapy. There’s objectively no benefit to getting a diagnosis for me other than claiming I have ASD. And there’s some negatives, especially if traveling abroad. So yeah, with that, I don’t want a professional diagnosis. I did lots of research and checked more than enough boxes in the DSM-5 to validate myself. Others’ validation isn’t worth a couple thousand dollars and hours of consultation over a year. If I needed support, it might be worth it, but personally, I feel I’m in a good place.
I was searching for why I am different and found that it had a name and there are other who have similar experiences that I can relate to. That’s good enough for me.
I get gatekeeping and that people may be spreading false information or making the community look bad. Call them out then. Otherwise, an educated self-diagnosis isn’t harming anyone. Let people be at peace with their sense of self.
What are these negatives you mentioned if traveling abroad?
Traveling isn’t much of an issue, but emigrating can be prevented to some places like Australia and New Zealand.
Also on self diagnosis: unfortunately too many people.read a Facebook post and then self diagnose thelrmselves with
Not trying to argue against this image, I’ll skip that as I don’t know much about it, but yeah. I actually know a few people who self diagnosed with autism, ocd and whatnot and they’re just in it for the attention it gets them
Then they probably need some attention fr. Like Professional attention. Some need is not being met
I‘m a little shocked at the amount of gatekeeping in this community. That was less of a problem on reddit tbh.
We „the autistic community“ have decided that self diagnosis is valid and that is a fact. So lets just not discuss the idea of the boogeyman posing as an autistic person and just accept people.
Thanks and have a great day. :)
A posted picture by an individual is not a community collectively deciding.
I know and I wasn’t specifically addressing that picture but also multiple comments stating that someone might abuse self diagnosis, which to me is just gatekeeping.
That’s not gatekeeping
This is gatekeeping:
We „the autistic community“ have decided that self diagnosis is valid and that is a fact. So lets just not discuss
Gatekeeping is specifically excluding people for arbitrary stated reasons. You’re keeping the gate closed when you gatekeep
so let’s just not discuss
No, it is not.
From oxford languages:
the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something. “Wal-Mart’s cultural gatekeeping has served to narrow the mainstream for entertainment offerings”
so let’s just not discuss
We „the autistic community“ have decided that self diagnosis is valid
You are not the entire autistic community. Accept that people can have different opinions.
I never said that. But I am part of it and I am happy that we accept people who self diagnose since it is tremendously difficult in certain circumstances to get a diagnosis.
Additionally, I find it unfair to not state „the autistic community as a whole has decided but my opinion is different“. People will get the wrong impression and we further empower aba and other anti autistic measures if we allow gatekeeping.
I‘m not trying to fight here. I just want people not alienated. Make any sense?
Your view makes sense and you’re free to believe it.
But many others have different views.
For example the comment of whoisearth described a negative experience with overinclusion. Their view is valid and to be considered.
You answered with “let’s just not try and gatekeep and we’re on the same page”, simply ignoring their point and asking them to unconditionally adopt your view.
You are free to only consider your view and ignore or even discredit others (as “gatekeeping”).
But do not act like you represent us.
Thanks. I just want to clarify on some things which might be obscure since autism and all:
- I accept that whoisearth made these experiences but I don’t come to the same conclusion.
simply ignoring their point and unconditionally adopting your view
No. That is not what I said. It just does not make sense to me to draw a conclusion like that from this experience. Also, the „silent masses“ is not an argument, no sources have been cited and it is an anecdotal fallacy. (I.e.: I made this experience so this is representative)
If you google „autism self diagnosis valid“ you will find many articles stating that in general, self diagnosis is a way of dealing with the very limited resources in autism healthcare and considered a more helpful strategy at this point.
We are talking about people harming themselves or worse because they are helpless and don’t know what to do. Gatekeeping cost’s lives.
Also, if someone wants to challenge me, attack the idea that invalidating self diagnosis is gatekeeping (which will probably fail) and not me personally because it shows lack of character.
The summary of this imo is that the experience of parents to autistic children to late/undiagnosed autistic adults could not be more different and we should probably just leave our pent up emotions at home and try to find common ground and accept eachother. What happens otherwise (which we have seen) is two sides usually living in their echo chambers and disresprecting the other side when they come in contact.
It’s pretty impossible for me to explain autistic thinking of an adult to anyone not on the spectrum because it’s night and day from allistic thinking.
I made this experience so this is representative
That is not what they claimed. They claimed to represent “many”, not everyone. Only you made that claim.
You can tell them that their argument is “an anecdotal fallacy” for which “no sources have been cited” and ask them to provide further evidence. That is not what you did. (You responded with your own sourceless anecdote, followed by the aforementioned.)
attack the idea that invalidating self diagnosis is gatekeeping (which will probably fail) and not me personally
You seem to have misunderstood my intent.
I don’t really have a strong opinion about people who self diagnose. It does not matter to me whether or not they’re freely included. As such, I do not intend to “attack the idea that invalidating self diagnosis is gatekeeping”. As I said, you’re free to have that opinion, I won’t challenge it.
The thing I do have an issue with is how you presented your opinion as without alternative, claiming to represent the autism community as a whole and disregarding others’ points of view.
You can try to invalidate my point, insulting me by saying that criticising your way of presenting and discussing views “shows lack of character”.
But that won’t stop me from telling you to please stop unreasonably misrepresenting and disregarding others in the future.
You‘re splitting hairs now and I wont go along with that.
I do accept that I could have phrased it better, my core point was correct though.
Have a good day.
We „the autistic community“ have decided that self diagnosis is valid and that is a fact.
So true and I recommend anyone who spends time in online autism communities just get involved in IRL autism communities instead. I find online autism communities utterly toxic and full of gatekeeping and hatred for self diagnosis, which no one I’ve met in person has ever had a problem with.
Thanks for saying that. I was genuinely baffled that nobody actually came to support this.
No problem. I remember talking to my friend who works in autism support before my assessment, and I was shocked when he said it’s still valid to identify as autistic even if you get a negative diagnosis. I said “they wouldn’t like that on the autism forums” and he just rolled his eyes. The online community really isn’t what the community is like!
My assessor said the same thing. There’s a spectrum of symptoms and no objective test, and ultimately for low support needs, whether yours reach the clinical significance for a diagnosis is a judgement call. You wouldn’t have passed the preliminary meeting to get a full assessment at all if you didn’t have autistic traits.
Thanks for elaborating. I mean, I would say someone who thinks they are autistic would most likely have a reason for that. Mostly that is more than one or or one very strong autistic trait. Without that I would ask how they concluded they might be autistic.
An then there is the somewhat tinfoil hat style idea that you have trolls and non autistic people in online communities to an extend who can make the majority if a group is very small and not moderated enough. That way you can end up with people preferring to judge if others are valid instead of blanket accepting everyone.
There are a lot of factors that can contribute to this. Also, I have met people who pretty sure are on the spectrum but who are ableists par excellence since they were molded to fit society’s standards. So, there is a ton of stuff to take care of in a sub like this.
This is so not the case as on reddit and I’m disappointed to hear someone say that. As the father of an L2 child the majority of autistic and “autistic” people online are the exception not the rule. This is why subreddits like spicyautism came around because of the deluge of asshats who don’t represent the silent masses of autism minimizing the struggles of life.
I’m sorry if that comes across confrontational but it’s the reason why for many, myself included, the main autistic subs became a toxic cesspool of self diagnosed people invalidating real autistic people because they know better.
It really comes off confrontational. As an autistic adult with an autistic wife I can vouch for the exact opposite. It took me years to get a diagnosis, same for my wife.
We don’t have any resources for autistic adults, doctors don’t know shit about autism in adults and if someone has an abuse trauma, they get institutionalized for that instead of looking at the bigger picture.
I don’t wan to fight you. Your feelings and experiences are valid. Let’s just not try and gatekeep and we‘re on the same page, deal?
@Haui @whoisearth
I don’t understand your “It really comes off confrontational.” What is it in your words.I had one visit with a pcp, and then read his session notes because I could. It was obvious that he really didn’t get what I said and instead reported that I was flakey, rather than consider that there was more depth than he could recognize. I wrote to correct him. I may have to teach him that diferent is not bad or dumb or a disability, it can also be a superpower. Just because I stim behind my back, doesnt mean that I can’t understand particle physics and ask hard questions, or sometime overload and need to leave the room. Medicine is dumb.
You are right, yo don’t want to fight me. As a camo I’m not exactly sure that my feelings are valid, even though my memories are sharp, and I know what I did would piss some people off. I mean, the past is the past and i’m not denying it happened. The reframe is comfort. Every day, millions of 'Oh yeah’s.
I’m working on figure it out.
I‘m having a hard time finding the source of the miscommunication here but I get you. It is insanely frustrating to talk with the uninitiated about autism in adults.
My therapist stepped on my feelings so many times I can’t count them. „Do you really think you‘re autistic?“ well, the diagnosis says so and I also stimm a lot, have selective mutism, lack facial expressions, don’t understand body language, cant read or remember faces, am mindblind and countless other things I can’t think of rn.
I‘m not stupid either but it turns out I‘m very easy to take advantage of if I trust someone. Bad combination.
Spicyautism came about as a troll subreddit for non-autistic parents of autistic children to talk about how much they hate low support needs autistic adults. They only posts there that get more than 20 upvotes are “Here’s why I don’t think L1s really have autism”
Proof of just hurting your feels?
Proving my point? You’re a non-disabled person trolling a disability forum with ableism, but you think you have some righteous justification because you know somebody with a more severe disability. And you’ll never self reflect on it. Spicyautism in a nutshell.
“Most doctors recommend abusive therapy to kids and teens” I’ve experienced that first hand and is the reason why I feel that being diagnosed was the worst thing to happen to me and is the reason why I typically try to hide the fact I’m autistic only ever admit it when I feel absolutely safe
I’m sorry that happened to you
This sounds terrible. My daughter recently got an autism diagnosis which we’ve been able to use to help get her better accommodations in school. Would you mind clueing me in to some of this abusive therapy stuff so that I can recognize it if she ends up in a situation like that?
Well when I was first diagnosed my school would just occasionally lock me in a room separated from the rest of my class and it only somewhat ended when my parents found out what was happening and even then the extra help I got was just doing my school work in a different room and when I tell them it’s not helping my teacher would simply lock me up again all the extra help did was just preventing me from having a social life and all of this was happening even after changing schools and all my folks could do is find a psychiatrist that would undiagnose me Edit: in hindsight I recall seeing a reddit post I’m to lazy to dig back up on r/Vermont talking about how a pedophile was fired from a daycare and the comments were talking about how it turns out child abuse is commonplace in Vermont daycares and that very same predator got a job at a different daycare so I guess the moral of all this is if you’re a parent keep your kids far away from Vermont the schools have abousers and the daycares have predators
Happy to to get a formal diagnosis if anyone wants to cash app me $2,500!
My legitimately incredible health insurance doesn’t give a shit if I’m autistic despite my doctor and therapist both wanting me screened! Not to mention the ~18 month wait to see the one person that does adult screenings in my state.
I feel you!
I’m on my fourth year and third attempt at even getting access to a professional. My current open options would be to travel abroad and pay $2500 to get a diagnosis that isn’t medically valid in my country.
To be honest, I didn’t even know I had ASD until I got my diagnosis for ADHD, which I didn’t know I had either. And now that ADHD is, let’s say, under some control, my ASD traits are more evident.
EDIT: I was diagnosed 6 months ago, just for clarification, at 35 years old.
Same. Was diagnosed last year at almost 41.
Same
36 and diagnosed a bit over a year ago. ;)
Living in a country that is still on ICD-10 (Autism definitions from the literal 80s), and professionals refusing to test anyone who isn’t a child with severe dysfunction: Screw gatekeeping.
Yes, there are people who claim this or that incorrectly, and are really REALLY annoying about it, but don’t let those assholes define how you treat people who have spent a lot of time figuring themselves out and need to not feel like a crazy space alien.
In Australia, our healthcare doesn’t fund diagnosis’ for people over 18. So even if you can find someone that will assess you as an adult, you have to pay out of pocket. I recently (last month) got a diagnosis because I found a psychologist who has a sliding fee scale. I was self-diagnosed for 6 years before that.
I was diagnosed in my late 40s. And yes my wife and I looked it up, and having that diagnosis can only limit the treatment available to me. But the US mental health system is underfunded.
It’s also impacted thanks to the epidemic and lockdown of 2020. So, it’s going to be hard to be treated in the US unless you have money.
And then the public serving mental health system is connected to our penal system and has similar abuse issues. One in three inpatients are abused, either sexually or violently, or are put on tranquilizers by the nurse (collaborating with the house psychiatrist) so you won’t be any trouble. If you’re committed in a public institution expect to not get any better while you’re in. And they’ll cover up any harm done.
(For private facilities, do research in advance regarding their rate of incidents. If you can have legal council available to you do so.)
So we have to depend on each other for help. So its imporant that we assume everyone else is here in good faith until there’s evidence otherwise. Note a lot of us are not good with interpersonal discourse. A lot of us instinctively mask for fear of harm and persecution — a concern in the US, UK, Canada and elsewhere as the rising transnational white power movement gains momentum and expands its list of undesirables.
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an on-record autism diagnosis: can be used to deny you custody of children, to have your kids taken away, to forcibly institutionalize you
Yep. That’s why I’m not pursuing one. Also why I’m not looking into transitioning.
