Autism's confusing cousins

If you think you (or a loved one) may have a psychological condition, go to a psychologist and get a screening. The diagnosis isn't the important part. The value is in the 20-something pages of detailed analysis by a professional.

At a bare minimum, it will give you a fresh perspective on things you already knew. In my experiences, there will be things you didn't realize about yourself.

They aren't going to tell you what the solution is to all your problems; that's for you and your doctor to figure out. They will give you everything you need to make well-informed decisions, and that's priceless.

Autism diagnosis has targeted screening questionnaires. So what kind of general purpose screening do you mean?

Get screened for whatever you think you've got. Think you've got ADHD? Go get an ADHD screening. Autism? It's not easy to find a psych who does adult Autism screenings, but they're out there. OCD? You get the idea.

Regardless of whether the conclusion is "yes you have x" or "no you don't have x" the diagnosis will be accompanied by a detailed analysis of your psychological condition. Whether or not you are diagnosed, that analysis will cover the issues that led you to believe you may have that condition.

I'm getting a full neuro-psych screening next month because my therapist suspects I may have OCD. It's a 4-6 hour series of tests/interviews (and probably other stuff, I'll find out). I'm guessing that's what they're referring to?

I never understood why people, especially americans, are so hyperfocused on "mental health" and wear their pseudoscientific bullshit diagnoses like medals. I agree that there is a small fraction of people that do have mental issues, but it is very likely that most of the people that encourage "therapy" and yap about "mental health" very likely don't have any meaningful issues worth diagnosing and are just unnecessary burden on the medical system. The term "autism" in itself is so overused nowadays that it doesn't mean absolutely anything anymore, the fact that it doesn't have precise, rigorous definition doesn't help either.

This approach might help some, but it might hinder too.

There is a post here about someone who was misdiagnosed and bipolar and that later came up when security clearance was needed for a job.

I think you mean the full diagnostic process? Screening is just the first step in (what should be) a long process to decide whether the full workup makes sense. Screening takes on the order of minutes to an hour and it doesn't come with a diagnosis, the actual diagnostic process should take many hours and several appointments.

> It's not easy to find a psych who does adult Autism screenings, but they're out there

And it’s very expensive to get the diagnosis, it can be up to $20k in California

The problem is such screenings are incredibly expensive (at least in the US), and for things like ADHD or Autism, you need a specific screening that is often even more expensive.

Because it's what has been advertised to teenagers to maximize profit.

Western culture is a mental issue beyond repair. It will soon be gone and it will not be missed.

Maybe if you were less angry at people trying their best to live a life that's happier and easier, things might be easier for you.

By downvoting we missed out a joke: Lets apply the article to the comment

>> I never understood why ... americans ... wear their pseudoscientific bullshit diagnoses like medals.

> Borderline Personality Borderline personality disorder involves intense emotional instability, ... and devaluation of others.

>Social Communication Disorder ... knowing how much detail to give, adjusting their speaking style for different situations, understanding implied meanings or hints,

> B5: Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD): People diagnosed with ASPD show a lack of respect toward others. They generally don’t follow socially accepted rules.

> B5: Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD): People diagnosed with NPD have a sense of being better than others... They lack empathy for others

---

> I agree that there is a small fraction of people

What exactly makes you believe the fraction is small?

And even then if you get an autism diagnosis as an adult, this report is effectively all you get, there are no medicines or treatment options that this opens up afaict.

I'll ignore the baiting and just answer this: >> What exactly makes you believe the fraction is small?

Because it's not as prevalent in other societies. The fixation of Americans, and especially younger Americans with mental health is not something I've (or clearly, GP) witnessed elsewhere.

I don't think the discussion here is due to a lack of empathy, rather it's curiosity of people looking into this society from the outside (which we're doing all the time because we live in an Americanized world, after all). It seems like the participants in this game of self diagnosis and mental health crusade are very self centered and not very fit to deal with life (which is a complicated matter, I admit to that).

This is not to dismiss the hardships of those people professionally diagnosed with mental conditions, obviously.

I paid $150 on crap startup insurance.

You may be able to get accommodations from your employer. Maybe.

Nope, I've been architecting, creating, and maintaining web apps since 1996 (most recently 12 years at an S&P 500 company), but I can't do live coding interviews to save my life.

Nobody will accommodate me in two years of job searching. They don't deny me outright, they just ghost me if I ask to do a "take home" or any other alternative.

And then what?

Nobody will accommodates you.

Suing for ADA violations will cost $20k just for a retainer. And then it's a gamble if you win or not.

And the US government wants to aggregate us into a list for who knows what reason.

If you have a referral, it's much, much more reasonable. My spouse's autism screening was less than $200 on my terrible startup insurance.

Here are a few ideas to get you started: My spouse's paperwork has helped us change habits around the home to better fit their needs. They're getting better at self-advocacy, in part because it's easier to articulate what exactly feels wrong. Their quality of life was directly improved because we read the paperwork together, and took action based on it.

In lieu of repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178777

Mental health, like physical health, requires action on your part. If the only thing you're seeking from a diagnosis is accommodations from others, then yeah, you're probably going to be disappointed.

This is something you can do with a self-diagnosis. If reading the literature on autism gives you processes that improve your life, you don't need the diagnosis to confirm that. The life improvements were the end-goal in the first place.

This kind of presupposes that you have suspicions about autism rather than just something in general. If you think you have autism, you're can target that literature anyway regardless of the diagnosis, while if you have no concrete suspicions, you'll be firing blind, and probably miss a lot more than if you could nail it down to one diagnosis.

By the time I got mine, I didn't need the processes, since I'd figured those out by myself, so the diagnosis is just a nice piece of paper pointing to a road I've already walked.

For ADHD though, that story is very different, since step zero there really should be medication,[1][2] and that is locked behind a diagnosis.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2515906/

[2] https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd

you completely nailed it, i just want to add more thoughts:

> Because it's not as prevalent in other societies.

Is it because (a) we have not looked close enough, (b) because it is a culture dependent thing, or (c) because there is no norm and therefore no deviation.

> If you think you (or a loved one) may have a psychological condition, go to a psychologist and get a screening. The diagnosis isn't the important part. The value is in the 20-something pages of detailed analysis by a professional.

Throughout my entire interaction with psychiatry (years, on and off) I never figured this is a thing. Go figure.