the issue of self diagnosis

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Double post.

Nothing new in what I?m going to write but we have new people all the time who have not read my writings. My writings will be USA centric which may or not be relevant elsewhere. *

I believe a professional diagnosis by a specialist in how ASD presents in your age group and gender is preferable to self diagnosis. A profession diagnosis involving better questionnaires, structured interviews with others has less of a chance of a misdiagnois then self-diagnoses does because self diagnosis adds risk of confirmation bias, denial and just being too close the situation. Many on the spectrum are categorization oriented and need validation of a professional diagnosis.

We do know that professional diagnosis is out of reach financially for many. Less discussed is that with the amount of specialists in adults and females being minimal that proper clinician is not only financially out of reach but psychically out of reach. I do believe with Autism being a specific list of observable traits rather than something you have to run psychical tests for(for now) self diagnosis is likely to be correct more often than not. Therefore self diagnosis is much preferred over doing nothing.

I also strongly believe self diagnosis is preferable to going to a general psychologist/psychiatrist or a specialist in childhood autism. Going to them is a crapshoot http://www.thefreedictionary.com/crapshoot .You might get somebody who is knowledgeable in autism but more often not you will get somebody that will make such basic mistakes as saying your are (female/adult/have a job) therefore you can?t be autistic, will say or imply you are making it up or give you the wrong label. Such misdiagnosis is worse than doing nothing. Doing nothing keeps the status quo, having somebody with authority misdiagnosing you or denying your ASD pushes you backward, sometimes way backwards.

*I am surprised how similar the diagnosis issues and problems are worldwide to those here.