Why is diagnosis so hard?

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Probably because there can be other factors to take into consideration by a neurologist/psychologist when diagnosing a disorder such the criteria for the DSM but that's if you live in the U.S. and I'm thinking Canada as well.

Rocket123 mentioned that they underwent neurological testing? I'm assuming that you had an MRI done because that is what neurological testing is. Psychological testing includes personality assessment, vocabulary assessment, inkblot test (although I'm not quite sure if that's used today), block testing, etc etc.

When I went for my psychological assessment before my NLD diagnosis the psychologist had me do the block test, a drawing test and verbal vocabulary test where he gave me a word and I had to verbally give him the definition of the word.

Also learning disorders can be diagnosed by psychologists. The one who gave me my diagnosis was a clinical psychologist. He didn't seem to think I had Asperger's, which I don't, but vaguely mentioned that I might have a visual processing disorder. When I finally saw the evaluation it had nonverbal learning disability on it.

RaspberryFrosty – Yikes. I should have referred to it as "Neuropsychological" testing. My apologies for any confusion.

Lol. It's okay.

I think my testing was also neuropsychological in nature. I didn't do any personality tests or the inkblot test. Hmm...I'd have to research that a bit more.

I asked the Psychologist who diagnosed me why the inkblot test was included. The Psychologist indicated that she included the Rorschach Test as one way to measure for the presence of a Personality Disorder (because I had mentioned several personality disorders as being a possible cause for some of my behavioral symptoms). I thought the Rorschach test was interesting. Even more interesting was reading about it (on Wikipedia and in books) following the actual test.

I see the woman's reproductive system everytime I see a Rorschach image.

The psychologist that I saw also mentioned avoidant personality disorder for me and then denied every saying anything about it.