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You could get informal support like that by saying you have autistic traits and some problems related to them or you suspect you may have ASD but haven't been diagnosed. Self-diagnosing wouldn't get you anything more than that, I don't think. There's nothing wrong with informal support and no reason why people with autistic traits shouldn't be able to avail themselves of it. As for people who need government or formal support (accommodations in order to keep a job, for example) I think they should have access to professional assessment and it's a failure of the government that they don't always. I live in Canada, which is far from a perfect county but at-least if someone is having serious problems in their life they can be referred to a mental health professional to be assessed and diagnosed at no cost, as long as they're a resident (there are probably tons and tons of homeless people who are never treated for mental/developmental problems here).

It is a serious problem that people don't have access to low cost mental health services, but I don't think that self diagnosis is solution to that problem.

That is true. But how exactly does a professional determine the difference between Autistic traits and Autism?

If I told some of these groups that I met that I had Autistic traits and just suspected that I had ASD, most of them would not have offered me their services. They would have told me to get diagnosed and come back when I had a real diagnosis. I actually had some conversations like that. It was not until I told some of them how I found out that I was on the Spectrum that they were willing to give me their services. Most of them would have let me in as a helper or a volunteer but not as a person to be helped. There is a big difference in the two. In fact most of the people thought that I was there to sign up to be a volunteer or that I had an Autistic child and it was not until I told them my story that they were willing to consider me as someone seeking help.

It can be a very cruel situation if someone suffers and is impaired in their every day life because of this. I have friends who tell me their relatives or kids have Autistic traits or they think they could have Autism. But these people have nowhere near the severity and frequency of issues that I have. Not even close. They function very well in their lives and the mild issues that they exhibit or the frequency of their issues doesn't seem to really affect their daily lives very much. Now of course I don't live with them so I can't know for sure just like people often mistaken me at first. But once people get to know me at least as well as I know them they can tell something is definitely not normal with me. They can't always tell what but they know it's something.

So if you can't get any real significant help anyway because you can't afford the diagnosis it becomes very disheartening and cruel to have to be denied a bowling outing or a camping trip when you know how impaired your daily life is. People who come to the conclusion that they are Autistic usually do so because they are impaired enough that they really can't function in normal society. People who just have a few traits, and please correct me if I am wrong, I am very sincere about this, but I believe that if you only have some traits you might not be very impaired in your daily life and you can probably get by pretty well. And I am only going by my own experience and by the people I know who have told me that they have "traits" or that they suspect they might have Autism.

One my buddies the other day told me when I was telling him about some of the huge Autistic type struggles I was having, that he thinks his son is on the Spectrum because he is very intelligent and at 5 he is reading at a second grad level. That was his only reason for thinking his kid might have a "touch of Autism". He thinks every super smart or academically gifted kid is on the Spectrum. So to tell these groups that you suspect you might be on the Spectrum unless they go into details of why you think that, you might not be welcomed as a person who needs help in their group.

But I really think that by the time you are an adult you know how impaired you are. Well, maybe not exactly. I was 27 when I found out that daily sensory overload massive migraines that last all day long are not normal. I had no idea of the severity of my situation until I found out that everybody else does not suffer like this. I thought everyone had shutdowns and meltdowns. I thought it was normal to have suicidal thoughts every couple of months. I thought everyone's fingers burned if they touched something that they did not like the sensation of. I thought everyone had sensory looping and the list goes on. So I had no idea of how impaired I actually was. That is why it did not make sense to me why everyone else could hold a job or live independently when I never could. I could not understand why people did not get it that I had a little child side because it was normal for me. But once I moved out of the sheltered environment of my parent's house and had to try to live on my own, it was absolutely impossible. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, I could not do it. My life was and is severely impaired and every reason has to do with a criteria on the DSM 5 list that defines Autism.

Now I could just say, "I suspect that I could possibly have this." or, "I have a few traits." It certainly would not be wrong to say those things but those sentences would not accurately describe what I live through every day of my life and how I struggle and how difficult my life can be and my inability to function normally. But if I say, "I have thoroughly researched this and I have self diagnosed myself according to the criteria of the DSM." that is actually more accurate. Now I personally had the great fortune of having been able to be evaluated by professionals so I am 99% sure that an official diagnosis would concur with their findings. The fact that my evaluations were done off the record does not change the findings. But not everyone is going to be that lucky. So if you really are impaired and you know it and you have done enough research to truly believe that you fit the criteria of the DSM, and you can't get real substantial help anyway, is it really that bad to say, "I am a self diagnosed Autism Spectrumite?" If it means the difference between whether you get to go bowling with a bunch of people who will accept you or whether you are rejected or whether you get to be put on a list to receive a homemade donated weighted blanket or not, I think it would be cruel to tell people that they have to say, I have a few traits or I only suspect I might be on the Spectrum. These people can't get real benefits anyway so why chance denying them a few moments of pleasure and self esteem building or lessons in how to cook a meal or do a load of laundry of do a job interview? Why risk denying them having access to a social group that would welcome them?

I personally think that if you only suspect you might have because you notice you have a couple of traits, you most likely don't have. If you are really impaired enough to suspect you might have and that impairment leads to such a thorough research that after you have looked and searched and evaluated and asked and done all that for a period of a couple of years like many on this forum have, than you are probably right. Of course no one can say for absolute certainty unless they have that document, and even many with the document second guess it, but you can probably get pretty close to figuring it out correctly.

No; access to low-cost mental health services is the solution.

But that's not a possibility right now for some people. They can't get what they need. Self-diagnosis isn't something people resort to because it's an actual solution to the problem of not having services--they do it because it's better than nothing at all. If they have to try to struggle by on their own, it's better to at least have some kind of insight into what's going on with their brain, despite the risk of being wrong, despite that it won't give them the accommodations they need.

The alternative to self-diagnosis is no diagnosis at all. These are people who have either autism or a problem that's severe enough to make them consider autism as an explanation. When they can't get help--because they can't pay, because the stigma is too risky, because their parents don't believe in psychology--they need to start with some kind of working hypothesis if they want to try to help themselves as best they can. That's what self-diagnosis is. Those people are having a hard enough time as it is, without professionally diagnosed people lording it over them, as though being lucky enough to have access to medical care made a person somehow a more valid part of the autism community. Like it or not, lack of access to services is a problem we as a community have, and need to address; we can't just ignore it by pretending that self-diagnosed people are just being overly dramatic or something.

Last edited by Callista on 02 May 2014, 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

People can have insight into their brains by recognizing that they have autistic traits and talking about them on WP. They don't need to self-diagnose themselves with ASD and say that they have a disorder for which they haven't been assessed to do that.

I just looked at some articles of what BAP is. Here is a quote that I found useful in understanding it.

Background:  The concept of the ‘broad phenotype’ of autism refers to the finding that relatives of people with autism often have mild forms of autistic-like characteristics, such as social and communicative difficulties. This study used the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a questionnaire devised to assess features of the broad phenotype in adults, with parents of people with autism, to see whether they would be more likely to obtain extreme scores than a control group.

"Mild forms of Autistic-like characteristics such as social and communicative difficulties" does not sound like anything close to what I could describe my life to be like. I need to look more into what they mean specifically and I will because now I am really intrigued. I will take the questionnaire if I can run it on my laptop and see what they ask.

Apologies for sounding rude but this is "Utter crud" those of us who are self-diagnosed are in a very very small minority here on WP. You are magnifying our influence out of proportion to our actual numbers.



WTF! where did this come from?? are you talking about the parent's section of WP? then 99% of the traffic there is from parents of Aspie kids. I can count the number of parents of LFA who contribute here on the palm of my hand.

Also you seem to divide WP into LFA and Aspie, there's also PLENTY of people here who are neither.

What good does it do for them not to self-diagnose? That just forms some kind of weird underclass of people who aren't "real autistics". They know they're self-diagnosed; they know they're using their own non-professional judgment. "Self-diagnosed" is the same thing as saying "I have autistic traits but I haven't been diagnosed by a professional."

Besides, as I've said, self-diagnosed people are usually correct. Autism isn't that difficult to spot. We self-diagnose things all the time--colds, for example; nobody needs a doctor to tell them when they have a cold. Or if you'd fallen and your leg was at a funny angle, you wouldn't need a doctor to know you'd broken it. A reasonably intelligent person who can't understand social signals, gets fascinated with specialist subjects, rocks all the time, and knows what autism is, will likely conclude that they are autistic. And they'll be right.

I just don't worship professional opinions all that much. The system often fails us. Having a professional opinion is nice, but if a person's autistic, then they're autistic whether they have that professional stamp of approval or not. It'll be nice when everybody can get the help they need, but implying that people aren't really autistic because they're self-diagnosed isn't going to get them that help any quicker.

The security on my laptop won't let me take the quiz but here is the quoted paragraph from the quiz:
Hi! Welcome to the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire, taken from an article in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (see http://tinyurl.com/3derhn). Ever since Leo Kanner first described autism, it's been observed that many autistics have relatives with autistic traits. Originally this was explained by the 'refridgerator mother' theory, but more recently it's been attributed instead to genetics. This questionnairre is designed to measure the mild autistic traits present in people who are not actually autistic but have a genetic predisposition to autism.

I don't know what the cut off is for mild. Maybe "mild" means more than I think it means. But I honestly don't think that my personal traits are that mild. If they were that mild I would not be living as I am living and suffering as I suffer at the frequency and severity that I suffer. So is it really fair that I should tell people that I have BAP just because I can't afford the price of an official diagnosis? Is it really fair to say I have some suspected traits when my life is as impaired as it is? That would be like having a full blown flu and telling people I have the sniffles. Don;t you think it's actually more accurate to say I have diagnosed myself and this is what I have concluded? Once you say you have diagnosed yourself then that leaves the door automatically wide open for anyone to say they don't accept you because you diagnosed yourself. But if you say you have BAP you are still diagnosing yourself for that so what difference does that really make in that regard and you are not being honest if you really suffer much more severely than that.

Someone recognizing that they have autistic traits is not the same as self-diagnosis.
Most of the people around me recognize that they have autistic traits, but they didn't self-diagnose themselves with autism.

I don't think that it is generally good for people to say that they have autism based on their subjective self-report of their traits that they perceive from inside their own minds and the perceived severity of their traits.
Of course the professional report is also subjective, but at least the professional is trained to diagnose autism and usually related disorders and can recognize things from the outside that the person may not from the inside, and they have seen a variety of autistic people and people with other mental disorders.
Objective tests will improve upon both self-report and clinical observation in future, and I can say based on current research but without going into details that self-perceived traits and severity of traits may not match objective reality as well as I used to think.

While I'm pleased to have been diagnosed mostly for reasons of identification and support, I dont concern myself with the diagnoses of posters. Sometimes I have my suspicions as to the possible neuroses of various posters, but I keep them to myself.

I think a lot were self-diagnosed and then formally diagnosed. I know there is a substantial amount of people on here who were diagnosed young, or diagnosed without discovering it themselves. But I feel there is an influence, and it's fairly strong.



No, I'm referring to parents of LFA children who want a cure, or have opinions that aren't appreciated generally on here. Some of whom are affiliated with organisations like Autism Speaks. Sometimes I think these parents are unfairly judged, and that they are made out to be worse than they are. You can understand their anguish, and their problems, and why they feel like that.



No, I'm someone who sees myself more in the HFA profile, but I think most on here are like that too. LFAs with intellectual disabilities, and those that are non-verbal aren't a big presence on here.



Cognitive bias and a misapprehension of the criteria can lead to all sorts of erroneous assumptions. It's not as clear cut as having a cold. And if the traits are sub-clinical, how do we know it doesn't fall into personality traits??

The diagnosis is for those who are impaired by their condition. I also think autistic traits are rarer than reported. And that subjective self-evaluation is flawed.

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I disagree. Look back at the "do you think I have it" threads on WP and you'll find a lot of people who don't have the core symptoms of ASD and say they didn't as children (problems with social cues/non-verbal communication, relationships). Some even profess to be better than average at understanding people but then wonder if they have autism. People who say they have no problems but just want an answer for why they're different. Not all of the threads are like that but not just one or two, we can't bring specific people into it so I won't post links but there were a bunch of these. As for colds, people could be wrong, but it doesn't really matter, there's nothing they can do and they're basically okay so they don't need a diagnosis. With the leg it could be sprained or twisted or broken. The person doesn't know and they need to get it treated. They should see a professional. I've gotten that wrong before and thought I broke my ankle when I only sprained it.



Professionals are fallible and psychology is soft-science and we need better more objective measures but that doesn't mean professionals are useless and psychology is useless. An opinion based on years of experience, education and some empirical data (though not as much as could be hoped) is worth something,IMO and is likely to be more accurate than one's own opinion. Even the objectivity of someone outside of your own head looking at you and your situation and your life and symptoms etc. is worth something,IMO.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 02 May 2014, 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

On topic of impairments, having impairments in daily life doesn't mean that the impairments are caused by autism.
Impairments could be caused by other mental disorders, undiagnosed physical problems, life circumstances, life history, etc.

Also, I don't take what people like SBC or Attwood or Frith said as the truth, unless they and others have shown multiple times in scientific research that something is likely to be truth. There was a thread awhile back about Frith saying that people who think that they have autistic traits probably don't have autism, while SBC or Attwood has said that people who think that they are autistic are probably autistic, but I have come across no studies about accuracy of self-diagnosis so far.

Very true, you could have the impairments and not have autism, there could be many different explanations for them but impairments in daily life are required for the diagnosis of autism.

I think you are right. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. Society doesn;t care for people who come across as NT (for all intents and purposes) who then try and claim they have autistic traits. Self-diagnosis seems to be meaningless when nobody knows so I'm ditching it....back to the world of ducks for me...