Input from family members in the assessment process?

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firemonkey
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22 Feb 2019, 5:55 am

How much does this involve the personal biases of the person providing input as to how things are/were with you? Is it ever possible for a purely objective description to be given or will a degree of subjectivity always come into it?



Trogluddite
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22 Feb 2019, 8:57 am

If there has been no awareness of autism throughout the person's childhood, then I think it's safe to assume that parents and peers, and even the autistic person, may have come up with their own alternative explanations for any "unusual" behaviours.

For example, in my case, my mother was rather perplexed by the questions that she was asked about my childhood. She couldn't see what relevance they could possibly have to the mental health problems that I'd always experienced, and which had led to me being assessed. It was only when I discussed things with her later that we realised how many autistic traits she has herself, and also that my uncle (her younger brother) shows many traits which are uncannily similar to my own. In other words, such traits seem common enough in my family that, to her, they were not at all remarkable or memorable.

If she had been left to simply talk freely about my childhood, she probably would never have mentioned many of the things which added evidence to my assessment. However, the psychologists who perform assessments will be well aware of these kinds of biases, so they will structure their questions to try to bring out factual answers about specific behaviours. In my assessment report, it makes quite clear that in some areas, my Mum's reports added nothing of significance, or were too ambiguous to judge one way or the other; in other areas they noted that my Mum's comments reinforced evidence found in other parts of the assessment, so were likely to be significant.


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DanielW
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22 Feb 2019, 9:14 am

Input from family member can be helpful, but its not absolutely necessary. I've been estranged from mine for a long time, and it didn't have an impact on my assessment or diagnosis.



Ichinin
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22 Feb 2019, 9:23 am

Both my parents were interviewed, the woman who did the diagnosis said it was common unless you were an orphan or something.


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DanielW
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22 Feb 2019, 10:11 am

I would suppose its more useful to have family input with children as they wouldn't be capable of discussing their own early childhood behaviors.



firemonkey
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22 Feb 2019, 10:11 am

In terms of pinpointing things like my difficulty with imaginary play and lack of friends/difficulty socialising my sister nails it.

However I can't at all identify with her claim that

Quote:
As he got older Tim also was prone to some serious rages and frequently got very physical, particularly I recall with his brother Nick



Verbally heated -yes. I tend to raise my voice in such situations ,but the physical aggression is a mystery to me. Certainly it's not something my brother has ever mentioned.
She mentions an incident when I was 20 where she had to hit me to stop me hitting my brother.

What stands out then is a very heated situation where my mother accused me of probably getting a girl I knew pregnant and that we would have funny babies(this was 6 years before I ever had sex) . I can recall my sister hitting me as I was getting angry with my mother and demanding an apology(which never came).

It is true that I can be seen to be more aggressive than I actually I am through tone of voice and build and this could influence my sister's revisionist account of things.

My sister has always been more resentful of the attention I got although the attention I got was invariably more negative than positive in terms of parental support.



DanielW
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22 Feb 2019, 10:18 am

If you are concerned about a bias against your own input vs that of your own family. Don't worry. Therapists are used to examining multiple points of view and making an independent decision.



BeaArthur
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22 Feb 2019, 11:34 am

Don't worry about it. You have enough other things to worry about. I agree with other commenters, the assessors know how to deal with this issue.


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naturalplastic
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22 Feb 2019, 11:37 am

BeaArthur wrote:
Don't worry about it. You have enough other things to worry about. I agree with other commenters, the assessors know how to deal with this issue.


Exactly.