Does this count as diagnosis?

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I bought two pages of notes to the psychiatrist I have been seeing. These covered incidents, difficulties and insights from early childhood onwards. I told him my AQ Test score of 36 and explained that although its on the internet, the source is Simon Baron-Cohen and its surprisingly reliable. This is the second time I had bought up Asperger's with him. It seems he was misreading the DSM and was reading "delay in cognitive development" instead of "no delay". OK, so he made a mistake and is not completely fluent in that page of the DSM. Perhaps it's just not his "special interest" lol. But he is not ignorant either, he told me about attending a conference on Relationship Development Intervention RDI and suggested I look at it. So he agreed that it appears that I meet the criteria for Asperger's.

So this isn't a fancy, high cost, multi-session diagnosis but it is a diagnosis. Is it misleading to say "I have been diagnosed with Asperger's." when obviously other people have much more intense and expensive diagnosis.

I know what you mean, my diagnosis was by my own GP, but I still think it counts. I had a dx for auditory processing disorder conirmed by a hearing specialist, and discussed the results, among other things with my GP. He wanted to take me off my meds, 10mg escitalopram daily. I was anxious about this, as I think they really help.
I brought up autism and the doc asked me about the AQ test. I said I had already done it several times online, to allow for mood variance, and score 36 - 42.
He then asked me loads of different questions, going back to my childhood, which I answered as best I could. He said that in his opinion, I definitely DO have AS. There is no point sending me to a hospital for confirmation, unless I want to and if I ever have any problems because of it, I can have CBT, counselling or whatever.
Cost didn't come into it, being in the UK, it's all on the NHS.

edited by BadPuddle for typos.

I guess it depends on why you want the diagnosis. If you want it to learn more about yourself and your difficulties I'd say it's pretty thin, but for benefits it's probably enough. Personally I'd seriously question a doctor who didn't know the DSM-IV criteria, and I wouldn't trust a doctor who took his patient's word for how he ranks on the Aspie-quiz. I'm undergoing an investigation now, and when I answered those questions we discussed each answer before determining which one was correct. Several of the questions can be interpreted in different ways and it takes a professional to determine which interpretation is the right one, as well as which answer best responds to the actual facts...

Heh. No, it's not enough for benefits; it wouldn't be if you'd been diagnosed by a preeminent neuropsychiatrist who specialized in it. I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist but had to be analyzed by the government's psychologist, too, after which I went through intensive three-day neuropsych testing to get services from the vocational rehab department.

Enough for learning about yourself? Yes. Even a "I think you may, but I don't know enough to be sure" will do that. If your goal is to become more competent, all you need is somebody who will work with you, with your skills as they stand, and is open minded enough to understand that you are not going to work exactly like a typical person when you're learning.