Are you self diagnosed or diagnosed by a mental health profe

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Are you self diagnosed?
yes 37%  37%  [ 51 ]
no 63%  63%  [ 88 ]
Total votes : 139

garyww
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18 Mar 2009, 4:57 pm

Sabbra maybe you're just dillusional since you are not a professional and you have something else otherwise it seems that you would fit in here to this forum but it seems that you don't for some reason.


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Sea_of_Saiyan
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18 Mar 2009, 5:36 pm

I am personally very leery about self-diagnosis for the reasons previously mentioned - I am human, I make mistakes every once in a while, and I also have a tendency to obsess over things to the point where I have difficulty escaping from them (This is why I plan never to gamble or use drugs/alcohol/tobacco).

When I read the book about Asperger's syndrome that led me to Wrong Planet, I felt as though I had finally found people I could relate to after a life of knowing that I was in many ways different. However, reading further, I realized that there is always a possibility that I could just be imagining things, and since I don't trust my parents enough to talk to them about this, I am really stuck at a dead-end and trying to stop obsessing over autism and take my life back to the way it was before.

My status on here is "Not sure if I have it or not", and if you ask me about it I will say that I am "NT until proven otherwise".

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sfumato
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18 Mar 2009, 5:41 pm

Actually I am self diagnosed but I hope to get a diagnose from an pshycartrist this year.



Apple_in_my_Eye
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18 Mar 2009, 6:46 pm

garyww wrote:
Self-diagnosis of any condition can be potentially dangerous. It's almost as bad a self-dentistry.


OTOH sometimes it's essential. If I hadn't done my own research and argued a cardiologist into doing a test he didn't want to do (and was sure would be negative), I'd probably be homeless and maybe dead. The professionals will say "trust us, we know what we're doing." Well, that's not always true.

Dr. Bryna Siegal, director of the San Francisco Medical School autism clinc considers marriage a rule-out for Asperger's (link). How many people on this board does that un-diagnose? (She's also proud of frequently "un-diagnosing" people.) So it's not even as if the professionals are consistent among themselves about this stuff. And she's the director, which means she sets policy for the entire autism department at that medical school.

Also, the professionals and 'experts' are (but one case I've ever heard of) looking from the outside in. Maybe they own the label, but their understanding has limits because it's not first-person. Autism existed before they gave it a name.

On an autism list I was on years ago, before AS was a dx, there were people dx'ed 'HFA', 'LFA' and ux'dx and people with strings of misdiagnoses. Since there were people who related and seemed to fit but didn't meet the autism dx criteria, a term was invented. That term was combined with "autistics," and the resulting term was the one that was basically always used to refer to people there. There didn't seem too much concern about precisely where someone was on the spectrum, or their dx status. It was basically how much people related to other's experiences, and they pretty much got to be their own judge of that.

Then Asperger's became an official dx, and concern about fakers cropped up. I remember a guy arguing that all adult dx's were suspect and to be rejected, because the evaluator couldn't have made direct observations of childhood behavior. (Ironically, that person was dx'ed in adulthood. Go figure.)

Yeah there may be some misguided people who aren't on the spectrum and 'try' to be for emotional (or whatever) reasons, but OTOH over-concern about fakers strikes me as emotional as well -- being, saying "my pain, and my struggle, are real, and I don't want that soiled (by people who haven't suffered as much as I have)." That's a legitimate point (I'm not saying it means "poor me"), but it's an personal, emotional issue, and probably hits a raw nerve for a lot of people, and therefore is likely susceptible to over-concern for reasons that might not be as rational as people think. I wouldn't want to see a free-for-all, but this issue often strikes me as just a turf war.



garyww
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18 Mar 2009, 6:57 pm

That's an incredibly inteststing post and I'd like to see you post more often during the day to day stuff.


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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18 Mar 2009, 7:30 pm

garyww wrote:
That's an incredibly inteststing post and I'd like to see you post more often during the day to day stuff.


Thanks. I'm pretty private but the bigger problem is I have a lot of days where I have massive trouble reading and writing. It can takes hours and hours even for something pretty short. I've lurked here a long while though and hope to get into things a bit more, though.



garyww
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18 Mar 2009, 7:43 pm

I think we need the 'undiagnosing' here really bad.


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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18 Mar 2009, 7:55 pm

Sure, right after they re-name it Gary's Syndrome. :lol:



Tim_Tex
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18 Mar 2009, 7:56 pm

I was diagnosed by a professional in 1996, at the age of 16.



pandd
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18 Mar 2009, 9:08 pm

Apple_in_my_Eye you have much insight.



dedhead66
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18 Mar 2009, 9:27 pm

Self diagnosed 3 weeks ago and not sure how it would impact my life. Today initially dx'd 299.80 after an hour of talking to a psychologist. Given ASDS questionnaire to take home and finish filling out. The Psychologist will score, review, evaluate and then get back to me with the results. Almost positive I have some degree of autism, just looking forward to my dx day and the freedom that will come from the knowledge of who i am.



Homer_Bob
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18 Mar 2009, 9:30 pm

I self diagnosed myself years ago before I saw an aspergers specialist last week and was finally diagnosed with it. I honestly never needed a doctor to know if I had it; I just was tested so my parents would finally understand about my condition.



Linasgirl
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18 Mar 2009, 9:49 pm

I was diagnosed as autistic when I was very young and was in special ed for 6 years before being mainstreamed. I like what Nena Aragón says about this in her YT video. An "official" Asperger's diagnosis is meaningless.

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18 Mar 2009, 9:51 pm

Sig says where I currently am. My suspicion is an ASD. I have not quite self-dxed myself with an ASD.


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Xelebes
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18 Mar 2009, 9:54 pm

Linasgirl wrote:
I was diagnosed as autistic when I was very young and was in special ed for 6 years before being mainstreamed. I like what Nena Aragón says about this in her YT video. An "official" Asperger's diagnosis is meaningless.

LG


Depends on where one lives. In Canada, there are some services available for those who are limited by disabilities that would otherwise be unclassified and thus impermissible without the diagnosis.


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Danielismyname
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18 Mar 2009, 9:55 pm

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:
Dr. Bryna Siegal, director of the San Francisco Medical School autism clinc considers marriage a rule-out for Asperger's (link).


Well, those who tend to form intimate relationships who have AS, are usually of the highest-functioning make (and are often undiagnosed and oblivious to any disorder), i.e., they tend to appear well off in a superficial way (they'll work, possibly marry, etcetera). Whether these people deserve a diagnosis or not depends on how affected they truly are.

When you're doing things that people without a label can do, you tend to cross the barrier which creates "disorder" and "normality".