Autism

Serious question: Why?

Gathering data like this for "curiosity" is understandable, but too vague for medical and personal data.

Without a stated purpose, data can be presented to form any and all kinds of narratives.

Will it be used to form a tabloid piece about "overwhelming majority of people in autism community aren't actually autistic" fuelling some agenda against the "self-identifying victim mentality epidemic"? Because it can, whether it is the intention or not, and I want less of that.

Or is it used to form an opinion on whether a clinical self-diagnosis is important to people? Or difficult to get? If so, please word the questions differently.

I voted as "self-diagnosed" -- but that's really an inadequate description.

I'm an adult with multiple autistic kids who have themselves each been professionally diagnosed... and I share an overwhelming percentage of my personality and characteristics with them. But I'm clearly in the "high-functioning" category, and have managed to reach a certain level of stability and success in my own life; so even ignoring the obvious monetary cost of getting a professional eval, at this point there just isn't much that such a diagnosis would do for me... whereas my kids benefit by having that official piece of paper in their school records; it provides concrete evidence to justify the requests for accommodations which we've submitted on each of their Individualized Education Programs (IEP).

Which is to say, I believe that there are certainly good reasons to go to a professional -- but there are also circumstances which can significantly mitigate those good reasons.

I'm autism diagnosed as an adult, but as the years pass I wonder if that's really the issue or if it's more likely to be ADHD.

There seems to be many overlapping features and mine are around poor social skills, feelings of being overwhelmed when plans change and long spells if decompression needed after doing almost anything.

I have high levels of empathy and have been a people leader for many years (highly rated) and I'm just not sure that autism is the right "sticker".

Okay, so I am kinda self diagnosed.

For once, when I was a child Asperger's wasn't even acknowledged yet and there was still the "girls don't have autism" trope going on. Also, my parents were both addicts and abusive. How things looked on the outside was very important to them though so acting and moving "normally" was literally beaten into me and I learned to mask pretty well at an early age. School was still hell though and I never managed to make any friends.

Fast forward to the time of the internet and I started meeting people who weren't that different from me. I started to make friends and met my husband.

Even more years later all that trauma from my childhood reared its head and I went through lots of therapy. At some point my therapist suggested getting tested for ADHD and autism. I had to go private because it was pretty much impossible to get diagnosed as an adult otherwise and after three years of waiting I was finally tested for ADHD and diagnosed. The neurologist who diagnosed me suggested getting tested for autism as well and let me take the RAADS-R test and I scored a whopping 212 points. She was, however, not qualified to give me an official diagnosis.

Right now, I'd have to wait for three to six years until getting assessed and it wouldn't change anything for me. I don't need accommodations at work because I'm a stay at home wife and there are no other upsides to an official stamp. I simply use workbooks and other information to find ways to make life easier for me.

Not allowed to vote because I use a VPN, but am self-diagnosed and waiting for an assessment (scheduled for next Feb.)

At the time I took this, 40% voted self-diagnosed, 22% adult-diagnosed, 18% child-diagnosed, 18% undiagnosed.

I voted self.

Self-diagnosis🧐

Will you list the results after a while? I want to see them, but don’t want to have to create an account on that site.

I was diagnosed last year with ASD and ADHD. I'm in my 40s. Still in the process of adapting.

The fact that there’s no “No - I don’t identify as autistic” means you’re going to get a lot of extra noise in the “Unsure” bucket, plus a lot of people who just see “No” and check that.

It says I'm on a VPN (I am not)

Formally diagnosed under the DSM-V as Level 2.

Professionally diagnosed, but I'm not voting in the poll because I don't want anyone to know how many people here are self diagnosed.