Many people seem to find a formal diagnosis helpful for understanding themselves
Anecdote: I was in this camp, for sufficiently low values of “formal.” I went to a psychologist to get checked out for autism (among other things) five or ten years ago. After testing, he said that he wouldn’t personally diagnose me, but that I was close enough to the line that if I shopped around I could probably find someone who would. I said that was fine—it told me what I wanted to know.
(hilariously, I also scored rather high on schizophrenia. His reaction went something like “Okay, obviously you’re not schizophrenic. Analytical personalities of the sort that take ideas and moral systems seriously just read that way on the tests. You’re not schizo, you’re just weird.”)
Thank you for a good comment. I’m thinking about Viliam’s suggestion of an unofficial or unrecorded diagnosis, it seems like you accomplished that unintentionally, which may be the best outcome! Also, I hadn’t considered the risk of being misdiagnosed with something different and highly-stigmatised like schizophrenia!
Have you come across the questionnaire-style instruments that aim to assess autism? I think they’re intended to be viewed as screening tools rather than properly diagnostic.
The one I’ve come across is called the autism spectrum quotient (AQ), and I think the longer version (AQ-50) is the one to check out. There have been done reports that the short AQ-10 is not very reliable.
I seem to recall that on UK forms related to employment and the like, the normal phrasing of the question about disabilities etc. has been moving away from “do you have a disability” and towards “do you view yourself as having...”. Perhaps a self-view, especially backed up by a self-completed screening questionnaire, might let you ask for adaptations without needing a formal diagnosis. I guess if so, that would still mean your self reported status would exist in records on your employer’s HR systems, though perhaps you would view that as less downside risk.
If you ever felt that in a certain circumstance the balance of benefits and risks were different, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to adopt different approaches to answering questions. Where you feel that someone is positive and wants to help anyone with adaptation needs, you can honestly in the affirmative that you feel you might benefit from adaptations. Where you feel that they want to discriminate against those with a condition, it might make sense to assume that desire requires a higher standard of proof, so you can answer honestly in the negative that you don’t have sufficient (i.e. formal diagnosis) reasons to think you have a discriminate-able condition.
Anecdote: I was in this camp, for sufficiently low values of “formal.” I went to a psychologist to get checked out for autism (among other things) five or ten years ago. After testing, he said that he wouldn’t personally diagnose me, but that I was close enough to the line that if I shopped around I could probably find someone who would. I said that was fine—it told me what I wanted to know.
(hilariously, I also scored rather high on schizophrenia. His reaction went something like “Okay, obviously you’re not schizophrenic. Analytical personalities of the sort that take ideas and moral systems seriously just read that way on the tests. You’re not schizo, you’re just weird.”)
Thank you for a good comment. I’m thinking about Viliam’s suggestion of an unofficial or unrecorded diagnosis, it seems like you accomplished that unintentionally, which may be the best outcome! Also, I hadn’t considered the risk of being misdiagnosed with something different and highly-stigmatised like schizophrenia!
Have you come across the questionnaire-style instruments that aim to assess autism? I think they’re intended to be viewed as screening tools rather than properly diagnostic.
The one I’ve come across is called the autism spectrum quotient (AQ), and I think the longer version (AQ-50) is the one to check out. There have been done reports that the short AQ-10 is not very reliable.
I seem to recall that on UK forms related to employment and the like, the normal phrasing of the question about disabilities etc. has been moving away from “do you have a disability” and towards “do you view yourself as having...”. Perhaps a self-view, especially backed up by a self-completed screening questionnaire, might let you ask for adaptations without needing a formal diagnosis. I guess if so, that would still mean your self reported status would exist in records on your employer’s HR systems, though perhaps you would view that as less downside risk.
If you ever felt that in a certain circumstance the balance of benefits and risks were different, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to adopt different approaches to answering questions. Where you feel that someone is positive and wants to help anyone with adaptation needs, you can honestly in the affirmative that you feel you might benefit from adaptations. Where you feel that they want to discriminate against those with a condition, it might make sense to assume that desire requires a higher standard of proof, so you can answer honestly in the negative that you don’t have sufficient (i.e. formal diagnosis) reasons to think you have a discriminate-able condition.