My reasons for a diagnosis

You may wonder what lead to my diagnosis.  Initially I was curious as to whether I am autistic.  But I still didn’t do anything about it for many years.  I was put off by things I had read regarding the process and cost to get a diagnosis.  I also had the idea that since a diagnosis would not change me from being non-autistic into autistic (or vice versa), it would not particularly affect my day-to-day life as a well-functioning adult.

I had read websites that suggested that multiple visits (in the order of up to 10) to a psychiatrist or psychologist would be required, and prices for such visits could be in the order of up to $200 per session.  And on top of that, there was the report itself which can cost the same as a session with the psych.

As it turns out, in the area where I live (south east Queensland) getting a diagnosis was incredibly easy, and much cheaper than I expected.  It took two face-to-face visits plus a report.  I had also found out that Australia’s federal government will subsidise a number of sessions (up to 20 per calendar year during the CoVID-19 pandemic, it has since been scaled back to 10 per year from 1 January 2023) with a psychologist or psychiatrist through our Medicare scheme.  Note that the report normally costs the same as a session, but does not qualify for a subsidy.

To access the Medicare funded sessions, all I required was for my primary care physician to fill in appropriate paperwork.  If your GP has known you for some time, and particularly if you have ever been to them for some other mental health related issue (autism affects the way various mental health conditions present and should be treated) this should not be a problem.

If you are in Australia (and eligible for the federal government subsidy), your larger challenge is probably to find a psych in your area who does the assessment and can fit you into their schedule. However, even that is easier in this era of telehealth and videoconferencing.

Back to how I got from there to here.  One night I read this paper (side note - this paper is a PDF file that will download to your device). I was sitting on the couch in the loungeroom and found myself sobbing (quietly, mind; I didn’t want to wake Other Half who had already gone to bed) as I read the snippets of stories told by the women quoted in the article.  I shared so many of their experiences.

The diagnostic tools have been geared towards picking up the signs in males, and females have been under-diagnosed over the decades.  There are a number of reasons for this, including:

·       females being socialised differently, particularly for those born before autistic behaviour and thought processing was widely known or talked about.  Behaviour that is seen as socially acceptable in boys is often not seen to be acceptable in girls, and vice versa.

·       women’s and girls’ difficulties having been minimised or misdiagnosed as something else – something that is thought to ‘affect women more than men’ such as anxiety or depression.

(It is tragic and ironic that in Australia, women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or PTSD, however those who commit suicide are disproportionately men, to the tune of seven out of nine suicides.  This suggests that just as autism in women is underdiagnosed, so is negative mental health in men; a case of the biases creating no-win situations for anyone.)

It was initially thought that autism was something that only boys had, then as women and girls with more obvious tendencies (i.e. matching those picked up in males) were diagnosed it was thought that the ratio was 10 males to 1 female.  From there it became 4:1, and current thinking is that it is 3:1.  Personally, I suspect that as more girls and women are diagnosed, the ratio will end up close to 1:1.

And so we come to my own trigger for action.  I wanted to be a data point - that very idea may shout to some that I am autistic.  I wanted to give additional weight to how autism can present in women so that others may be more easily diagnosed and assisted as required.

“When doctors, parents, teachers, therapists, even television describe typical spectrum kids, without meaning to, they’re describing typically male spectrum traits — patterns first noticed by observing boys. Only boys. And we aren’t boys. So they miss and mislabel us.” – Jennifer O’Toole, Asperkids