For those of you who weren’t diagnosed until adulthood (I’m in my late 40s), what was the diagnosis process like? Are you just given a written test, or does someone evaluate you more thoroughly? Do they try to understand your symptoms, or is it more of a checklist? If anyone has personal stories they’d be willing to share, I’d love to hear them. I’m also just curious about what to expect during the appointment. Who do I make it with? A psychiatrist?
I also wonder if there are other related conditions or learning disabilities that I might have, such as dyslexia. Do I need to be proactive in asking for multiple diagnoses? Or will they be able to evaluate me for anything/everything?
I’ve seen many online self-assessments that use some version of the DSM questionnaire that you’ve mentioned. I have a hard time committing to a binary answer to an open question so these are always a nightmare for me. My answer is usually something more like “sort of” or “depends” and I get very stressed out that I’m not being truthful or accurate. I’ve found ways to manage my symptoms out of necessity over the years and I think that might skew my answer to some of the questions also. I still usually end up answering “yes” to five of them, but that seems like I’m on the cusp. I just feel like a list of 9 written questions lacks nuance and that’s why I was hoping to hear that a more holistic approach would be part of the diagnosis process.
My experience is that psychiatrists have never just asked me “do you experience X”, going through those specific DSM symptoms, but instead they’ll administer some kind of questionnaire that asks a significantly larger number of more specific questions that give you some sort of score at the end. The score is then used to determine whether or not you rank highly in certain symptom areas, which can then help the psych better understand your symptoms and whether or not you qualify for a certain diagnosis.
They may ask you to get other people, who are close to you but can be more objective, to answer the questions.
Have you seen Lucky Number Slevin? There’s a great scene where Ben Kingsley says, “The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”
I’m saddle shopping. I have an evaluation scheduled tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.