Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing (2017)
We went through the ASD diagnostic process with our son, and it left us very sceptical about the whole thing. I was never convinced he had ASD (and I&#x27;m still not), but some psychologist talked us into it.<p>I really got the impression the psychologist was cherrypicking information (especially in the parent interview) just to check things off the diagnostic criteria. Everything he did that vaguely sounded like an ASD symptom was attributed to ASD, with no real thought as to whether it actually is or not. I compared her report to the DSM-5 criteria, I didn&#x27;t get the impression she was actually applying the criteria properly, just doing her own thing and then invoking its name at the end as if it was some magic spell.<p>Her diagnostic report claimed our son (who was about to start school) needed all this special education help (timers in school, sensory diet, etc), and she really wanted us to give it to his school. The report sounded like a bad caricature of our son. We decided not to give it to the school and not tell them anything about it. And his teacher tells us he is going very well.<p>She also put him down in the report as being ASD Level 2, but she told us verbally she only thought he was Level 1, but she always puts people down as Level 2 or above because that&#x27;s the cut-off for Australian government disability funding (&quot;NDIS List A&quot;).<p>He&#x27;s mostly normal kid, rather like myself at the same age. He&#x27;s very intelligent, social stuff isn&#x27;t his strong suit (but so what, it&#x27;s never been mine either.) He&#x27;s very shy, but my wife says she was even worse at his age. We did go through a period last year when his behaviour was becoming rather unmanageable (aggression, defiance, hyperactivity), but he&#x27;s much much better now (so much so that we took him off his ADHD meds) and I think a lot of those behaviour problems were due to family stresses (new baby), parental mental illness (I have anxiety&#x2F;depression, and I suspect my wife does too, although she resists diagnosis), sub-optimal parenting skills, rather than ASD and&#x2F;or ADHD and&#x2F;or whatever.<p>When people say that ASD is being overdiagnosed, and I look at what this psychologist did, I think it really is.