Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Can You Diagnose Yourself With A Mental Illness" video.

I agree with him, although I'd say there's two or three things you get from a doctor that generally make it preferable. The differential diagnosis, treatment and potentially notes to hand in when requesting accommodations. But, that being said, sometimes the diagnoses are just broken. Schizoid Personality Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder are all autism and likely to eventually be fixed at some point. Those first two, the ScPD and ASD are virtually impossible to tell apart in many cases without a lot of extra testing because ScPD started out as the adult version of what would become Asperger's Syndrome. The two are a massive amount of overlap, but the fact that ScPD is considered to be a personality disorder, it doesn't require as much evidence from the past as ASD does. This is especially problematic for adults of a generation before the cameras were everywhere, as it can be hard to provide the necessary supporting evidence to say for sure that it's autism versus just being schizoid.
6
Yes, I do wonder how many people would be self-diagnosed if diagnosis was easier to get. The only reason that I self-diagnose as autistic is that the diagnostic criteria were pretty well screwed up and there was only classical autism when I was a child. But, the psychologist thought that I've probably got Schizoid Personality Disorder, which despite its name implying schizophrenia, it's virtually identical to what used to be referred to as Asperger's Syndrome and the two names have often been used interchangeably at different times. I've got a bunch of additional testing to do to try and settle things for good, but it's a massive problem as self-diagnosis doesn't bring treatment or legal rights, and the diagnosis that I could get doesn't cover me for any of the stuff that I would benefit from treating.
3
I generally agree here, but, I do think that often times the diagnostic criteria are just defective in one way or another and there's clearly a significant thing going on, but it doesn't have any sort of a diagnosis available, and that can happen even with disorders that are known and have been treated for decades. A really good example would involve the autism spectrum, where there used to be a bunch of different diagnoses and most of them were merged into autism spectrum disorder and social pragmatic communication disorder. There's a reason why I said most, as neither pdd-nos nor Asperger's Syndrome were completely covered under either of those diagnoses, and the previous practice of diagnosing schizoid personality disorder also doesn't really cover those cases either. So, you get this sort of weird hole where there are people who are clearly autistic, can pass as autistic merely by being themselves, but do not have any possible diagnosis and as such do not have any sort of access to treatment or legal protections as a result of that. It's definitely not ideal, but the alternative is going to a sympathetic doctor and essentially getting a deliberate misdiagnosis to whatever the closest diagnosis is and hoping that it covers the parts of the disorder in that patient that need treatment while not risking your license to get the person help or sued for malpractice. This particular problem is set to get worse when future diagnostic criteria remove the ScPD diagnosis and attempt to cram those patients into either schizotypal or avoidant personality disorders with no provision for the autistic patients for whom the entire diagnosis was originally created.
2
Autism is just a developmental disorder, it's not the only one. I'm glad you were able to get a proper diagnosis. But, the other options probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in terms of treatment as it's mostly treating the traits that are causing issues in any case.
1
@fx4426m Speaking as somebody that's going to be 43 later this year, if you seriously think that you are autistic, get the evaluation done while you're as young as possible. That will give you the best hope of getting an accurate evaluation, whether you are or aren't autistic. Past a certain point, it can be virtually impossible to get an accurate diagnosis due to the coping strategies and accommodations that you would be making. That is unless you are OK with the possibility of never getting an accurate diagnosis and want to chance finding out later on when you burn out and can't really function any longer.
1
Yes, and that's ultimately a large part of why I wound up being recommended schizoid personality disorder rather than autism spectrum disorder. I already had questionable diagnoses for both schizoaffective disorder and schizotypal personality disorder in the past. And, I didn't really interact enough with other children for the lack of connection to be obvious. And, ScPD and ASD are virtually identical other than the age of onset where in my case, I was a bit too old for ASD, but a bit too young for ScPD. I've also had a bunch of things that were comorbid to both.
1