Should one pursue an autism diagnosis? How does it work?

You basically have to go to a shrink. A GP isn’t able to give diagnosis on this.

And you have to read the shrink’s bio to make sure he deals with autism. There are not many doctors that do this. Furthermore most shrinks here don’t have the time to give you attention because they have to see 200 patients a day.

You could probably get it in the states easier, if you have $$$ to pay.

You’ve tried this and it hasn’t given you the answer you need?

Do you know the criteria of medium severity?

I did. I went to the Taipei Yangming Hospital (also a govt hospital, in fact they do the military health check there) and wasted 300nt on a consultation where the guy essentially said “the fact that you want diagnosis for autism means you are not autistic”.

I don’t know what the criteria is. This is based on what the social worker told me when asking about govt assistance. I’m sure there’s a criteria somewhere I just don’t know about Taiwan laws and procedure to know what it is.

Then there’s the issue with houkou.

Go again, and again, until the guy wants to get rid of you and gives you what you want.

A post was merged into an existing topic: Where can I go to get an adult autism diagnosis?

this

1 社會適應能力中度障礙,語言功能輕度障礙。
2社會適應能力輕度障礙,語言功能重度或中度障礙。
經過特殊教育和矯治訓練,通常在庇護性環境內可自理日常生活,或有可能訓練出簡單的工作能力者。

1 Like

And waste 300 each time? There are much more therapeutic things I can spend 300 on.

1 Like

That would be your choice, of course, but your complaints about not getting the Asperger’s/Autism diagnosis you want would carry less weight.

5 Likes

What criteria do they use to evaluate social disability?

I have very low social ability. Who would make the call? What criteria would doctors use to decide that?

And my problem isn’t really inability to do jobs, it’s more inability to be hired for jobs because job interviews are specifically designed to screen out autistic people.

This may not be the current version, but I guess it may not be much different.

社會適應能力及語言功能障礙程度之評定標準
一、社會功能包括身邊自理、人際互動、家庭適應、學校適應、工作適應及社會適應等綜合功能,其等級障礙程度之定義如下:
(三)中度障礙:具有部份學校或工作適應能力之中度社會功能障礙者屬之。這類病人通常具備完全生活自理能力,能遵守部份學校規定,亦能學習部份課業,或於庇護情境從事單純反覆性工作,但少數主動與人互動,別人主動可能以正常或怪異固定之方式反應。未達學齡之病人,其身邊自理與社會性發展商數為五十至七十者。

Though I’m no expert by any means, I doubt when you can understand social system and regulations and follow them by yourself, and can communicate, it doesn’t sound you are in that category.

This is precisely why pursuing a diagnosis is a bit pointless, and why I suggested to the OP that his question is a bit like asking “where do I get a flux capacitor for my DeLorean?”.

To a crude approximation, all human abilities fall on a bell curve. All psychological diagnoses work by taking some related set of these distributions and then drawing an n-dimensional shape upon them that represents the syndrome, typically down at the tails. That shape is often badly-defined, and has fuzzy edges. It can shift around depending on the clinician you’re dealing with, the instruments he’s working with, and what mood he’s in today. The existence of the syndrome, and the criteria that define it, is often a matter of opinion or culture - for example, ‘hysteria’, which was once a common (and exclusively female) affliction is no longer considered a meaningful syndrome.

Here’s a 2D gaussian curve so you can visualize how that works:
image

It is not the case that Taiwanese psychologists don’t know anything about autism or Asperger’s. They’re as well-versed as any other professional elsewhere (an acquaintance of mine is a clinical psychologist and he makes an effort to read the English-language journals). They just don’t see it in the same terms as they do in the West. Here, it’s considered merely an unfortunate variant of normal, not something to be medicalized.

1 Like

I just feel it’s pointless for me to try and seek government assistance because it seems you have to be so badly impaired that you literally can’t live without assistance to get them. And the other requirements such as having lived in the same houkou or whatever makes it really hard for those who genuinely needs the help to get it. It meant you have to have family support. If you were impaired badly and have zero family support, the government simply can’t help you because the system is designed to prioritize family over individuals.

So if you are a family where you earn over 60,000nt a month but have 5 children, and your wife doesn’t work (she is needed at home to tend to children), then you’d qualify simply because there is no way someone can make more than 23,000nt per person in the household.

At least that’s how it works.

In regards to the COVID related assistance, I only qualified for 10k, and not 30 because I am not a head of household. If I was, I’d get the 30k because I made less than 1.5x the minimum living cost for New Taipei City.

It is INDEED the case that most psychologists the world over don’t know much about Autism or Asperger’s. They learn what they learn from textbooks. Those textbooks are based on studies that are done by and for neurotypicals. If you read actual Autistic voices out there (of whom many are degreed and credentialed, not just saying stuff) there are a LOT of basic assumptions that need to be challenged urgently about what it means to be Autistic.

The problem with a completely non-medicalized viewpoint (which is what most neurodiversity advocates in the West are working toward) is that then society is supposed to “just do the right thing”. People do not “just do the right thing” especially with regard to people they feel act “strange”, don’t “communicate properly”, or whatever.

I pursued a proper diagnosis in the US as a protection in employment (though I have been self-employed for many years and likely won’t need it). If you disclose to an employer then (in the US, and in theory) they are required to provide reasonable accommodations. The problem is that so much of “how good a job one is doing” rests on “how well do you schmooze with your co-workers”, and we will never be good at that, assuming the co-workers are not Autistic. (Autistic communities have no more problem getting along with each other that neurotypicals do in greater society, which is neurotypical-centered, so there’s that.)

Imagine if you, as a non-Taiwanese, were rated on how “correctly” and well you were able to deal with every single professional and social situation in your job. Every wording in Chinese, every email, every statement, every gathering, every assumed thing you didn’t know about. That’s what it’s like.

My situation is made worse in the fact that I am not only autistic, but I am also rated by how Taiwanese I am, and I am not Taiwanese except on paper.

So you ever wonder why I choose self employment?

But why is there not really any efforts made to bridge the gaps? Everything I hear from autistic people is “they don’t accept us because they think we are weird”. Or is it human nature to reject anything not normal in the slightest?

Or is autism the next step in human evolution?

Ever seen one of those “two chatbots conversing” things on YouTube? I suspect I’m about to embark on one of those, but here goes.

I’m probably Aspergers. Or at least I was when I was younger. I didn’t know what it was called, but I know what it feels like. I made a conscious effort to do something about it (as I assume you did). My method was to construct what would be called an observer process in control systems terminology: an explicit mental model (to augment what, I believe, boils down to an underdeveloped theory of mind) of how ‘normal’ people behave, against which I can gauge my own reactions and adjust as required. It took decades to do this. It used to be a whole load of mental effort, but it now seems to be successfully installed as part of my mental software. Funnily enough, it works even when I’m drunk. It sits there in the background, stone-cold sober, informing me that I’m starting to act like a bit of a dick and I should stop drinking. I’m pretty happy with the general outcome. It genuinely does feel like having an auxiliary consciousness.

I also have a degree in psychology and I know how autism spectrum is conceptualized and diagnosed in academia and clinical practice.

You are of course right that “normal” psychologists/psychiatrists know what they know from textbooks. But how could it be otherwise? They cannot experience every single psychological disorder they might encounter during their careers. So yes, they probably don’t grok what it’s like to be autistic (or Asperger’s - I really don’t think those two diagnoses belong together). But I don’t think you can criticize them for that.

My take on the matter is this: whatever might or might not be wrong with me, I’d prefer to take my chances being judged the same way as anyone else. I’m not going to be medicalized, given a leg-up, pitied, or given therapy. I’m not going to expect other people to “do the right thing”. In my 20s and 30s I struggled in similar ways to TL regarding interviews and similar situations, but my workarounds now work pretty well. I’ll never get promoted into a mainstream middle-management position. People like us, I think, are stuck in a sort of psychological uncanny valley: people sense that there’s something not quite right, but it’s hard to pin down exactly what is wrong. Whatever. Fuck 'em. I’ll make my own path through life, thanks very much, and although I rather regret spending my teens and 20s getting to that lightbulb moment, at this point it’s all working out pretty well.

@Taiwan_Luthiers: if I could offer you any single piece of advice it would be this: accept it. Make your peace with God. Jump off a shrimping boat and swim around for a bit if you have to. Life sucks for everyone, and everyone gets their own unique slice of cosmic suckery. Being Asperger’s, in the grand scheme of things, is not that bad. It’s better (IMO) than, say, having no legs.

As regards interviews, bear in mind that appearances count for a lot. Get yourself a tailored suit. If you’re out of shape, get yourself fit and lean. Get a haircut. And remember that most interviews work by just deciding whether the interviewers like you or not. Smile, relax, and listen. Give simple answers. You’ll be fine.

5 Likes

It isn’t that simple.

Takes years to get fit and lean. Not something that will happen overnight. It will take a LOT of suckery to get there, and at some point genetics just work against you. The only way is to basically not eat for an extended period of time, or eat very little and be hungry all the time. That’s how people in the old days stayed slim… they just hardly ate anything.

As for suits, no, just f*** no. Suits are completely not suited to Taiwan’s weather at all. Unless temperature drops below 15C during the daytime (and that happens maybe a week per year AT MOST) suits are extremely uncomfortable to wear in Taiwan. Not to mention they cost money. Why spend money on some suit that I wear once every 2 years, if that? My dad bought me a tailored suit 10 years ago. I wore it twice in that time. I hated wearing them. They were uncomfortable as hell even on the coldest of days.

And in my opinion and experience, it made almost no difference in terms of how much people liked me.

Of course it bloody isn’t. Nothing worth doing is simple. Everything I’m describing is hard work. But if you want to get from here to there, what choices to you have other than sit around waiting for someone to help you?

The bottom line is this: nobody cares. Everyone else has their own private struggles to deal with, and they don’t want to have to deal with yours. It’s a bit crap, but it is what it is.

Yeah, I know that’s what you’ll read in the Life and Living supplements, but it’s complete bollocks. It takes about a year, and although it takes some commitment, it’s quite enjoyable, not least because you’ll get more attention from women (yes, women are as shallow as men).

Not eating will make you fat (“dieting” is one reason why we have so many fat people around).

I agree. Our Mr Logic minds tend to rebel against the bizarre stuff that “normals” do. But again, it is what it is. If you want to breeze through an interview, you have 30 seconds to make a good impression. Get a good suit and learn how to look like you’re comfortable in it (ie., try not to look like you’re wearing it under sufferance - people pick up on that within 50 microseconds).

TL;DR : Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.

2 Likes

Also if I am interviewing for a machinist, I would NOT want to wear a suit. A suit and spinning machines do not go together.

I can wear a suit under a sufferance, or I can wear what I normally wear and be comfortable. There is no “wear a suit not under a sufferance” in Taiwan. The climate here do not allow that unless the suit has active cooling of some kind. So might as well wear what I am comfortable (within reason) and not act forced. Because if I am going to suffer like this and it would backfire on me, it is pointless.

Good, thoughtful advice and an enjoyable post to read, despite the predictably pessimistic and ungrateful response (as usual). :wall: :wall: :wall:

4 Likes