Testing...

After chatting with Nerdy Girl on Monday night over coffee where I suggested that I might show some symptoms of autism, I found a UK-based website and took their course. Nerdy Girl suggested that it might not be autism per se but rather personality quirks. She might have a point, but it's pretty difficult to know without sitting down and spending time with someone for a full-blown diagnosis. If KfW2's experience is anything to go by, these can cost up to £1000 and have a year-long waiting list... if you're lucky.

Anyway, the results of the test weren't that shocking. I've done several over the years and they all return broadly similar results. I experience a lot of the symptoms though not to a high degree, so it's always been a borderline kinda thing.

Your score suggests you experience many or all of the most common traits experienced by autistic people.

What should I do now?

The assessment for autism is very in-depth and will go into a great more detail than the above quick indicator test. You may therefore want to consider whether a full assessment will be helpful for you – our triage team can explain this in more detail. A full assessment will also look at other common mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety and ADHD – it’s common for autistic people to have another issue as well, and often these can be successfully treated.

If you are at all concerned about how you are feeling, we would always recommend speaking to someone. Our team of clinical advisors are all trained professionals who are able to help identify if there might be a problem that we can help with. We can arrange private psychiatric assessments and therapy sessions at one of our 21 nationwide locations.

The difference this time, that would actually make me consider this is the fact that this particular site suggests that an assessment might also consider other factors. I've never seen that mentioned before and is actually making me seriously consider this. I still have the links that the attractive blonde HR girl gave me at the start of the year that I have yet to use, but I wonder if this is something I can do through work?