If your psychiatrist informally diagnosed you with ASD, during your ADHD assessment, is the diagnosis seen as valid?
Last Monday I had my ADHD assessment and the psychiatrist assessing me was very nice and thorough. He asked me loads of questions, asking me about my childhood and stuff like that. Beforehand, I had to fill up 4 pre-assessment forms, 3 for me to fill out and one for a friend or family member to fill out. At the end of the assessment, he told me I had ADHD and Autism. He seemed fairly certain about it too, explained to me that I was a level 1, which would be Aspergers and explained to me that the autism had been masking the ADHD traits and the ADHD the autism traits. Then he said that although this ASD diagnosis is just informal, he was very certain about it and then told me to research more into it so that I can understand my brain more and can start being myself more authentically. I don't know if I'm still in denial about everything, as I wasn't expecting the ASD diagnosis one bit but - would that count as a valid diagnosis then? I mean - he does have experience in diagnosing ASD (I had looked him up before my assessment and saw he had experience in both diagnosing ADHD and ASD). But as this ASD diagnosis was an informal one - I don't know if it's valid or if it counts.. maybe it does but I just want to be sure. I have researched into ASD though and I can definitely relate to a lot of the traits but still would like to know if the informal diagnosis itself would count as valid or not.
Well it depends on what you mean by "valid". If you trust your psychiatrist and if you recognize youself in the diagnosis, you can at least treat it as valuable information that you can use to understand yourself better and grow as a human being. But if you want to apply for, say, an organisation for people with ASD, then you would most likely need an official diagnosis. At least, that's what it's like here in The Netherlands.
@yellowTurtle5658 It depends on the legislation which is valid in your area and for what do you need your diagnosis. Therefore, can you maybe ask the people who need the information on your diagnosis in order that you get certain benefits, treatments, etc?
But for the sake that you can identify as a person with ASD if you wish to identify as a person with ASD, then informal diagnosis can be enough if you feel so.