Getting a Diagnosis-- advantages? disadvantages?

Post Reply New Topic

Reflection,

Are you still in school? If so you are probably on your parents' health plan?

Are you employed? Do you have health insurance via work? If not employed, consider contacting your state's Vocational Rehab services. Their main job is to find you employment but they do testing upfront to see what type of employment would be a good fit. Ghosthunter, another member here, went to Minnesota's rehab. In addition to doing skills, appitute, and interest testing, Rehab sent to send him to a doctor for a dx. Some state sevices are better than others though.

Here's a link to IL.
http://www.ides.state.il.us/ietc


BeeBee

Unfortunately, in today's world the doctor-patient confidentiality, and privacy in general, simply goes down the drain. Consider the example of West Virginia:

Beginning Jan. 1 [2004], health care providers who determine that a West Virginia resident has autism or a related disorder must report the patient's name, diagnosis, symptoms and related conditions to the registry at Marshall University's Autism Training Center. Physicians in other states must report on West Virginians they diagnose. [...] [A]lso included in the registry are Asperger's Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Rett's Disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder -- Not Otherwise Specified.

Source: http://www.autisticsociety.org/autism-article171.html

I've heard that several states in addition to WV - NJ, DE, OK, UT - also have reporting requirements for doctors who dx autism. Not sure how true it is, or if they are only "reporting requests."

The other question is whether the governments are keeping detailed lists of peoples' names and addresses for some unspecified future use or if it's just a case of gathering statistics to help determine financial priorities and budget for future needs. The latter is fairly common. The former would be of interest to the ACLU, etc.

Last edited by Jetson on 06 Feb 2006, 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

I managed to get a diagnosis funded by a charity, which helped substantially. It helped me make sense of a whole load of stuff going through my head. It's something I can put on job application forms, which means my idiosyncracies can't be legally held against me at interview unless they're directly relevant to the job (which they won't be). In fact, I haven't failed a job interview since then!