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Certainty
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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If parents are declaring one child as diagnosed but not another it’s because they went to health professionals and respected their diagnoses. Your attitude is gross, toxic, and harmful.
That's a lot of assumptions there bud
That’s my point. Assuming a diagnosis of mental conditions based on casual social observations is a super fucked up thing to do.
It's not "super fucked up". Suspecting it based on behaviors is the first step to diagnosis, what are you smoking
I prefer Northern Lights when availability and price permit, otherwise some Blue Diesel related strains are my go-to.
I don't think the person in the OP is necessarily assuming diagnoses. I agree with you that arm-chair diagnosing based on little information is generally a bad thing to be doing. However, there is a disproportionate number of girls and women with undiagnosed/late diagnosed ADHD. People (understandably) put a lot of weight on official diagnoses, but also, institutional bias exists (though has been improving on this front, in recent years)
This isn't about trusting or distrusting the assessment of doctors. If the daughter in the tweet had been assessed for ADHD and was deemed ineligible for a diagnosis, then I might be more in agreement with your comment. However, the crucial step before being sent for an assessment for ADHD is often an informal one: teachers, family or friends commenting on a child's behaviours and saying "you should get him/her assessed for ADHD". Institutional bias is one thing, but sociocultural bias is insidious and hard to challenge. That's why in my opinion, the person in the OP is doing a positive thing, because the daughter might not have been assessed for ADHD, and if no-one says "have you considered she might have ADHD?", it'll stay that way for many years.
I apologise for the wall of text. My intention isn't to just talk at you, I am genuinely interested to hear your opinions on what I have said, especially if you find some parts of my comment more disagreeable than others.
Not to mention that neurodivergence in girls and women is severely underdiagnosed due to differences In manifestation combined with hegemonic standardizations and diagnostic norms.
Female-bodied people show different symptoms and may be more commonly dismissed as “quirky behavior”.
So your assumptions that one is tested and the other wasn’t may, in fact, be just as “gross and harmful” as this user accuses someone else to be.
When I was 8, my 4 year old brother, 40 year old father, and 35 year old uncle whom I lived with all went to get screened for autism after my brother's pre-school recommended it.
3/4 of us walked out with autism diagnoses.
I was given the official psychiatric assessment that I had "learned and developed autistic traits and mannerisms due to growing up in a household with no neurotypical influence" and the advice was that I would grow out of it once I made enough "normal" friends at school.
My brother started occupational therapy and other programs, and at each one, the practitioner would recommend to my dad that I join too to "help her brother feel safe and comfortable" and I would litteraly participate in the Autism therapy programs with my autistic brother.
Over my years at school, I picked up official diagnoses for dyscalculia and dyspraxia and that explained a few of the struggles I was having. The autism OT I was already doing covered support for my learning disabilities so nothing except the paperwork changed.
And sure enough, I made neurotypical friends at school, and a lot of the autistic-like traits I exhibited as a kid were no longer apparent in my behaviour.
I had a lot of mental health issues as a teenager and young adult. But what millennial isn't depressed and anxious? I was growing up with 3 autistic men as a teenage girl, I rationalised that my dysfunctional emotional state was justified by my life circumstances. I was a dramatic teen.
Hearing and visual impairment, and other physical health issues with muscle tone, and struggles to heal due to poor proprioception that got worse in my 30s somehow lead to a re-assesment for autism as an adult.
Big fucking suprise. I'm autistic. Always have been.
Sometimes health professionals don't get the full picture. They're human.
My presentation is drastically different from my male family members, and I was parentified by my fathers autism from a young age - I remember being as young as 10 and my dad saw my ability to blend and socialise, he'd send me into stores or get me to make phone calls for him if he was having anxiety over it. This was not something that was discussed at the time of my first assessment.
My special interest was, and still is, anthropology. I maintain that loving the study of humanity and human culture means I've been able to intellectualise my way through social situations that neurotypicals feel their way through on instinct. I suspect I've done this from a young age, and that this further muddied the waters for that psychiatrist who assessed me when I was 12.
If I'd gotten reassessed in my later teens, or early 20s, I'm certain the result of the assessment would have been different then to, even with the same psychiatrist. You get 4 hours with a perfect stranger,just on some random day, and they're supposed to make an assessment on your entire life?
We trusted their assessment, which is why I fumbled through life for 20+ years under the assumption I could learn my way out of feeling autistic.
Trust your healthcare professionals, but remember that they're human, and second opinions are important, especially if you're struggling with the treatment plan, or lack thereof, from the first doctor.