Self-diagnosis is valid
I only figured out I'm autistic in 2022. I'm still learning. Writing these articles is how I learn things. They're all works in progress, to various extents. No-one can speak for an entire minority group. These are just my personal experiences, things I've found out from talking to my friends, and discussions I've seen on autistic forums. Please don't take me as authoritative. I'm not.
When it comes to things like autism, self-diagnosis is valid for multiple reasons.
Self-diagnosis is generally very accurate
AQ-10 scores grouped by diagnosis
You can see clearly in this graph the correlation between officially-diagnosed and self-diagnosed autistic people.[1] With autism in particular, autistic people can be pretty notorious for being well-researched and "over"-thinking things, being highly aware of alternate competing theories rather than hearing about one and hazily applying it where it "feels good" to do so.
If you've spent months researching autism, taking online tests, and compiling lists of traits and which of your experiences they suddenly explain, then by that point you clearly know what you're talking about, and with autism in particular, the fact you did that level of research about anything you didn't have to is itself a sign that you think and act (and obsess) like we do.
Self-diagnosis is often necessary
Access to an official diagnosis is currently a privilege, given it requires either a functioning nationalised healthcare service or a lot of money. It requires doctors who are aware of what it means to be autistic, even if you manage to present yourself as allistic on a superficial level. (Apparently many doctors diagnosing autism still don't know what masking is.) It also requires your government to not discriminate against you using your official diagnosis, disincentivising you from getting one in the first place.
Self-diagnosis doesn't have a downside
Even if an allistic person mistook themselves as autistic, they wouldn't be depriving anyone else of necessary accommodations.
If your autism is subtle enough to other people that you can pass for allistic, then you're likely considered a level one autistic adult (which we're not naming after Asperger anymore). We're generally self-sufficient enough that there are very few accommodations to be had, and the ones there are, such as working from home, are not zero-sum.
You're not going to be asking for a carer, you're going to be asking to wear sunglasses or earplugs, or to close the blinds. If that makes you more comfortable, I can't think of a reason for anyone to deny such a request, regardless of whether you strictly need it in order to avoid headaches, meltdowns, or shutdowns, or whether it merely helps you stay calm and focused.
References
- "An Exploratory Study of a Dimensional Assessment of the Diagnostic Criteria for Autism" Mark Brosnan, PubMed Central, Mar 2020
Am I autistic?: Autistic and allistic traits | Autistic imposter syndrome | If I'm autistic, why don't I stim? | Online autism tests | Self-diagnosis is valid
