Is This Autism?: A Companion Guide for Diagnosing

by Donna Henderson, Sarah Wayland, Jamell White

This companion guide to Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else shows clinicians how to assess for the possibility of autism in clients of all ages.

Understanding of autism has greatly expanded in recent years, and many clinicians feel ill-equipped or confused about how to incorporate this knowledge into their diagnostic process. As a result, countless unidentified autistic people do not have reasonable access to proper identification or support. This book describes current assessment methods, including interviewing, rating scales, self-report measures, social cognition tests, and behavioral observations. It also provides guidance regarding cultural considerations, common mistakes, and how to communicate with and support clients through the diagnostic process.

This very practical clinical guide provides a clear and neurodiversity-affirmative approach to autism assessment, particularly for autistic individuals who have previously been missed. It is relevant to all healthcare professionals who want to learn how to identify autism in their clients.

Genres: Psychology, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Nonfiction, Ebooks

334 pages, Paperback

Published July 25, 2023

Reviews

[Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s no test for autism, nothing that can rule out or rule in autism, clinical judgement always takes precedence. This is from the test manuals themselves and top of the line autism experts from this 2023 book. The initial interview with the parents to map out the patients childhood, behavior and symptoms should last about 2 hours according to this book, which illustrates how time-consuming proper clinical work is. I would assume most psychologists/psychiatrists rely more on the tests in recommending/assigning diagnoses.

It continuously bothers me how the medicalization of psychiatry has resulted in treating people like robots with symptoms who lack morals, free will, judgement and humanity. The complete lack of discussion of how parenting or lack thereof affects the child or how the environment of schools might actually be toxic to a developing mind by these super-experts on autism across two books is just sad. What we’re left with is a system that takes a bunch of children and attempts to force their whole experience of life into a standardized box of “you have this condition,” usually to make the parents’ and school teachers’ life easier. There are some psychologists and psychiatrists who incorporate more humanity in their work and try to understand the patients beyond the diagnoses but it’s a rarity in my experience. The reality is, most people do this work as just another job and follow the guidelines as a factory worker would.

That said, the diagnosis of autism still saves many children from diagnoses a lot worse than autism that could put them on neurotoxic medications for the rest of their lives even if autism itself is a misdiagnosis. If one were to do the clinical evaluation of autism properly, the result would more likely help the child or the adult, even from an anti-psychiatry perspective.

[Ricky · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot I like about these two books, but after having read them, I definitely have more questions than I should. With this one in particular, I felt like it should have really gone through each of the diagnostic criteria more clearly and given a lot more concrete examples of how this might manifest. The organization across the two books didn't completely work for me. this material is so so complicated, I almost would want it as some kind of workbook. laid out in that way with a lot of examples of worksheets and lists of potential things to watch out for. It's kind of unexpected, but I think there was actually more of that kind of thing in the first book. it would be nice if they had collected it all together. That said, I loved the chapters that had a lot of questions in them. I actually listened to the audiobooks, but I ended up ordering the physical copy of this book so that I could more easily reference those questions.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I’ve read on autism so far. I especially like that the authors included input from people on the spectrum as well as the extensive list of co-occurring conditions. So much of this book was eye opening to me (& I’ve been a therapist for 30 years). It is geared towards therapists, but the language is accessible to anyone. I’ll be recommending this to my clients and colleagues.

[Megan Angelica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided I needed to read this books after reading the first book. It gave a great overview of how to go about conducting autism assessments in a flexible and neurodiversity affirming way!

[Lisa Boland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this for all diagnosticians. It has become the bible in my practice!

[Madison White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful resource. Great adjunct to the first book