I’m asking because I’m suspicious I might have autism but I cannot access a psychiatrist.
If I do self diagnose and no matter how much evidence I find that I have autism at the end of the day I don’t know that for a fact.
So if I go around claiming I’m autistic when I don’t even know for a fact I am, it feels extremely disrespectful to people with autism right?
It’ll be even worse if I do get access to a psychiatrist and they tell me no I’m not and I’m just weird or something.
EDIT: I don’t want to reply to everyone one by one but I do wanna say thank you for everyone’s kind and helpful answers. I appreciate it.
Getting a diagnosis can be extremely difficult for people. In my area you either need to pay about $5k or go through a 2+ year ordeal.
Even with all that, diagnostic methods are murky at best. There is no binary you have it or you don’t kind of thing, no physical test that can conclusively say you are autistic.
All that to say as someone who went through the process to get diagnosed. I think self diagnosis is perfectly valid with autism.