I attended an extremely good post-diagnosis webinar 2 weeks ago and I slowly condensed down some of my notes to share here. Other things I'll probably get to mentioning in due course.
It was presented by the same clinician at the clinic that handled my diagnosis. Someone with a long list of credentials and a career going back decades and in multiple countries. He clearly had massive passion for what he does. He offered to share the webinar presentation slides with the attendees, so I e-mailed him after the webinar and he sent me the slides.
He covered so much, from core autism features, historical perspectives, the biological basis, the psychological basis, theories and frameworks. Way too much to cover in one post, so I'll try to distil down my notes to the most relevant general things:
1. It is important for each individual to develop their own journey and framework for understanding themselves and learning about how to live in their own situation.
2. The diagnostic process should be transparent and accommodating as possible. Many people have a horrendous time with their diagnosis. The clinician explained why they use the flying frogs story as part of the assessment.
3. When it comes to looking up resources, there is no "autism police" and no border guards saying "no, only people from the UK can access UK autism resource websites" for example. Free internet resources are open to all.
autismcentral.org.uk was recommenced by the clinician as one of the best autism resources. The first fully funded peer education program, developed in partnership with autistic people and commissioned by the NHS.
Autism Central for Parents and Carers | Autism Central
The historical perspective part of the webinar had a few familiar names, others I hadn’t heard before, Gary B. Mesibov and Victoria Shea.
Books mentioned for a historical perspective were:
Lorna Wing, 1996, The Autistic Spectrum: a Guide for Parents and Professionals, 25th Anniversary Edition.
Mesibov and Shea (2005): The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders.
The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders : Mesibov, Gary B : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The chapter on the culture of autism was discussed.
The Culture of Autism - Autism independent UK
One of my favourite parts of the webinar was learning about ecological modelling with regard to autism. Again, way too much to go into in depth, but it’s well worth Googling. The general idea is that autistic people struggle more and more the further from the middle of the digram we go.
This is a simplified diagram, but I found the more in depth diagrams and research to be fascinating:
The spectrum is a circle, not a line.
Then there is of course the importance of differentiating other conditions from autism, but also look at co-existing conditions and their relationship with autism. For example, anxiety is almost a built in feature of autism, where as depression usually develops later and is more reactional and situational. People need to understand how each individual experiences autism interwoven with other conditions or to what degree there is more of a separation.
Lastly, I've been looking into the psychological basis, with the trifecta of theories, mostly out of interest:
- theory of mind
- central coherence
- executive functions
What Is Theory Of Mind In Psychology?
Central coherence was visualised in this bell curve graph, with autistic people hovering around the first vertical line:
Thanks for reading!
It was presented by the same clinician at the clinic that handled my diagnosis. Someone with a long list of credentials and a career going back decades and in multiple countries. He clearly had massive passion for what he does. He offered to share the webinar presentation slides with the attendees, so I e-mailed him after the webinar and he sent me the slides.
He covered so much, from core autism features, historical perspectives, the biological basis, the psychological basis, theories and frameworks. Way too much to cover in one post, so I'll try to distil down my notes to the most relevant general things:
1. It is important for each individual to develop their own journey and framework for understanding themselves and learning about how to live in their own situation.
2. The diagnostic process should be transparent and accommodating as possible. Many people have a horrendous time with their diagnosis. The clinician explained why they use the flying frogs story as part of the assessment.
3. When it comes to looking up resources, there is no "autism police" and no border guards saying "no, only people from the UK can access UK autism resource websites" for example. Free internet resources are open to all.
autismcentral.org.uk was recommenced by the clinician as one of the best autism resources. The first fully funded peer education program, developed in partnership with autistic people and commissioned by the NHS.
Autism Central for Parents and Carers | Autism Central
The historical perspective part of the webinar had a few familiar names, others I hadn’t heard before, Gary B. Mesibov and Victoria Shea.
Books mentioned for a historical perspective were:
Lorna Wing, 1996, The Autistic Spectrum: a Guide for Parents and Professionals, 25th Anniversary Edition.
Mesibov and Shea (2005): The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders.
The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders : Mesibov, Gary B : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The chapter on the culture of autism was discussed.
The Culture of Autism - Autism independent UK
One of my favourite parts of the webinar was learning about ecological modelling with regard to autism. Again, way too much to go into in depth, but it’s well worth Googling. The general idea is that autistic people struggle more and more the further from the middle of the digram we go.
This is a simplified diagram, but I found the more in depth diagrams and research to be fascinating:
The spectrum is a circle, not a line.
Then there is of course the importance of differentiating other conditions from autism, but also look at co-existing conditions and their relationship with autism. For example, anxiety is almost a built in feature of autism, where as depression usually develops later and is more reactional and situational. People need to understand how each individual experiences autism interwoven with other conditions or to what degree there is more of a separation.
Lastly, I've been looking into the psychological basis, with the trifecta of theories, mostly out of interest:
- theory of mind
- central coherence
- executive functions
What Is Theory Of Mind In Psychology?
Central coherence was visualised in this bell curve graph, with autistic people hovering around the first vertical line:
Thanks for reading!
