ADOS in teen girls???

[bonbons]

I am getting increasingly anxious for my daughter as she has her Ados test this Tuesday. My journey began with her about 18 months ago around yr 8 in mainstream high school when her anxieties turned into angry and aggressive behaviour.Prior to this, she had been naturally'loud', though not angry! She had always questioned her feelings of being 'different', and not ' fitting in', struggled socially, focused on her obsessions to make her happy, was subject to bullying, and basically stood out!!She has been excluded more times than I can recall due to being non compliant, abusive and aggressive, and has now been permanantly excluded under a 'managed transfer' to another, more specialised school. She struggles to see the points of view of others, cannot seem to ever learn from her own mistakes, cannot predict consequence of actions, and is very much engrossed in her own world!! Due to self harming issues, she ended up in a young persons psychiatric unit where, after many observations and the filling out of various questionaires and several interviews regarding her early years etc, the paediatric psychiatrist there concluded that she was on the autistic spectrum, probably aspergers ( strong traits).once discharged and back to CAMHS, who had previously labelled her as behavioural{ despite my regularly questioning this opinion!)' they very much dismissed her dx but,never the less, agreed to conduct the ADOS assesment.

Can't help feeling that this assessment may be slightly biased as CAMHS seem intent on clinging to their original view, and unwilling to accept the professional view of another! Keep reminding myself that nursing staff/educational staff at ypc have spent hours/weeks/months observing her to see what we see, where as Camhs see her for 30 mins a month!!

She is awaiting statementing so that a suitable school to help DS to reach her full potential, may be found, but am worried that if Ados does not reveal these traits, support may dwindle and she will end up back in the mainstream type of education in which everyone agrees she cannot cope!!

does anyone have experience of ADOS in adolescents? Advice appreciated!

[puffin]

DD1 (14 AS/ADHD) was diagnosed at 7 and then re-tested using ADOS at the age of 11.

 

For us it was very useful as at age 7 she was given the dual diagnosis of ADHD/AS. However there was one person on the team who thought that she was ADHD only - there were also school troubles exaccerbated by a a very unpleasant head who lached on to the minority view and refused to believe the AS diagnosis from when she was 7 - dropping lots of hints about ADHD and bad parenting. The centre where she had been diagnosed did not use ADOS at the time of her original diagnosis so they agreed to a retest.

 

It was very useful. DD1 had been taking concerta for ADHD and these symptoms had strongly declined - however the testing made her autistic symptoms even more visible and strongly confirmed the diagnosis - in fact in the first part of the test she met the criteria for autism (not AS or HFA). She was pretty stroppy and refused to do some parts of the ADOS test - but it was noted that they were all to do with imagination.

 

However if she is already diagnosed - do you even need to do ADOS?