No joke. I got mine after a 45 minute interview with a consultant psychiatrist.
I could give you a battery of 20 or so questions and have a
very accurate understanding of your personality traits. You only have five total after all so it's a simple thing to gauge. Add a
single question following that and I'll know where you score on intelligence too. This could be accomplished within the half hour.
Psych evals for mental disorders are a different matter. You understand how a diagnosis is given, right? You just read off the DSM-V and check the boxes, if enough boxes are checked you get your free license to be an asshole on the internet. But these boxes are hardly ever exclusive to a single diagnosis and there is a significant overlap between not only many different pathologies but also perfectly normal behavior — which you might not be expressing in the first place if being evaluated while in a depressed state since one of the more dreadful effects of depression is that it
depresses your basal personality traits.
Say for example a bad case of depression from being let off work and having to move back with your parents slides you into the deep end of introversion. Now let's say your parents become concerned because they can see you're clearly struggling to cope with the situation and they push for a psych eval, given this hypothetical do you think you'd be more or less likely to be diagnosed with a disorder? Will being rehired when the economy rebounds then be the miracle cure for this disorder or is it just the
particular cure for your
particular circumstance that was misidentified as something congenital?
A measure of skepticism towards diagnoses of mental disorders is always warranted but in particular ADHD and ASD since they are typically given on very loose grounds with little to no methodological rigour having been applied.
Even under the best of circumstances you're still entirely reliant on self report and the discretionary judgment of the evaluating party. Both can introduce significant error.
What does your diagnosis have to say about you exactly? What does it
mean? If you feel you have to add a bunch of caveats to explain how it impacts your life when maybe you're just a neurotic, close minded introvert and nothing else needs to be said to describe you, that diagnosis means jack shit. If a diagnosis does not describe something more accurately than can be encompassed using fewer words and simpler language then it is of no value.
All that said, CWC fits the diagnostic criteria of autism to a tee and I have no reason to doubt it. It's also obvious he suffers from several additional pathologies.
It's a pity eugenic sterilization is no longer practiced, I can think of no better a candidate. It would have saved him, his family and his community an awful lot of trouble.
