Chamber and committees

The SIGN guidelines recommend all diagnoses should ideally be made through a multi-disciplinary process and not done by a single clinician.

There is no requirement for the diagnosis to be made by any particular profession. This should be dependent on who has the skills and experience and may include Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Paediatricians and Speech and Language Therapists.

Not all health professionals will be trained to diagnose as this is a specialist skill, but it is the expectation of the Scottish Government that they should be aware of and have access to referral pathways.

By the end of Core Psychiatry training, trainees must be able to:

• receive a full psychiatric history from and perform a Mental State Examination (MSE) on patients within a range of mental and neurodevelopmental disorders across the lifespan in routine, urgent and emergency situations, incorporating appropriate terminology.
• assess patients from a range of different cultural, spiritual, and religious backgrounds, including asylum seekers and refugees, and demonstrate an understanding of how protected characteristics may impact on clinical presentation.

In order to successfully complete Core Psychiatry training, all trainees must undertake a neurodevelopmental sub-specialty placement, either Intellectual Disability (ID) or Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), so they are aware of and will be familiar with the process of diagnostic assessment.

General practitioners are essential to recognition and assessment. Autism is covered in the GP Curriculum alongside a range of other neurodevelopmental differences. Clinical psychology doctoral trainees receive training in relation to assessment and intervention for people with neurodevelopmental disorders, including Autism. Undergraduate training ensures that any Speech and Language Therapist at any level can provide or contribute assessment information that could assist an assessment team in making a diagnostic decision.

The Scottish Government commissioned NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to produce the NES Autism training plan, to ensure that staff involved in diagnostic assessments across the lifespan have the right skills and knowledge, prioritising staff from across Scotland who are involved in diagnostic assessment.