Just a clarification buying, psychologists are generally the ones who run CBT programmes (and social skills programmes), these are based on psychological theory; Tony Attwood is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so the real message is - find someone who specialises in ASDs, who has an understanding of and access to the therapies needed. I have come across paediatric psychiatrists and developmental paeds who are hopeless with ASDs, and psychologists who are brilliant, and vice versa 🙂 cheers Rae

I agree with Island here as to the psychs. We have been through a fair few of them to find the ones which suited our boy. Yes, you do need one who understands the ASD's (we've wasted a lot of money visiting shrinks who had less of an idea than us) and you also then need to find one that your child "clicks" with. This in itself can be an expensive exercise as you may need to go through a few to find one you like. If your child doesn't like them, it doesn't matter if they are the best and most qualified in the world and sometimes this takes several sessions to determine.

We worked our way up to Attwood, which was when we realized just what a difference the "right" psych could make, then when he reduced his work load (we now only see him once every 12 - 18 months - he just oversees everything now, doesn't really "treat" him iykwim, he recommended us to another young lady, brand new she was, and she was absolutely brilliant (did her PHD on ASD with Attwood supervising or something, so really "got it") and fortunately or boy responded well to her. We got to keep her for about 3 years until she won some fullbright award overseas and since then we've "gotten through" but never really found one as good for us, but then things are a lot more manageable these days so not as big a deal.

The thing to point out with all of these shrinks though is that we had to travel quite a way for all of them (about an hour and a half). whilst there are no doubt many good shrinks much closer, these were the ones that worked for us the best so just had to do it.

Last bit of advice before you start on the therapy merry go round is to find a peady with whom you have absolute trust in (once again, may have to look around) and let him be the cruise director kind of thing - let him direct the therapies and have the other specialists report back to him - that way you have one person who has the whole picture, not just a bunch of tests and therapies that a heap of people have opinions about but no one person putting them all together into your child's profile iykwim.