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Drawing a line in the sand: affect and testimony in autism assessment teams in the UK
Author(s) -
Hayes Jennie,
McCabe Rose,
Ford Tamsin,
Russell Ginny
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.13063
Subject(s) - autism , affect (linguistics) , feeling , situated , thematic analysis , psychology , multidisciplinary approach , interpretation (philosophy) , medical education , applied psychology , medicine , developmental psychology , social psychology , qualitative research , sociology , computer science , communication , social science , artificial intelligence , programming language
Diagnosis of autism in the UK is generally made within a multidisciplinary team setting and is primarily based on observation and clinical interview. We examined how clinicians diagnose autism in practice by observing post‐assessment meetings in specialist autism teams. Eighteen meetings across four teams based in the south of England and covering 88 cases were audio‐recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. We drew out two themes, related to the way in which clinicians expressed their specialist disciplinary knowledge to come to diagnostic consensus: Feeling Autism in the Encounter; and Evaluating Testimonies of Non‐present Actors. We show how clinicians produce objective accounts through their situated practices and perform diagnosis as an act of interpretation, affect and evaluation to meet the institutional demands of the diagnostic setting. Our study contributes to our understanding of how diagnosis is accomplished in practice.