Scott McKirdy is a Registered Psychologist and co-owner of Solasta Counselling in Calgary, where he conducts adult autism and ADHD assessments. View Scott’s profile >>
If you’re considering an autism assessment as an adult, the not-knowing is often the hardest part — not just whether you’re autistic, but what you’re actually signing up for. How many appointments. What gets asked. How long you’ll be waiting for an answer. This is a plain walkthrough of the real process, start to finish, so you can go in knowing what to expect.
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Step 1: The Free Consultation Call
Before anything formal starts, most practices — including Solasta — offer a short, no-obligation consultation call. This is where you talk through why you’re seeking an assessment, ask questions about the process, and get a feel for whether the clinician is a good fit. Nothing is being evaluated here; it’s purely informational, and there’s no pressure to commit afterward.
Step 2: The Interview and Standardized Testing
The bulk of the assessment happens across two to three appointments of roughly two to three hours each, built around two core components: a detailed clinical interview covering your personal and developmental history, current challenges, and the specific experiences that led you to seek an assessment, and structured, standardized testing using gold-standard instruments — the ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition), the ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised), and the MIGDAS-2 (Monteiro Interview Guidelines for Diagnosing the Autism Spectrum, a sensory-based format that’s often a better fit for adults who mask well or present atypically).
These two pieces don’t necessarily happen in a fixed order, and they’re sometimes woven together within the same session rather than run as strictly separate appointments — the exact structure depends on your clinician and how you present. A good clinician also won’t run every available tool on every client by default; tool selection should be tailored to you specifically.
Step 3: A Note on Childhood Information
One of the most common worries people raise at this stage: do I need someone who knew me as a kid to confirm what I was like? Not necessarily. Collateral information from a parent or childhood observer can add useful context, but plenty of adults seeking a late diagnosis simply don’t have access to that — and a thorough clinician should be able to build an accurate picture from the clinical interview, standardized tools, self-report measures, and your own detailed account of your life, without it.
Step 4: Scoring and the Written Report
Once testing wraps up, the clinician scores the results and writes up findings — this typically takes three to four weeks. What you get at the end should be a substantial document, not a one-page summary: a genuinely thorough report runs 20 to 30 pages and covers diagnostic impressions with clinical rationale, a profile of your strengths and support needs, and practical recommendations for things like workplace accommodations and daily-life strategies. It should be written to actually be useful to you, your doctor, or your employer — not just a checkbox.
Step 5: The Feedback Session
Once the report is ready, you’ll sit down with your clinician to go through the findings in plain language — not jargon, not a data dump. If autism is identified, this is where you find out what that means for you specifically: your particular profile, not a generic description of the diagnosis. This is also the point where next steps get discussed, including what post-assessment support might look like.
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How Much Does an Adult Autism Assessment Cost?
This varies by clinic, but as a real reference point: comprehensive adult autism assessments at Solasta in Calgary start from $3,250, reflecting the multi-session process, standardized tools, scoring, and detailed report involved. It’s a genuine investment, which is exactly why it’s worth knowing upfront what you’re paying for rather than being surprised partway through.
You also don’t typically need to pay the full amount upfront — payment is usually split across the process rather than due as one lump sum before you start, which makes the cost easier to plan around. And depending on which clinician you see and your specific insurance plan, direct billing may be available for part or all of the cost — it’s not universal across every assessor or every plan, so it’s worth confirming on your consultation call whether it applies to your situation.
For context on timing: the wait for an adult autism assessment through Alberta’s public system can run two to three years. Going private typically means four to six weeks from your first consultation call to a finished report — a meaningfully different timeline if you’ve already been waiting a long time for answers.
Depending on the outcome, some people are also eligible to apply for the Disability Tax Credit — worth raising with your clinician if it’s relevant to you.
How to Prepare for an Adult Autism Assessment
There’s no strict prep required, but a few things make the process smoother:
Write down specific examples, not just impressions. “I struggle socially” is harder to work with than “I need a full day alone to recover after a family gathering.” Specific, concrete moments give your clinician more to work with than general self-descriptions.
Gather anything you already have, but don’t stress if you don’t. Old report cards, past therapy notes, or a family member’s recollections can help — but as covered above, their absence doesn’t derail an accurate assessment.
Expect some of it to feel emotional. Talking through years of not quite understanding why certain things were harder for you than for other people can bring up real feelings, sometimes unexpectedly. That’s normal, not a sign anything’s going wrong.
Come with your actual questions. Cost, timeline, what happens if the result is inconclusive, whether the report will be useful for workplace accommodations — a good clinician would rather answer these upfront than have you find out partway through.
Why This Matters: Autism in Adults Is Often Missed
Many autistic adults weren’t identified in childhood — not because they weren’t autistic, but because they masked effectively, or because clinical understanding of how autism presents (particularly in women and non-binary people) has shifted significantly in recent years. A late diagnosis is just as valid as an early one, and for a lot of people it’s the first time a lifetime of specific experiences finally has an explanation.
Who’s Actually Behind an Assessment Matters
The process above is fairly standard across good clinics, but who’s running it isn’t. At Solasta, adult autism assessments are co-led by Scott McKirdy, MC, Registered Psychologist, and Dr. Gillian McKirdy, Psy.D., Registered Psychologist — both trained in the ADOS-2, ADI-R, and MIGDAS-2, with additional specific training in assessing autistic women, a group historically underdiagnosed by tools originally normed on a narrower population. The full assessment team also includes Sabrina Minor, Sarah Choudhry, and Misha Waheed, registered and registered provisional psychologists who each bring their own clinical background to the assessment process. For Indigenous clients specifically, Randi Sager offers assessments adapted for Indigenous populations, recognizing that standard diagnostic tools weren’t developed or normed with Indigenous communities in mind and don’t always translate accurately across cultural context.
Ready to get some answers? Book a free consultation call or learn more about adult autism assessments at Solasta.