Find a therapist to help with autism

Likert scales are often unhelpful for autistic people.

Clear definitions and customization make rating scales more accessible to neurodivergent individuals.

Bringing personalized or alternative scales to appointments can lead to better care outcomes.

Likert scales are widely used in the medical and mental health systems, as they are a useful tool for rating everything from mood to pain levels. For autistic people, however, Likert scales can be more of a hindrance than a help, as the scales often do not make sense to our neurodivergent brains.

To help illustrate this, I will use my own experience as an autistic adult and my struggles over the years to use pain scales. When I was giving birth to my first child, the nurses kept asking for my pain levels. They were using a scale from one to 10 that was color-coded and had smiley faces, with one meaning that I was experiencing no pain, and 10 meaning that I was experiencing extreme pain. I told them I didn’t understand the scale, and the nurses tried to explain it to me, saying that one was no pain, and 10 was the worst pain I had ever felt, like a C-section with no anesthesia. This was not very helpful, as I had never had a C-section with no anesthesia. They changed level 10 to “the worst pain you’ve ever felt.” At this point in my 28 years, I had never broken a bone, gotten stitches, or had any other serious injuries, so my current labor pain was the worst pain I had ever felt. I kept giving high pain ratings, and in response, they kept trying to push an epidural, which I was trying to avoid. My commitment to my plan of having a natural childbirth, along with........

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