The Coventry Grid for adults: a tool to guide clinicians in differentiating complex trauma and autism.

In this paper, the authors discuss the need for an instrument to help distinguish between autism and the effects of complex trauma in the diagnostic assessment of adults. They chose to adapt the Coventry Grid (Moran, 2010) for this purpose and developed the Coventry Grid for Adults (CGA). It is widely accepted that autism presents differently in each individual with the diagnosis and so too in trauma. Diagnostic assessment tools are necessarily limited in that they have to use general descriptors and can not account for every individual seen with the condition. There is also often a focus on difficulties and a tendency to view difference as a deficit, when such differences can convey strengths and/or may not be viewed as a problem by the person concerned. The authors acknowledge that the CGA is in its infancy and welcome feedback from readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]