Could i have Autism?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm 27, I was diagnosed with Speech & language in the 80's & Severe Auditory Processing Disorder, I also have a Learning disability at Grade: 1-2 Level. I also had a assessment done 4 years ago that my Mental Functions are between 10-12 years old

My IQ is 68

I hardly speak & got no communication skills at all or social interaction. 3 year old's communicate better than me. or does Speech & language also mean you got no communication skills? I have a bunch of scrips in my head before i try n talk. Mostly i repeat words though out the whole day, I cant stare anyone in the eyes at all. I'm very sensitive to heat, Smell & hearing. When i was a kid, I always waved my hands around when i talked. I also had lots of tempers. I kicked soo many holes in the walls & threw toys around.

I been researching Autism for months, It kinda looks like i have it., But im not sure. i took some test online & says i have it, but those is not reliable.

I took a medical report to the doctor & he put down Autism with out me proving it.

If i have it, why wasn't i diagnosed with it in the 1980's? I heard my speech delay is a sign of Autism, but was never diagnosed with it? Or does all of this have to do with my speech and language when i was diagnosed?

My head hurts thinking of Autism too much.

I also have no friends. Also scared to post this at WP thinking everyone's out to get me...

I don't think Autism was as well known in the 1980s when you were getting assessed. I know it feels strange to get diagnosed with something as a kid but then feel like maybe that diagnosis is wrong. I'm not sure where you are, but there may be some people in your area that specialize in Autism, especially in adults that can help you cope with your social and speech difficulties.

I've found most people here on WP to be pretty understanding. I think it's common to get diagnosed later in life, so lots of people (myself included) didn't get the proper help in childhood so it makes it harder as an adult. Welcome!

It sounds quite possible that you could be on the spectrum. Is their any way you could arrange to contact your doctor or have a family member do so for you? If not, you could always look up a physician, email their office and explain your situation and ask for their advice/make an appointment. An autism diagnosis would require an evaluation by a medical professional and or therapist.

Good luck

If the doctor wrote down autism, you were likely diagnosed with autism sometime when autism was better known without being informed. That's my reasonable guess. Do you live on your own? I would find it difficult to believe if you were still around people that deal with disabilities you would have such outdated diagnoses.

The problems you talk about having, with speech, with being very sensitive to things around you, and with interacting with other people are very typical of autism. You were right to bring it to your doctor's attention, and it's not particularly surprising that he diagnosed autism.

Why was it missed? Well, if you've been researching autism, you probably know that we haven't known what autism is, or known how common it is, for very long. In the 1980s, autism was thought to be extremely rare, as rare as one in ten thousand people. (Currently, the figure is one in a hundred.) Many doctors weren't looking for autism when they saw a child who had a speech delay; and I imagine that once you got diagnosed with auditory processing disorder and then took the IQ test and came up in the mild-mental-retardation range, the doctor must just have put your difficulties down to that and not looked any further. (I know one guy who is blind and autistic, and his doctor didn't figure out the autism for a long time because he kept assuming that all of his problems came from being blind.)

What's important, though, is that you caught the doctor's mistake, did some checking on your own, and got yourself evaluated properly. Now that the doctors know a lot more about autism than in the 1980s, it probably wasn't too hard for the doctor to tell that you have autism, especially with the "speech and language disorder" and "severe auditory processing disorder" already on your record. Those are commonly found along with autism.

"Speech and language disorder" is a general category for people who have difficulty communicating. That means everything from getting started speaking, to having useful conversations, to communicating what you want to communicate instead of making mistakes and saying other things instead. It also covers problems with understanding what other people are saying to you, both in terms of figuring out what words they're saying, and in terms of figuring out the meanings of the words; and also with problems understanding what you're reading (but problems with reading itself would be called dyslexia).

Yes, it's possible that your mom knows but didn't tell you. Some people from our parents' generation think that telling someone their diagnosis is a bad idea because it's somehow shameful... Makes absolutely no sense to me, but I guess they meant well. My mom knew about my autism when I was little but wouldn't get me evaluated because she was so afraid that I'd be "labeled". In the long run, it was a horrible idea for her to hide it from me, because I missed out on learning things I could've learned much earlier if I'd been allowed to get lessons instead of being blamed for being stupid/lazy/rebellious rather than simply autistic and really bad at doing whatever thing it was.

I hope you have figured out that your IQ is not 68. You probably have a normal or more IQ. You could not have diagnosed yourself and have all of this communication (even in email) with 68. My son's IQ was set at anywhere from 70 to 105 depending on the test and I know he is overall much higher than that. My son is 25 and we got lucky with a speech therapist that recognized what my son had when he was 4. We had to convince his dr he had it. The 80's and earlier were very tough in getting correct diagnoses. Congratulations on figuring it out!

And, Callistas comment on labelling should be shouted out everywhere...! !!

[img][800:1280]http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/4897/83471732.jpg[/img]

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I don't think we should be questioning that somebody got an IQ measurement of 68. It's entirely possible, and anyway, some of us have scored around there before. What we should be questioning is: What, exactly, does the IQ test measure? I think it measures how well you do on IQ tests, personally. That's about it.

Seems to me like the only things I can get from that report are that you didn't do well at school. Look at the "Information" sub-scale--that's the kind of stuff you learn at school. And the 1st-2nd grade level on the academic achievement tests? School, again. Makes me wonder whether your school was giving you an education that fit your needs; many times, in special ed, you end up getting under-estimated.

Well....I can tell you from experience that your IQ scores can easily fluctuate greatly from test to test. I just scored 79 on the perceptual-organizational index score on the most recent IQ test I took. My processing speed score was the same as your own at 86. Both of these scores were the lowest i've ever obtained. I usually score in the average range on processing speed and anywhere from low average to high average on the perceptual-organizational index. My verbal IQ/VCI scores are always in the superior to very superior ranges though. No matter what....IQ scores just don't indicate much beyond your performance on a very narrow range of skills on a certain day. The scores you obtained are likely no indication of your ultimate cognitive capacity (if there even is such a thing). Many people here have obtained scores as low or lower than your own at one time or another and yet they're in universities majoring in subjects that people with IQ scores below 70 supposedly can't be successful at. There's millions of reasons for performing poorly on IQ tests which have nothing to do with one's innate cognitive abilities. People with ASD are among the first to perform poorly for these reasons.

I also never worked before & get $1200 a month from the government.

I stick to my mom like glue, Can't function with out her.

Thanks for the reply's guys, Been helpful.