My psychiatrist failed to detect AS. Is she INEPT?

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check with a nerologist for diagnosing aspergers. make sure you had a iep setup at school. but first talk to a psychologist and bring any papers related to iep, medical information with you, usually a good psychologist will ask questions related to if your hearing any sounds, or social related questions, a good psychologist will give you a series of tests related to family past, substance abuse, and social questions. which based on that will usually multiple diagnosis such as anxiety disorders, ptsd, somatization disorder, and or agoraphobia, schizophrenia and all the other known diagnostics, and medical stuff in your past medical history. usually this is enough to get on social security disability. once you get on that you usually have to wait 2 years to get on medicare, then you check with a nerologist on aspergers.. my adopted father is a doctor and PHD in the medical field.- this is what helped me get support till i'm qualified to get on medicare, another 3 months and i can go to a nerologist to see whats going on. anyway depends on what kind of support is available in the area. for me a company called advocates for public benefits, llc helped me get the support needed. checkout the site http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/list.html advocates for public benefits in california- redding california: http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowLp ... 9628410031

hope this information helps

I apologize to do mostly a self quotation, but what follows was posted a few days ago and is here with only e few changes. I think what I was saying is relevant.

I will try to give some answers based on my experience. I lived all my life (I am 74) with an autistic problem (fundamentally not being able to read the mind of others and being therefore clumsy and ineffective in interacting with others), but, at the same time I have had a very difficult family history, so that both aspects have been affected, the genetic, and the so called traumatic.

I am convinced that if one has a defective genetic dotage, and a difficult conflict relationship with his parents or close protectors (foster parents etc.) his problems will not be summed but will be compounded. And the combination of the two problems (genetic and traumatic) is very frequent. This, added to the fact that the exploration of autism is rather recent and falls ouside the normal curricula followed by the majority of pratictioners, makes normally DXs difficult.


My experience of psychiatrists, neurologists and self defining psychoanalysts may be affected by some regionalism, but has been disastrous, being psychoanalysts at the bottom of the ladder of incompetence. Professional labeling may not mean much (except in the case of psychoanalysts who are certainly unqualified), but probably the right thing to do should be to approach a pratictioner up to date and serious.

It’s difficult that neurological and traumatic problems don’t get compounded, because if you have a neurological flaw it is very probable that this will run in the family, and, if so, you will find much more incompetence and unavailability in your parents or relatives in handling you with generosity and understanding.

Good for you, Mw99. Unfortunately, it does appear to be necessary to "shop around" for competent mental health care professionals, particularly when AS is in the picture. Based on my own experience, depression is a secondary issue... which doesn't mean it should be ignored! It may be that, for you, part of solving the problem will involve library and internet research. I particularly recommend making an effort to wade through the info on the neurochemistry of depression. However, don't rule out meds... and it is MDs who dispense them. Correctly utilized, meds can be an effective shortcut to ridding yourself of the misery and angst of depression. They may even be a life-saver.

PS I am NOT a health care professional!

Um, before everybody throws up their hands and blows off the head shrinkers, here's a way that the Asperger's diagnosis might actually help therapy: instead of randomly groping for some kind of rationale for your behaviour that doesn't exist, you can examine the role Asperger's has played in your life- i.e. being misunderstood/rejected/persecuted for your apparent difference. You can't get rid of the Asperger's, but you can work through all of the crap that's been dumped on you because of it, and come up with some strategies for creating self-esteem. I've had extremely negative experiences with one psychiatrist, who wasn't interested in treating me AS or no AS, but once I found someone who gave a damn and figured out the DX, she was extremely helpful.

I don't want to go through the pain of finding a competent psychiatrist. Besides, I don't need a psychiatrist, or psychologist, or therapist. I need something else.

We autistics are an interesting and varied people. Sadly, not many psychiatrists or psychologists are experienced enough specifically with adult ASCs to be able to consistently reliably diagnose most of us.

Most psychiatrists specialize in the Triad: 1) Anxiety Disorders, 2) Mood Disorders, or 3) Psychotic Disorders. They aren't usually up on their autism. So your description is not at all surprising, and actually a very common occurrence.

If you really want a dx, hopefully you can find a diagnostician who has a lot of experience with adult ASCs. Unfortunately, those diagnosticians tend to be a bit rare.

That psychiatrist and psychologist are probably only going to be able to identify and maybe help treat some of the comorbids, like depression and anxiety. I wouldn't expect much else from them. Most shake off a suggestion of ASC by their clients as ridiculous even though they don't even have the professional experience to responsibly come to that conclusion.

Having a degree doesn't guarantee the professional will know what to do with it.

AS wasn't a known diagnosis when I was growing up, or even when I went to college. I never read anything about it until 1997. The criteria certainly seemed to fit. There were a lot of resources for college students with various disabilities, but I was never given a concrete diagnosis. I was told I was hopeless and there was no help for me.

In perhaps not so humble opinion....There are many doctors
out there, and I say MANY not ALL, that are basically whores
for the pharmaceutical companies. They run mass diagnosis mills
that make SOME people feel like they are a cow being herded
blindly through a narrow corral into an unknown and frightening
place they know nothing about, or what will happen there. I have
seen it, experienced it first hand, and am grateful there are some
people out there who have not and will not ever have to go through
that. I am sorry you had to go through it mw99. I know some of us
really NEED to be on meds but for those of us who can get by
without them, well it's just a shame, that's all.

What Paolo and Sophist said.

I think there's a tendency in gen-Y-ers and younger to want/expect an explanation or a category for things, even if those things defy explanations or categories. Medicine and psychology (in particular) are constantly evolving; they say we are 100 years behind in our knowledge of psychology as we are in our knowledge of medicine (i.e. we currently treat psychological "illness" with methods akin to bloodletting). Labels change, as does our understanding of the conditions they describe. (e.g., ADHD [also along the autism spectrum] was called "minimal brain dysfunction" before it was called "hyperactivity" before it was called "ADD" before it was called "AD/HD." Some specialists are now re-evaluating that label.)

People are more complex than a label or a diagnosis. And even then, I can imagine that some professionals might be hesitant to label a child "autistic" (for example), if she is uncertain whether that's the ONLY thing going on--it's hard to undo that kind of Dx in terms of how you're treated at school and expected to perform, in general. I never had a Dx for anything growing up (though were I a kid today, I most surely would have), and I worked my ass off to do well in school and get through [a decent] college. I'll never know whether I would have worked as hard had someone told me, "we don't expect you to do as well as the 'normal' kids, so don't worry so much." (Then again, a childhood Dx might have changed the way people related to me, resulting in less anxiety as an adult. But I'll never know.)

I have been in therapy on and off since I was 8 (I've had eight therapists [all for at least a year, aside from my current one], two MD/psychiatrists, and one coach, and nobody ever once mentioned to me that I might have ADHD until I was 31. It wasn't until 2 years later (this past summer), that anyone ever said to me that I might have AS (at which time, 2 different specialists mentioned it independently of each other).

Does that make all of my previous therapists incompetent? I don't think so. The person I saw for two years up until this past June was wonderful, and has helped me immensely. She wasn't the one to pick up on the ADHD, and never said anything about AS either. But the field of psychology is SO broad--and in a sense, it's all a construct, borne of human creativity and our need to categorize--that I can't expect any one person to know about every single Dx both in and outside of the DSM-IV. The fact that I or anyone has multiple Dx's--(before AS it was ADD and before that it was GAD, SAD, and depression, yadda yadda) and that those Dx's change--proves that this [construct thing] is so.

What if half the people diagnosed with anything (bipolar, depression, anxiety, ADHD, AS, etc.) were just like "normal" people when they were born, but just had really crappy childhoods and really difficult lives? And what if, given enough love, attention, understanding, and a supportive environment as children, those kids who grew up to be called [insert Dx here] were actually completely "normal," if not a little sensitive? There's a lot of suffering in the world these days, and maybe some people's parents just didn't know how to deal.

In this case, therapy was a bit of a waste, and it wasn't cheap. Mostly occupational therapy. The therapist was convinced I was extremely paranoid and delusional when I wasn't and would focus mostly on those aspects. I even started to believe that I was going through a psychotic episode because of her.
The meds, besides having many undesirable side-effects, such as weight gain, drowsiness, a few convulsions and very high prices (at least for me) they were practically stuffed down my throat. It was a slightly bad experience and, since I was a minor at the time, I was forced to undergo.

I think I personally benefited from the diagnosis of Asperger's. At least I no longer blame myself for my social ineptness and other 'eccentric' behaviors, but that's as far as it goes. It's not something I wave around to get attention, as so many people (namely educators) think.

To reiterate: My current psychic assumed I had AS from the first time he saw me; he neglected to mention it to me due to treating my OCD. I saw countless psychotics, [psychologists and psychiatrists] prior to him for a year that missed AS/AD, even in the mental hostel where I was the only person who was reclusive there.

I'm not thinking of anyone in particular, but I personally feel very sorry for all the suckers who spend thousands of dollars on mental health professionals and medications, when in reality they don't need any of those things to get better.

Some people (aspies included) seem to have a hard time thinking on their own and are easily intimidated. I am not like that. I am an independent thinker and I stick to my guns. I don't know if this is an aspie trait or not, but If people try to make me think I am crazy because they disagree with my opinions, they are free to do that and I don't care.

I'd rather be wrong than deceived.