Were you misdiagnosed before ASD diagnosis?

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Severe Depression, Social Anxiety Disorder and ADHD when I was 15. I was on meds (with therapy) for while and they did help for the most part, but I still had unexplained symptoms, I was still struggling to fit in and the meds for ADHD just made me ill.

I haven't been diagnosed with AS yet, so maybe my doctor was right in the first place. I highly doubt it though. To me the mold fits AS better than anything else on the table.

Agreed.

A "quack"? What does that mean? I'm guessing it doesn't have anything to do with a duck?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quackery

Ah, thanks. I get it now.

Yeah, I'm trying to find someone else. Father already canceled my next appointment with this psychiatrist. I'm going to ask my counselor for advice during my next session.

I was diagnosed with depression. Nobody ever caught the ADD or OCD related to my ASD.

Since you're still a teenager, I'd recommend that your dad find a developmental psychologist or developmental pediatrician to evaluate you, preferably one who is trained in performing the ADOS. Psychiatrists just dont get much training on identifying ASD.

Nope, but inevitably I was diagnosed by developmental pediatrician with a speech and language disorder at the age of 3 which was correct in accordance with the developmental abnormalities that I exhibited in early childhood such as echolalic phrases which gradually diminished and consequently I engaged into formal, pedantic sentences which have now been persistent throughout my whole life and is proudly my most predominant linguistic aspect.

Shortly afterwards likewise the pediatrician recommended me to be screened for Fragile X syndrome (a chromosomal abnormality that is classified as the most commonly inherited form of intellectual and developmental disabilities & a genetic attribute to autism spectrum disorders) in attempt to account for my abnormalities. However the outcome came back negative so Fragile X was ruled out.

Other than what I have elaborated on preceded my official diagnosis of "classical" Asperger's Syndrome in 1998.

AQ: 47/50

Leme tell you, while I'm definitely gifted I'm also definitely not just gifted, I've been around enough people and have seen myself struggle to know that much. I say I that I might fit the actual diagnosis criteria for AS better than ADHD, at least at the time of diagnosis, but it seems that with my traits the common traits of ADHD fits better those of AS, at the very least for stereotypical AS and ADD. I do think I have more autistic traits than most people with ADHD would, but less than most people with AS. If BAP is combined with some else, would it increase its chances of being diagnosed as a PDD, and would a diagnosis of AS make it harder to get a diagnosis of ADHD?

What I was meaning was looking into what parts of you are associated with giftedness might help sort out what else would be going on. People tend to ignore giftedness and it can be very difficult in some cases to tell the difference between a kid which is just gifted, a kid with autism, and a kid with both. Simply being gifted actually can involve a lot more struggles than people give it credit for, and it makes identification of diagnoses more difficult . Overlooking the fact that someone who is gifted actually tends to have different traits rather than just high IQ, tends to make struggles like wondering whether you have AS or ADHD or something else harder. I've just noticed at times you've seemed to give your autism credit for traits that are very common in gifted people, and that has meant I'd think you should look into more the various types of being 2e, rather than just autism or ADHD, because being gifted can change quite a lot in presentation of symptoms.

I don't have an official ASD diagnosis but I was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder and depression when I was a teen. The psychiatrist also noted that I had significant social delay or something with awful eye contact hehe. Not sure why he diagnosed me with a personality disorder at that age but ASD wasn't really known back then.

@Ganondox: Maybe you should look for that book. http://www.amazon.com/Different-Minds-Children-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1853029645

My father doesn't suspect ASD, let alone know anything about it. He just didn't like the way the psychiatrist handled things and made sessions shorter than what we paid for. How do I go about finding a professional who knows about ASD then?

I wasn't labeled anything initially, despite my lack of speaking for far longer than is typical. I struggled in early school, and went to speech therapy because my pronunciation was peculiar, although this did not earn me any label. But afterwards, I was labeled as gifted, mainly due to my scholastic proficiencies. That label was the only one any gave me as a youth, aside from the occasional label of genius.

What I find irksome, is that in my early teen years, when it was becoming very obvious I had other issues besides high intellect, I never received any real assistance or direction. I went through countless specialists, took test after test after test, brain scans etc. and no one knew what to do with me. So no one did anything. I was always "too smart" to be autistic, although that diagnosis kept coming up, and I technically had enough symptoms to be diagnosed, I was never diagnosed due to my IQ being too high.

I get agitated when I think about it, although I doubt that at that time there was anything they could have really offered that would have actually helped me. It is quite incredible how far the understanding of this condition has come in such a short time. While I've had to muddle through it on my own, today's generation has more resources at their disposal, and I am at least thankful for that.

A very stereotypical response. A counsellor once said she didn't think I had Asperger's because she'd seen men with the condition and I didn't come across like that. ASDs, however, were not her expertise - and to be fair, I wasn't seeing her for that - which is why I chased a diagnosis from a specialist.

People with Asperger's are all different, and there's good reason to believe that girls are underdiagnosed. You might have learned just enough coping skills to mask the condition, which is why you, too, need a specialist.



Have you got a local autism or Asperger's society, or a local support group? They might be able to point you in the right direction.

Was I misdiagnosed? Yup, with depression. I won't argue that I was depressed - I was - but it wasn't the full story. Once I had the depression diagnosis, everything got put down to the depression. I knew it wasn't completely right so I never stopped being alert for an answer.