AS diagnosis no good need HFA diagnosis to get help. Help?

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I am diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder as of last summer but to get services/help I will be re-assesed because the program doesn't acknowledge AS as a valid condition for their program. While assessing me they will be looking for signs of High Functioning Autism rather than AS. And for what it's worth I'm female.

I was under the belief that AS and HFA were very nearly the same thing.

I did a little searching online and webMD says that neither HFA or AS have language delays. I did not have a language delay as far as my mother knows but since I was born early most of the stuff recorded when I was a baby was medical stuff and not when I met the different mile stones of development though at a year I couldn't sit up by myself and at 19 mos(I think) when the hose thing I was attached to my face so I could breath finally came off I started walking. School records state I was good a math and poor at reading when very little then switch to being super good at reading and poor at math from 3rd grade til the present.

I've been advised to play up the bad parts of my life when the people come to assess me and my mother thinks that my lately being obsessed with this forum and AS may help though I'm not sure how it would help since I have trouble differentiating what bits of info I've learned are from doctors and such and what are opinions from random forumites(even though the later has been more useful to me than the former so far).

These people have assed me once before and after saying I was basically 'too smart' for their program one suggested I might have AS - which I then went and looked up and started trying to find out if I did have it. A kind of flaky doctor confirmed I have it but as he was the only one that could make that call other than a neurologist, whom I haven't seen, and didn't want to make the diagnosis offical at first, I've wanted a second opinion.

Sorry if this is hard to follow.

As far as I know I did not have a language delay as a child. I am poor at math and am surpised I was allowed to graduate High School without knowing how to muliply(which was first taugh to me six grades earlier). I love reading and have always had a good imagination and could/can imagine up worlds/stories to entertain myself for hours if I need/want to. This doesn't quite have an off switch so I find myself 'daydreaming' I guess even when I'm trying to work on other things which are boring.

I know I may not get into the program this time either but if I could it would be a very good thing.

AS seems to fit me quite well but for all I know I could fall under HFA as well.

(I also have Cerebral Palsy and a recent MRI showed nothing abnormal with my brain as far as damage or anything though the CP is a product of brain damage or so everyone says and any proof must have healed all up in the 26 years since the damage was caused from my premature birth in the mid 80s).

I don't generally make eye contact except with close family and my one friend. I did look at one other person's eyes when talking to her at a meeting yesterday but I'm been going to meet her for about a year and a half now and before that day I generally looked at her mouth instead and even yesterday I didn't look at her eyes for more than a few moments before looking else where.
I have gotten better at talking to strangers in the last year but at 26(27 by late November) I've learned to do stuff like that, that I wouldn't have done as a kid. As a kid I could sit in a corner and play by myself til the recess bell rang and not know that anything was happening anywhere else around me. Most of the time I only knew the bell had rung because it was quieter and all the other kids were running to line up already while I was still sitting there building walls of cut grass for houses for my two my little ponies(one was used and the other was a gift I never really got into the series back then though I recently watched the new series on youtube and love it).

So can someone with HFA be mistaken for AS or someone with AS also fall under HFA? I'm not sure what exactly the people will be looking for and what things I may have or not have that could rule out HFA in their minds and make them close my case for real(we thought they'd already closed it after the last interview but turns out they hadn't).

I've noticed that doctors and like people don't try to explain things in plain English even when asked to repeatedly in a loud(for me) unhappy tone of voice.

(This can be moved to Haven if it seems a better place for it. I wasn't sure which spot fit best. Making decisions is one of my major weak points.)

Last edited by EB on 01 Oct 2011, 4:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.

According to some, there's no difference at all between HFA and AS.

According to others, they're as different as night and day.

I fall into the first group and thought most people did as well but it seems the people that will be coming to test me are of the second group.

This may have been posted somewhere before, but could someone post a list of the differances between the two and similarities or link to such a list maybe?

The test I imagine will be like all the other ones which is bad since I've been doing the test since I was five and in resource at school. With the flash cards and the copy this picture thing and make this pattern with the blocks and answer these verbal questions about a story we'll read to you and read this story and answer the questions about it and so on. Half of that stuff I did in normal tests at school and I've always been good at reading and remembering stuff about what I've read unless it was a boring textbook or something like that. I remember part of a show on the skull shape of wild pigs verses domesticated pigs and how they can change to the other based on diet over time and stuff I read as a little kid about hippos(and what that book looked like that I read from) and telling my family about Greek myths after learning about them at school.
However I can't remember to brush my teeth every night or shower every night or eat on time(my concept of time is not really there) and I get lost walking around my neighborhood almost ever time I leave the house (I have a handmade map of a part of the city near my house and usually have my keys and cell phone with me so I do get back home again one way or another in the end). I can never think of examples of my problems when asked by doctors or whoever or when trying to write about them.

I doubt I'd be able to live on my own without some kind of help so I need the program's help for that but if I don't fit the diagnosis they'll except I'm not sure what the next step is yet. I've been job hunting for a little over two years as well with no luck(I do have a job but I can't live off it and recently the job hasn't been calling me to come in at all).

I'm sure this topic will explode with debate shortly, but in the meantime, type this into Google to see the many, many past debates:

site:wrongplanet.net difference hfa as

AS requires no language delay. HFA could have language delay, but it is not mndatory.

That's what I heard as the difference as well. I think many PDD-NOS fall into the HFA definition. Sometimes I don't really see why a bit of improvement in the ability to talk (talk, not communicate) makes it harder to get help.

As far as I can ascertain from my research so far the only thing that ever should make any difference for diagnosis is that HFA sometimes has some language delay, whereas in AS language develops at the normal rate - but I don't even think this is mandatory and a lot of people could technically meet the criteria for both.

BUT

In practice a lot of doctors (be they neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists or whatever) have actually used the two diagnoses to make some sort of value judgement as to what they think someone's functioning level is (i.e. HFA = lower functioning, AS = higher functioning), or to rate someone's IQ (i.e. HFA = low IQ, AS = high IQ) or any other misconceived notion that suits them at the time

I am sure there are better informed people than I who will hopefully correct me if I am wrong

I've always scored high or at least average on all the IQ tests since they test the things I'm good at like reading and drawing, though they also have some math and numbers which I'm not good at mixed in.

I've been doing IQ tests and similar tests all my life though so it seems like it'd be hard to do bad on them though I'm never told exactly what I get wrong.

There is no clinical definition of "HFA." There are simply AS, PDD-NOS, and autistic disorder.

Many, many people who have a diagnosis of AS qualify for a diagnosis of autistic disorder. It has nothing to do with level of perceived functioning. It has everything to do with whether you had a delay in language, self-help skills, or a lack of curiosity about the environment.

I also think that HFA and AS are pretty much the same thing. So, are you saying that a diagnosis of Asperger's means nothing to these people, that they don't recognize it as severe enough to require help, yet they're looking for symptoms of a disorder not even officially diagnosable in the DSM (HFA)? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Often, when someone states the latter, they list traits that are "HFA" and traits that are "AS" and I am just as likely to have traits from either list, as are a lot of people, apparently.

As a parent of a HFA girl, the label is only really useful to get financial assistance for support at school or through local councils for support at home or for council activities for children.

When you do you your reassessment you may be advised to give a worse case scenario to push your diagnosis further along deeper into the spectrum. This will better support more funding for services in future. In addition if you have CP you may be eligible for assistance for that diagnosis separately.

The whole HFA Vs AS thing is redundant as DSMV is going to use a rating scale along a single continuum for autism. I don't know what the response to this proposal is in America but here in Australia, Aspergers groups are not in favor of losing the label. I have now met a few parents of children with AS and they simply don;t wan't their children pooled with kids diagnosed with autism, most primarily because their kids may speak oddly but at least they speak and are showing signs of "wanting to socialise" even if they are not actually making friends. My child was and still does not communicate to people outside her immediate family.

From what I've been told the program does not help people with Asperger's which I am already diagnosed with but they will help me if they themselves diagnose me with High Functioning Autism. Why this is exactly I do not know. They are the only group that gives help in my area or anywhere remotely near me that I know of so maybe they're able to make crazy rules for some reason.

Thank you everyone for all your advice.

Unless it's changed, as often happens with these things, the people will be coming in November but that might just be the paperwork and not the testing part.