Autism doc says im just depressed

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I was treated for depression and anxiety for years by my GP. I was never sent to specialist doc for anything until after years of treatment not working I told them that I thought I might be on the spectrum.

The psychiatrist who I was referred to, who has a special interest in autism and worked closely with the local autistic society to be sure of my diagnosis, said it was obvious from the very beginning of our assessment that I had an ASD. I was shocked to hear this. If it was that obvious, why wasn't it spotted sooner? Because it was hidden under the depression. But the key is this: even with the depression this doctor could spot it because it was his area of specialism.

And he stated very clearly that my depression and anxiety came from having persistently high stress levels caused by living - and achieving - in a world that is "not made for people like me".

Right now, I'm don't even think I'm depressed at all - which is a very novel feeling, and I put it down to finally knowing what the problem is and actively working to reduce my stress levels (which means letting out some my natural autistic behaviours more instead of suppressing them as much as possible)

I would think if it was an autism specialist you saw, he should be able to spot it even with depression present...

I have to say that based on most all your posts I agree 1000% with this doctor. You may have something like ASD underneath the depression but you are mega depressed. I would focus on that as a priority and keep the ASD thing on the backburner for now.

If you are concerned about the AS I would look into that, don't let the depression get out of control but if you're concerned about having AS it is probably best to maybe try getting a second opinion on the diagnoses.

It's true that knowing you have an ASD can help you recover from depression. But you don't need an official diagnosis for that. You may not need one at all.

The reason it's useful is that knowing you have ASD traits would allow you to figure out more about your major stressors. Eliminate those, and you can reduce your vulnerability to depression.

Luckily, you really don't need an ASD diagnosis to identify and remove stressors. Since you suspect ASD at this point, you can just mentally add the things that would bug an autistic person to your list of potential things to check. Like--maybe you're stressed out by uncomfortable clothes, or being forced to socialize all day. Whether you're autistic or not is, as I've said, beside the point right now. You could be anywhere from ASD to simply a nerdy introvert. Just focus on the depression--that's the really dangerous thing right now. Autism never killed anybody. Depression, on the other hand--if you let that get too far, it's a Bad Thing. Nip it in the bud now before it goes further.

A lot of good advice here. There's quite a few disorders whose symptoms can seem ASD-like, so it's important to get them under control first before going for an ASD dx.

I'm not going to buy into whether the doctor was incompetent or not, I don't have enough information about the session and what they actually said, but I do have to agree that you have to be a bit careful about self-diagnosing. Sometimes we need a third-party perspective on our behaviour, because we can't observe ourselves.

Get the depression under control, talk to a therapist if you have one [or get one if you don't], and when you're better, then discuss the prospect of ASD with them. You need to be stable and fairly asymptomatic for people to make a fair assessment.