What are common misdiagnosis for ASD?

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(I haven't read the intire thread)

Here in Sweden it's not uncommon for ppl with AS/HFA to be misdiagnosed with borderline, especially if they self harm or also have ADHD.
The knowledge about ASD in teens and adults here are not very good.

I finally got the correct diagnosis after moving to Sweden at age 40. My daughter also got her correct diagnosis after moving to Sweden at age 15. I've been quite impressed at their level of knowledge. I don't think we would have ever got the right diagnosis had we stayed in the UK.

Basically, it can be misdiagnosed with every other mental disorder. Or almost every mental disorder.

Yes, compared to other countries Sweden is really far ahead. I'm from Germany and I've even read articles about Sweden and ASD.

The problem with autism is that it can look sometimes like nearly other mental disorder. ASD is very often not easy to detect.
I also behaved from the outisde(!) like Borderline, like schizophrenie, like schizoid and so on.
I'm neather one of those, but sometimes it can look like this if I've overload, have a problem or something on.
That's the difficulty in autism. It's not allwayls like for professionals would have no clue at all (okay sometimes it is), but most of the time autistic people usuall don't walk to psychiatrists and mention the criterias of ASD as their problems. Most with ASD who don't know that they have it walk into their and say stuff like, they like being alone, have difficulty with other people, everything is too loud, sometimes they scream when they are overwhelmed, self-harm, or something else and if you don't look close enough those symptoms can be at first sight really be everything. That's the problem.

A lot of people don't come along with others, not just autistics, a lot of people like being alone and so on.

That's very true. I've found out alot more about AS post diagnosis and now know that there have been loads of issues over the years which would have pointed to AS earlier, but it never occured to me to mention it. It never occured to me that my absolute hatred of polyester was connected to my inability to make friends. Or that my daughter covering her painting with enough paint to sink a ship at 4 years of age was connected to her stealing at 10.

Yes exactly and my missdiagnoses where all anyoing and could be prevented if the professionals would have looked close enough but I even can understand them now. I thought those situations through and when they thought I've ADHD, I was outgoing and kind of looked "hyperactive" at that time, when I was missdiagnosed with schizophrenia, I had huge trouble with overloads and walked around telling them: "everything is too loud, every little sound messes me up and it hurts." when I was missdiagnosed with borderline, the same thing. I had a trauma at that time, telling them highly emotional stuff, being afraid of a lot of things and so on and I needed nearly two years to calm down.
So from the outside I behaved like this. All those psychiatrists weren't specially trained for ASD, but I still think now, that those shrinks didn't missdiagnose me on purpose and it isn't like they would have no clue at all, sometimes autistic people just behave in a certain way and EVERY behaviour autistic people show CAN be also part of another diagnosis and sometime too many factors come together and it really looks like schizophrenia, a personality disorder, a mood disorder or something else.

Autistic people deal different with problems and also my way to come along with my trauma wasn't "normal".
If you want to understand autism, you have to forget pretty much everything you heared about psychiatry how it works in normal people and that's the difficulty. A lot of disorders look somehow different in autistic people, even my trauma did.

May I ask where in Sweden you got assessed?

I was diagnosed at the hospital in Falköping in Västra Götaland and my daughter at the one in Skövde.

Ok, I haven't notice anything proffessional and knowledgeable about the swedish psychiatry.
I've been in their net since I was 5 more or less the whole time and not until I'm 20 they start to think a little about it.
But mainly they haven't even thought about it at all. The aspies/auties I know agree with me, that the swedish psychiatry sucks and that they barely have any knowledge about ASD at all. I've been treated extremely badly both before and after my autism diagnosis and I've lived in/near four different cities in different parts of Sweden. If they got the right diagnosis on me earlier then perhaps I wouldn't be so mentally f****d up as I am now. I have almost nothing good to say about the swedish psychiatry at all and I've only met 1 doc that actually listened to me and no psychologist have listened to me at all and they have forced me (yes they belted me actually) to take antipsychotic drugs even though I wasn't psychotic 'cause they said it would make me "feel better".
You must have been lucky if you have gotten treated the right way, 'cause I and almost all ppl I know with an ASD here in Sweden have not.
If I had knew anything myself about autism then I could perhaps have gotten my diagnosis earlier too. But neither I nor my family knew nothing about it, not my schools either. I've gotten the info about autism after my diagnosis.

Oh and I'm not a person who acts out and I'm very shy and can often not speak at all irl. I can't say no and I don't act out. So why they said I was pre-psychotic and had borderline is for me and my family a really big question. I'm mostly in what Lorna Wing call the passive group.

Last edited by DemureStargazer on 04 Oct 2012, 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have been told this more often than not.

What do they know about schizotypal PD, Tourette-Syndrom, dissociative identity disorder, transsexualism or any other diagnosis who is not extremly common diagnosed in the last 30 years like borderline, schizophrenia and depressions?

Other diagnoses have the same problem and ASD is just getting recognized resently. Sience just started to understand it and when you were little, this diagnosis was still very rare. Psychiatry is still on the beginning.

The psychiatry I was treated so badly has an autism ambulance since not even two years and when I was there for a check up (I was allready dx with ASD before, otherwiese they wouldn't have even send me there) I was the tenth person and that's not a small psychiatry at all. So a lot of psychiatrists who saw me there I was the first patient for them who was officially diagnosed with HFA they have ever treated. I got from nearly every psychiatrist there another diagnosis in addition, because they had no clue and my last shrink there toled me that for here my diagnosis, that ASD, is just a modern fashion, nothing more.
Now I left there, because it didn't worked out and I was traumaticed in the locked ward there and now I'm away from there complitly since 5 weeks and I still don't have my papers I need and they have to give me.

Psychiatry is still on the beginning and we just started to understand the human brain, also many, if not even all psychiatric disorders are highly complex. Shrinks are just human people like everyone else and they don't like to hear that they missdiagnosed or even traumaticed some of their patients in the past or even made their condition worse.



They wanted an explenation, they wanted to find out what's wrong with you and that's the only explenation they came up with.
Also schizotypal PD was very often part of Borderline (and schizoid PD) in the past. This diagnosis is also very young and schizotypal PD has many paralells towards autism. Borderline just meant in the past that you are between neurosis and psychosis, just recently the fiew changed and it got a seperat diagnosis if you will. I've read articles who are maybe just 20 or 30 years old, claiming that 70% of the people who have mental problems have borderline, because back then the deffinition of it was a different one and noone knew what it exactly was. It was just a diagnosis for people who were between psychosis and neurosis, but in the meantime the psychiatric fiew has changed and now you have a lot more disorders who are placed in this area.

I was missuspected of hypopituitarism and hypogonadism because my high-tone voice, childlike aspect, slow motion and mental processing, sleep disturbances and fatigue. In 2003-2004, I had an episode of diabetes insipisus and was treated with desmopressine. Then, after 7 months, I developed water rettention and I stoped the treatment, and I didn't longer have diabetes. The IRM showed an posterior pituitary mass. The laboratory studies don't found any hormone deficiency. The recent follow up IRM showed again the pituitary mass, but this didn't grew up. I must again do a laboratory workup. But, I'll say my endocrinologist doctor that I was recently diagnosed with an ASD. I know that my fatigue is actually an social exhaution.

First, I was diagnosed with social anxiety by an psychologist, and I underwent 8 months of psychotherapy. Then, at 18, I was suspected of hypopituitarism.

For an adults..

My husband was diagnosed with OCD, GAD, depression, anorexia, and schizoid personality disorder.

For adult women BPD, anxiety, depression, disordered eating.

I think on kids it's ADHD first, just because it can be medicated away and insurance considers Autism a money pit diagnosis. I see very few kids get the Autism diagnosis first thing unless they are extremely low functioning. Speech delays are a popular diagnosis in my area too.