Anyone been diagnosed as autistic when they were young?

Post Reply New Topic

As far as i know i was diagnosed at 3 with autism, and then sometime later (i cant remember what age) i was diagnosed with AS

I was originally diagnosed with Childhood Schizophrenia, then Social Anxiety Disorder, ADD, ADHD and finally Asperger's.

No.

I'm one of those rare ones who was missed (not even a misdiagnosis of something else).

(I was passive and quiet; I had all of the usual "pointers", all of the symptoms, speech therapy to correct my "funny" speech, hearing tests for I didn't acknowledge teachers many times. I interacted fine with my mother; I didn't play with other kids, I kept to myself until preschool; it took me grade 1, 2 and 2 again to learn to read/write at a basic level. "High" IQ meant I just didn't want to do my school work in the typical words of the psycho. Or, I was just too high-functioning, "Asperger's", and I was 8 by the time the first AS criteria came out--I improved from then on till high school.)

I guess I was just too high-functioning for someone with "classic" autism; that's what the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with autistic disorder said anyway--no different to an "aspie" in reality.

Age 8, first diagnosis, explained to me why I was the way I was. I was age 10 before I realized that I ought to learn more about it. At about age 12, I took the first solid steps to modifying my own behaviour through will and knowledge. At age 18, a few months until 19, I'm doing fine.

Formal Diagnosis: Aspergers Syndrome.

It was when I was diagnosed back in 1961 at the age of 8

Yeah, I forget his name, but there was a diagnostic checklist for autism in 1960, it featured nine points that one had to meet IIRC.

A psychiatrist I spoke to said that "childhood schizophrenia" was autism to him when it was named that, and many others in his field.

There was no separate autism category in the DSM-I. I was diagnosed with schizophrenic reaction, childhood type when I was around 5 or 6. Back in the 1960s, under the DSM-I, that was a catch-all term which included what we would now call Asperger's autism. I was only diagnosed with Asperger's last year.

I was diagnosed as autistic in late first grade.I was just considered mentally ret*d before that, I was put in special ed at separate school for part of the day and then in regular class for two hours a day until fifth grade when they tested my IQ and decided I was too smart to be autistic, and told my mom it was ADHD also my mom thought the ADHD thing was a fad and it didn't really fit me, the reason the had given I was smart and liked to run in circles and spin and also I would rock , thus not sitting still and being hyper so back to normal school all day, I don't think I was "cured" of autism like people insisted ,I still made little eye contact, stimmed, rarely talked unless it was about something I was obsessed with usually with little regard for whether the person I was talking to responded or listened.

Last edited by kitsunetsuki on 04 Feb 2008, 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

dx'ed pddnos at about 6 months, then the dx was changed to as around 7 years...

oh, and I have to add that mother delibrately looked for a doctor that knew what ASD was (in 1988, not that many knew...)

Last edited by ToadOfSteel on 04 Feb 2008, 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

PDD-NOS at age 7 and still PDD-NOS

Yes,autistics used to be thought of as being "dumb" or all mentally ret*d,the belief is still out there today amongst some,despite there being advances in what is known of autism and the creation of the autism spectrum.
If anyone isn't smart,its the people who assume autism is retardation.


Original topic.
Am was assessed for autism and other things at hope hospital at two,and they refused to diagnose because the scans did not show up obvious brain damage,that and their treatment plan to parents [to smack am more,as it was caused by a lack of punishment] ruined childhood,they actually thought am was posessed by the devil,they had been trying to get am put in a childrens home since a young age to,teachers,dinner ladies and the neighbours had asked them to take am to the doctor to get help,but they only ever quoted what the HH docs said.
It was sister who finally got am help.

Autism was not a DSM category until 1980. Under the DSM-I, children with autistic behaviors were diagnosed with schizophrenic reaction, childhood type. Adults were diagnosed with either schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type or schizoid personality disorder.

Researchers and clinicians certainly talked about autism, even under the DSM-I. However, the standard view was that it was, in children, a symptom of childhood schizophrenia.

Here is the statement in the DSM-III (1980) in which the American Psychiatric Association discusses this gradual change in thinking:

"Some believe that Infantile Autism is the earliest form of Schizophrenia, whereas others believe that they are two distinct conditions. However, there is apparently no increased incidence of Schizophrenia in the families of children with Infantile Autism, which supports the hypothesis that the two disorders are unrelated."
http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-iii.pdf

It just depends on the information one has received. For instance, many, maybe even most, people assume that everyone with Down syndrome is intellectually disabled (mentally ret*d), which is also not true.

Well, people assume autism means retardation because that is what hollywood has popularized it as...

I'm sure that i had been but when i was a child then nobody would go to a doctor with anything less than a scizofrenia or true, hardcore autism with mental retardation or so.
i could strare at the walls from morning to evening around the ages of 4-11 but when i noticed my mother strated to worry, i passed it off as something else, like drawing or reading. but all the action was happening inside my head

I was diagnosed with High Functioning Autism at the young age of 5. I had the symptoms of autism way before 5 though. I used to scream at everything if it wasn't perfect.