my parents hid my aspergers from me

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responding to the original post {and not the tangent everyone went off on..... } I feel badly for you. One should be able to trust one's own parents. And it makes me wonder what else they may have kept from you. I am sorry for the understandable anger and disappointment that I can only image you probably feel. I think that was very cold of them to keep that from you.

I don't wish to be cured of my AS, nor do I think that autistics should have the cure forced upon them if they don't wish to be cured. I think that parents and particularly NT parents need to be cured of their ignorance so that their autistic offspring can reach their highest potential possible - something I didn't have the opportunity to do.

I agree with this so much. So many of my problems are caused by my parents not accepting me for who I am and trying to change me. I think my parents are secretly embarrassed by me, that I will never be their normal and perfect son

The best way to start a debate is to state a firm belief in something so people are inclined to disagree.

And you seem to be misunderstanding my standpoint, i am saying there is something that is being diagnosed as ADD and that it is just a general lack of interest in school, not being able to pay attention in school is very hard i understand that, but the medical industry has claimed ADD is a physical and medical illness, not just behavior, and i feel it is ridiculous to take something as far as the medical industry has taken ADD when you cannot prove the existence of it.

i am still leaning towards the ADD isnt real and some kids just dont have the attention span for school standpoint.

My friend Taylor (real example) has hyperkinesis, Taylor has had up to twenty people (not an exaggeration) screaming(also not an exaggeration) his name at him from ten feet away whilst he stares blankly right through them lost in his own mind.

Now you keep trying to tie those two together but they are less related than your making them out to be in that sense. Autism has tangible physical evidence, not just behavioral. ADD only has behavioral. So please do not put words in my mouth.

Autism has tangible physical evidence, not just behavioral. ADD only has behavioral.

But that is a behavioral characteristic, not a physical one!

What physical characteristics does he, as someone with "real" hyperkinesis, exhibit that are not exhibited by people with "non-real" ADHD?

The extent to which you are enamored of mind/body dualism and the idea that physical illnesses are "real" and mental illnesses are "not real" is quite fascinating for someone who studies psychology.


I'm not putting words in your mouth. Anyway, obviously you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to physical evidence of ADHD.

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... t/50/5/333
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... t/53/7/607
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 21058/full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12685515
http://www.springerlink.com/content/vm16712g04202567/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 5806000079
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0406001549
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 2304011850
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/14/1740.short
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 6709666855

Those are just from the first 20 of 48,700 results for a Google Scholar search for 'adhd brain'.

Really? What physical evidence does autism have? Last I checked, it was still diagnosed by counting behaviors, not by running an MRI or something.

OK, but then don't complain when people argue with you as though you have a firm belief.


You are grossly misinformed if you think ADHD just amounts to "a lack of interest in school" or "not being able to pay attention in school."

And has it never occurred to you that maybe people with ADHD can be interested in something but still have difficulty paying attention? Inability to pay attention and lack of interest are two different things. I'm pretty sure even most neurotypical people have difficulty paying attention to things they're interested in sometimes.

But the thing I really don't understand is that all the same "accusations" leveled against ADHD can be equally validly leveled against autism, yet you accept that autism is real and ADHD isn't. To me it seems like an awfully big coincidence that you are prepared to accept that you personally have autism but not that you have ADHD (and maybe you don't, I certainly can't make that determination), and are also prepared to accept that autism exists but not that ADHD exists. You complain that ADHD isn't diagnosed based on physical symptoms. What physical symptoms are used to diagnose autism? What physical symptoms of autism do you, personally, display?

Hell, the same accusations could be leveled against pretty much any mental illness, but as a psychology student I assume you don't think those are all fake too, or do you?


That sounds awfully like you're writing off the potential of everyone with ADHD as students. Some of the best students I know have ADHD. I'd like you to tell it to their faces that they "just don't have the attention span for school."

However you are still putting words in my mouth, at no point did i claim that AS was not real nor did i claim mental illnesses in general are not real, that is putting words in my mouth.

I was not claiming my example of Taylor was a physical characteristic i was merely pointing out the obvious difference in severity between hyperkinesis and ADD, the two of which have become essentially interchangeable in diagnosis here in the US despite the vast and obvious differences.

I do believe there was some results found as far as that type of brain scanning goes

And where i stand on my diagnosis of ADD is if it is real i definitely have it but i have always felt more inclined to believe it is aspects of my personality that attribute to my difficulties in school. ... I have merely come to question whether or not my difficulties were due to things that are helplessly beyond my control, or my own free will, naturally i would very much like to believe it is a matter of free will, because the other option is hopeless without the help of "experts" or medication, for which i have developed a rather large distrust.

No, I am not putting words in your mouth as I never said you claimed either of those things. I said that, following your logic, if ADHD is not real because it is diagnosed using behavioral and not physical symptoms, then you should consider autism and mental illnesses not to be real either, because they are also diagnosed using behavioral and not physical symptoms. I'm well aware that you don't; that is what I find so horribly inconsistent about your position in the first place.


If one is just a more severe version of the other than there are not "vast and obvious differences." Even if it were decided that ADHD would refer to less severe cases and hyperkinesis to more severe ones, there would always be cases that sit on the border between ADHD and hyperkinesis, just like there are cases that sit on the border between ADHD and "normal," just like there are cases that sit on the border between autistic and "normal," and so on.


Yes, there have been, but they are still experimental, they are not used for diagnosis (yet). More to the point, the same exact thing is true of ADHD (read the links in my previous post). Both are diagnosed based on behavioral criteria, both have an emerging body of research relating to physical brain characteristics.


If you prefer to blame yourself for your difficulties that's fine. It's certainly a valid position though I don't agree with it, as you can probably see. What I really don't understand is how it is possible to think that ADHD doesn't exist, but autism does. I simply don't see the difference and since your argument about physical evidence is clearly well off the mark (it exists in similar amounts for both -- experimental, inconclusive, but there) I really don't see what you think the difference is.

I wasn't told until i was almost 19. I am not entirely sure how i feel about it. I understand that they didn't want me to develop a sense of learned helplessness but i still feel i had a right to know. My entire childhood made sense to me all of the sudden. My father tore up the documentation of my diagnosis and is still completely in denial. It just pained him to much to have a mentally deficient son. I remember thinking over and over again throughout my life, "am i ret*d and everyone is hiding it from me?" I remember seeing how the down syndrome children were treated and spoken to in a way where they aren't even aware they are different. I noticed similarities in how i was spoken too. I was put on medication for years... all i can say about medicating your children is DONT if you can go without it in any way DONT medicate your children. Medication made me completely psychotic during the period i was medicated. The medications i was given robbed e of my personality and robbed me of my morality. I was an unfeeling zombie for years, and it was the meds. The medication made me behave in such a way that it was easy for everyone to say i was crazy, and the behaviors the medication caused led to further diagnosis and guess what... more medication. One day i realized that i had just spent several years fighting psychotic urges that seemed to be coming from an outside force, i stopped taking my medication. Suddenly i was an intelligent young man. I go to college for psychology and sociology and i am far more intelligent than either of my parents. I am still very socially awkward though. In college sociology i learned about something called the medicalization of deviance. The theory goes as such, doctors and the overall medical industry are pushed by pharmaceutical companies too diagnose more and more behavioral disorders and something physiological and genetic, once the problem is diagnosed as something you cannot face because it is part of your genetics they sell you a cure or treatment. The pharmaceutical industry largely relies on this. And overall if you look at accurate unbiased statistics on the effectiveness of medication, particularly anti-psychotics, and psychotropics, you find they don't work hardly at all. So hopping your child up on drugs that are generally similar chemical compounds to meth (for example: Ceroquil, Ridalin, Adderal) is not the solution except in particular extreme cases. Oh and ADD isn't real. You generally dont get diagnosed with ADD unless you are in America. Other countries have Hyperkinesis for which the behavioral effects are much more severe than what has been diagnosed as the standard behavioral effects of ADD. ADD is diagnosed purely behaviorally, there is no provable physical characteristics of ADD. ADD is generally diagnosed when children don't pay attention in school. This is what was once called being a child, what child in their right mind could happily pay attention to school, kids want to play. If your child wont calm down and stop running in circles, take them to the park or beach to run. ADD is generally a just a lack of stimulation resulting in children who desperately need to play. It is often just a result of the lazy parenting that has become common place in the modern day. It is just easier to feed your children sedatives than to take them out three times a day. The amount of activity required to raise a happy child is simply considered too much of a bother in the modern day.

Sorry for getting off topic im prone to ranting.