Any adults get diagnosed without parental involvement?

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I'm going for my AS eval in two weeks, and all I know about is that it's a two hour appointment. They didn't ask me to bring my parents in, which I neither could or would be able to do. My father passed away last year and my mother is clueless. I'm almost certain she's HFA, and is completely blind when it comes to people. She wouldn't be able to answer a single question about me as a child. So does anybody know, how do adults get diagnosed if they can't interview the parents?

I was diagnosed without the pysch even needing to speak to my parents.
Although it was different for me,as the pysch works with the GP I go to,and with my permission he chatted to him about some background as well,I had had a built up file because my symptoms were all documented as a toddler onwards,only the Dr through out the idea there and said there was nothing wrong with me other than being bad as a brain scan for visible damage showed up nothing.
I have heard of adults being diagnosed without any parental help,and have also heard of some pyschs refusing to diagnose because of the lack of evidence,is there any school records in the house that would help-school reports,is there teachers still around today that could be asked for their view on self,
or how about a report of siblings (if any) or other relatives?
I know of someone on another ASD forum who was in the process of seeing their 70 or 80 something year old dad go through an ASD diagnosis,so it can be done.

The doc that did my eval never actually talked to my parents. When I booked the appointment I asked my mother to email me everything she could remember about my childhood medical history without saying why, and then filled in the gaps with things I knew that she forgot (or that I had kept secret from her). It helped that I still have a remarkably vivid memory of most of my childhood (I'm now 40) and was able to discuss various diagnostically-significant events as if they just happened recently, including in most cases what I was thinking and feeling at the time.

For some doctors all of that information is very important because they don't know a lot about adults with autism and therefore want to "diagnose the child" from your history. Doctors who are more familiar with adults won't need as much detail as they would diagnose based on your current symptoms and use the history mainly to eliminate any differential diagnosis such as schizophenia or the effects of brain injury. For example, when I told the doctor that I'd had three concussions at ages 5, 7 and 10 he became a LOT more interested in my history prior to age 5 because everything after that was potentially a result of brain injury. Since my mother's email had included my developmental milestones and behavior as a baby and toddler it was clear that the ASD was always there.

I knew all my life I was different. Never put it past my parents, I knew they'd never accept the fact that their beloved baby boy was any different than the rest. So childhood was a struggle, struggle to fit in, struggle to understand.

During college I started trying to find some answers. First I was diagnosed with Inattentive Attention Deficit Disorder. I was also diagnosed with Central Auditory Procession Disorder. These diagnoses answered a lot of questions for me, but at the same time openned many more up. I was never totally happy with them.

Recently I've done much of my own research and came to my own personal conclusion that Aspergers is what I have. The CAPD and ADD both seem to fit in with that theory too.

I couldnt see myself involving my parents though. I mentioned to my mom a few years back that I had been diagnosed with ADD and she completely dismissed it and acted as if I the whole disorder was created by doctors in order create zombies out of kids (via ritalin). What research has she done on mental disorders? None. But she thinks she's the authority on such things. So I wouldnt put it past her this time. I had expected that very reaction but had decided to 'test the waters' so to speak.

i had absolutely no involvement from my parents. she did talk to my husband, so i think that helped. then i had two long appointments with her.
april

My parents were involved. Felt like a background check. Heh.

The thought of that (parental involvement) is pretty scary as my mom is also clueless and likes to rewrite history to suit herself . I can only imagine some of the stuff she would come up with.

It seems to run in my family but nobody is willing to admit it my mom just says its in the past let it go and I just figured you were lazy it was usless asking he questions my fathers a real wingnut and realy didnt have a lot time for anything outside his own little world. All my siblings have traits some I suspect are but they dont like to talk about it and all are at least 10 years older than me and I'm 38 and come from an era were special ed was for that kid in a wheel chair.

Me too. The first Psychiatrist I mentioned AS to laughed at me, and said, they would have picked it up when you were a kid. And I got this picture of myself as a kid in school: very quiet, did all the work, didn't say a word. This was the 70's. What teacher back then knew about AS? Not a one. And what teacher is going to even notice a quiet little girl who does all her work and never says a word? None. So that psychiatrist was completelly wrong, IMO.

And like everybody else, it seems, my mom's a wingnut and I can't imagine what I would have had to do to get her attention. It's still impossible to get her attention. LOL

50 years ago when i was in the 2nd grade my teacher sent me to "Speach Therapy" to be evaluated because i mispronounced words when i read aloud, i never spoke otherwise. actually it was because i am Dsylexic and pronounced the words as i saw them.

speach class was only mentioned by my peers in hushed whispers, the "Therapists" were trolls and mean to the children. I was terrified, (they did not mention this to my parents either), i sat in a little chair and the 2 of them, big brusk and loud, in their big chairs side by side right in fornt of me in the middle of a large empty room.. they asked me to repeat a series of words which i did flawlessly.. my father wanted to be an english teacher and grilled me on speach..

they looked confused and put their heads very close together and whispered back and forth in each others ears, one would whisper very closely in the others ear and them they stared at each other then they both truned and looked at me and then the other would whisper in the others ear about 2 inches away... etc, etc.. they would look at me for a long time.. this went on for a while, then one asked me where my family was from, i replied Oklahoma. they turned and stared at each other for a bit and nodded each to the other, them turned to me and said i could go.

they aparently decided i talked funny because my parents were Okies..

i think what confused them is my emotionless Very 'flat monotone' voice.

my wife told me that people dont take me seriously because of the lack of "Inflection" in my voice. i told one of her friends and her husband that their car had an improperly adjusted ignition and if they didnt get it fixed they could burn a piston or valve and i would cost her at least $3000 to get it fixed. i smelled the lean exhaust and saw the white ash in her tailpipe as i walked up to her car, they were only by the curb a few minutes talking to my wife and i mentioned it as they left.. a couple of months later they called up and talked to my wife, it cost $2880, they were somewhat suspecious, they said they didnt think i knew what i was talking about because i didnt say it like i ment it.

that has been a problem all mylife, i was put in special ed then sent to honors level, then banished to commoners classes in school, they never knew what to do with me.. the speach therapy was the only evaluation i really had. my wife sent me to her shrink for an ADD evaluation after reading an article in the paper.. he was a specialist in Childrens learning disorders. we talked about 2 hours, he said it was very obvious i had Aspergers Syndrome but there wasnt any treatment and the clinical evaluation at my age was a waste of money.

Welcome to WP, passingthrough. You'll find that many people here have not gotten a formal diagnosis, for a variety of reasons.

I too have had the problem of being misinterpreted because of my tone of voice. It was actually an asset when I was a nurse working in the ER, because it tended to calm everybody down from the patient to the staff. However, I'm also not taken seriously very much because of my speech delivery, or people misinterpret me. Why can't NT's just listen to the words??????

This is why, before I got diagnosed in September, I made sure I got a recording of
my Grandmother(age 85 this year). She is the one who raised me and had my
past in her fast fading memory as she got older.

Coupled with my own pecular quirks, and knowing the autism group, and
the recording saved on burned CD and posted here on WrongPlanet as
a archive for others to possibly learn from I then gained this diagnoses.

Due to gaps in my own memory, and my adolesent mystery that was well
hidden from my Grandmother, I got a Aspergers for quirky traits, but still
say HFA due to learning disabilities that are not verifiable due to time passing.

I am 40 this year and when my Grandmother does pass away, this history would
have been gone(ages 2-10). I am wishing you much luck.

Sincerely,
Ghosthunter

They sent me a couple of evaluation forms that I was to forward to my parents. My father's dead so it had to be my mother, whose memory is very selective. I was pretty nervous about that. So when it came to actually interviewing relatives, I asked my sister instead. She's a year younger than me but she always took care of me. She remembers.

OTOH, I think they would have managed without any relatives. I mean, it has to be possible to diagnose a person without always having parents available, right?

I have a dx as an adult and no parents involved here either. I was pretty familiar with all of the 'weird' stuff I did as a kid.

You would think with all of the adjults being diagnosed these days that they would come up with adult dx criteria.. it all seems so centered around childhood symptoms though.

My story on that is kind of funny. They did ask my mom to fill a form. And as she is selective and in deny, the results were not conclusive for AS.

What's funny is that, to open up my case, i wrote a 20 page history of my life and all my specifics. The psy then calls me for a 2 hours interview in which he substentially said "You did exactly what was needed, all i needed for the diag. is written there, i don't need those twisted answers from your mother"...

I have tried to get an "official" dx for my husband, and have given up. He is 42, his mother died 30 years ago, and his father left his mother when he was 8. Hubby remembers riding the "short bus" to school one year around 3rd grade, and knows that the elementary school had a hard time figuring out what to do with him much of the time.

His problems were complicated by being raised by relatives who taught him quickly that he was the "dumb one" (he has two siblings - "the girl" and "the smart one"). Turns out "the girl" was the only one that came close to being right.

I was the one who figured it out, after our son's diagnosis last year. Suddenly one morning over coffee I said to my husband (who was in hour two of another essentially all day monologue about cars) "omg, you have it too". Quite the gestalt moment. There are a lot of other issues he has that make him even a more clear cut case of AS then our son, and the doctor referred to our son as "classic" AS of which I didn't think there was such a thing.

Now I have rules with hubby just like with my son. For hubby, it is basically that one conversation out of 10 that he starts MUST be about something not car related.

The only reason we were trying to get a dx is because he is having a terrible time finding jobs. People think he is giving them attitude, they just don't know how to take him, when it is just his pleasant self. Where we live alot is done on a handshake and a pat on the back, and for someone who can't muster up much eye contact and who starts most conversations with "I'm sorry", it's just hard.