Asperger's misdiagnosis?

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I've never told this to anyone before in my life. When I was 6 years old, I was diagnosed as having High Functioning Autism by a psychiatrist. At this time I lived with both of my parents in a hellhole of a neighborhood and my father was severely abusing my mother. My symptoms were social naivete (although I was always outgoing and somewhat normal in that aspect, no shyness or awkwardness) and an obsession with, of all things, ships. My mother (who is undiagnosed aspergers) did her best to completely shelter me because of her panic disorder, and I believe the naivete and developmental hurdles were because of a lack of experience on my part. I also had violent tantrums, although to my credit I was in severe pain 24/7 because of food allergies and eczema. Flashforward ten years. Ever since 5th grade, when my mom and I escaped my father and moved away I became more and more normal. The tantrums subsided, and my obession with ships was all but forgotten. Also, my social skills rapidly improved to the point that they are on par with my age group. My mom agrees with this. When I got to high school, being a major football fan, I decided to give tackle football a shot. Since I'm a big guy, my coach stuck me on the D-Line and I went on to make a good showing on JV and now on Varsity. I've always enjoyed sports, especially basketball and football. I'm socially confident, with half a dozen close friends, and a lot of guys I hang with during class and practice. Homecoming is in a few weeks and I'm planning on asking my crush out after the game. I'm a As and Bs student in school and I'm taking 2 AP classes so I've got no problems with my study skills. I want to attend one of the military colleges and go into a law enforcement career. I'm in the process of applying to a local police explorer post and the advisors assure me that I'm a shoe-in. Sorry for the long post but here's my question: Do you think I was misdiagnosed with autism/aspergers? If so, how can I get it removed from my record? This isn't something I want to have to tell my BI when I apply for the Explorer post or my MEPS physician when I enter the military, especially since I'm 100% positive that it no longer applies.

I hate to have to be the one who tells you the bad news.

But if I was you it would be best if you tell the military or police recruitment man about the HFA DX. The thing is that if you hide a DX and something goes wrong as a result of HFA (or xxxxx) then you could land yourself in a heck of a lot of trouble.

Also if you once had HFA then you still have it, people sometimes seem to have "recovered" but what has happened is that the person's coping skills have improved so that they are able to pass as a "normal". HFA and AS are due to a difference in brain wiring to a NT, it is impossible to rewire the brain so as a result it is impossible to "cure" AS or HFA.

I also can tell you that many people with HFA or AS do not want to be "cured", to them curing autism is like trying to cure black people of a disease of being black or like trying to cure homosexuals of being gay.

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Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Thank you for sharing your story.

In my view, it is not that easy to correctly diagnose every six year old child with something like Asperger - autism. It often can take weeks, months, even years to very slowly see what's there/what isn't there.

For a long time now (decades), have wondered why more doctors do not give something like a very clear preliminary, possible diagnosis vs what many of them tend to give: a definite diagnosis/end of story.

You may or may not know it but the diagnosis of Asperger is scheduled to be phased out by the year 2013 (new DSM 5) where all current Asperger will be renamed Autism.

That's my understanding.

Words

Correct diagnosis

vs

Wrong diagnosis

---

Labeling a person correctly is good.

Mislabeling a person is bad.

Mislabeling causes wasted time, wasted money, and even worse - disillusionment with all behind a wrong diagnosis.

--------------------------

It does sound to me like your symptoms at that time were likely just from fear in that home environment. That can really f**k a person up, I know because I endured it too, I was constantly beaten up and sexually harassed by 2 older stepbrothers from age 9 to 14.

If you feel like you "seek" people and can understand them, feel/share/repair emotion with them, and you enjoy team sports and other heavily people-interactive activies (like asking out a crush), then I think you would be right to seek to have the previous DX updated. That wouldn't be too hard if you went in to a clinic and explained your goal. I do find it a little bit odd that you were given this diagnosis so quickly. Same thing happened to me, but they gave me ADHD instead of thinking deeper about my emotional and social development lapses (which shown much worse by the time I got to high school).

It is possible you have some traits on the spectrum, but I think your plan sounds like a good idea.

The pysychiatrist who diagnosed me was a complete hack and to answer several comments, I'm very social and outgoing. I've never anyone about the original DX do they don't know or suspect that anything was ever wrong with me. The reason I posted this question is just to discuss to get it declared a misdiagnosis. My mother agrees with me that I don't fit any diagnoistic criteria and most likely didn't have aspergers in the first place.

As for getting into the military if you were diagnosed with HFA as a child but later after 15 or 18 got a neuro typical diagnosis and the paper work to prove it then the military will not care.

When I was in basic training the Army was just getting use to using computers so there were only a few drill sargeants that could operate them. I had experience using a comadore 64 computer so the drill sargeants made me their computer guy. I was transcribing paper files onto the computer for the sargreants. Out of 150 men 12 of them had psychological problems as children but not as adults and were allowed in. We were going in for chemical operations training so before they let us play with nerve gas they had to make sure we were not crazy or stupid so they gave us IQ tests and psychological exams. All but one of the 12 did not pass he was an arsonist who the drill sargeants caught starting fires in a broom closet.

You sound like you would be able to pass a psych evaluation test. Get one done as soon as possible and get the paper work if you pass. If you fail wait a few months go see another psychologist then do it again. Repeat as nessessary. I did pretty well in basic training.

Welcome to WrongPlanet.

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Like I said before, I doubt I've developed "coping" mechanisms as I enjoy social encounters and seek them out. Also, I heard aspies can't develop musclular tone and I'm a guy who's looking at a partial football scholarship to a divsion 1 school. Is there any way I can get a diagnosis that ceased to apply when I was 9 years old off my record?

Not necessarily "off your record", but yes, you can get re-evaluated and have a psychologist state that you no longer qualify for diagnosis and likely haven't qualified for quite a while.

Aspies can be athletic, but most aren't. There is (used to be? I forget if he's still on it) an autistic long-distance runner on the Autism Hub, for example. Autistic people are just less likely to be athletic; it's not at all impossible. What tells me that you probably no longer qualify for diagnosis is that you no longer have social impairment and seem to be able, from your own report, to communicate quite effectively, and that your special interest wasn't replaced by another interest when it faded. (Many of us have changing special interests; one will take over when another tapers off.)

Being good at school hasn't got anything to do with autism; there are quite a few good students on the spectrum (and, of course, quite a few off it).

In general, when they diagnose autism, they're looking for three basic things:
1. Unusual activities (special interests, repetitive movement, and lack of cooperative pretend play)
2. Language and communication impairment (delayed or unusual speech; inability to have conversations)
3. Social impairments (difficulty making friends; difficulty understanding body language; inability to get information from others' faces)

If you don't have 1 and 3 (Asperger's autism) or 1, 2 and 3 (regular autism), then you can't be diagnosed. If you want the official criteria they use to diagnose people with, they are: Autism and Asperger's (click on the words for links). They're a bit wordy, but you can look up the jargon in a medical dictionary, or if you've had a psychology class you can probably interpret them.