Please Help me Help my brother?? Portland/OR & Vancouver

Post Reply New Topic

Hi there,

I'm here about my stepbrother. We adopted him from India. He has always been very different. He wears the same thing every day. He doesn't deal with people. He has 0 friends. ZERO! He doesn't look people in the eye right away. He is terrible at maps and math and directions. He is brilliant though. He knows everything about everything. He is very much into Science, Space and all that stuff but he doesn't even tie his shoes. He is 23 years old now and never had a job. He is 300% into music. Music calms him down. He has huge ups and downs - depression. Apart from our family, he doesn't talk to anyone else. Just 3 people in his life for so many years now. He has all these strange isms and habits that come and go. I didn't know anything about Asperger's until someone pointed out that my stepbrother sounded like one. So I have been researching about it for a month now. It's like a perfect fit glove. I wouldn't say he is Autistic, he is very high functioning but very dependent at the same time. I'm pretty convinced that he has Asperger's. I ran the idea by him - initially he said nothing was wrong with him but there are those rare moments he accepts that he needs some help and said it fits as well.

How do I go about finding the right Help for him? Who do I go to? I couldn't find any good psychiatrist in our area that deals with Asperger's. There is just about one guy. Are there any specific clinics or places that I can take him to get tested? He is very private and doesn't like people touching him. I'm not sure how a therapist would help him? He is not much of a talking person. I imagine some sort of meds to help with his mood swings might be needed - so a psychiatrist is the way to go? or counselling? Anybody know anyone near Portland, OR or Vancouver ,WA area? I would really like to help him. His quality of life needs to improve. It sucks watching him get wasted away.

Thank you

If he is 23 I would suggest that you ask him what he wants to do. Someone posted a very good list of AS symptoms on here recently. I believe it's in this forum. Search for that and show him the symptom list. If he feels that a good bit of it applies to him, suggest that he see someone for a diagnosis, and if he's having mood swings that he see someone for that.

There is no treatment per se for Aspergers. Sometimes a person with AS may have anxiety or depression or OCD, which can be made worse for them because of the AS, and those things can be treated in the normal fashion. Seeing a therapist is the first step. They can also refer him to a social worker who can help him with some of the things he's having trouble with that aren't emotional, mental, etc.

AS isn't something "wrong" with us, in the sense that it needs to be treated, etc. It's a different wiring of the brain so we process things differently. Some of us have trouble with things that NT (neurotypical people - people without AS) people don't have trouble with. There are different levels of functioning within the AS diagnosis itself. Some with AS are high functioning to the point that others wouldn't notice a difference without prolonged interaction with them, others are lower functioning and need help with day to day living. Some can be high functioning in some areas and lower functioning in others. There are no absolutes of what a person with AS can and cannot do. There are many here who live on their own, work, some are married, some have children. There are just as many here who cannot live on their own and haven't had a relationship. Some of those are working on skills to be able to do those things and some will succeed and others won't. It depends on the particular person, how their AS effects them, how well they can use coping techniques to override their natural impulses and reactions, and their own level of tolerance to stimuli that they dislike or have difficulty tolerating. There is no one set prognosis for a person with AS.

I'd suggest that you ask your brother to do some research on his own about AS, and that may help him see that it's not a label of "handicapped" in all cases, although for some it may be. I didn't get diagnosed until a few years ago and I'm 47. I had struggled and fought with myself and forced myself to learn things that others take for granted. I had never heard of AS, I thought I was just weak, or selfish, or wierd. When I got my diagnosis, it explained a lot about myself to me, and gave me a chance to develop better working strategies to deal with things in my life that I had trouble with. Your brother could very well find something helpful like that in a diagnosis, if he does indeed have AS.

He may not have it, he may have something else entirely. Also, an AS diagnosis does not rule out another comorbid diagnosis of a mood or personality disorder or other psychiatric disorders. I'd say the best bet is to get him to a psychiatrist first and let them guide you. I'd mention the suspected AS to the doctor, but I would let him do the guiding in this situation.

Good luck, and I hope your brother finds something to help him.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

I think it's great that you want to help him. Although Asperger's might seem like a good fit, it's always better to get a second opinion.

Good luck.

Yes get the second opinion, there are other things that look a lot like aspergers. As I found out this week, See: http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... x?rid=120# RAD is associated with adoption and bad early living conditions, but it will look a lot like ASD.

Jason

Thanks for the reply guys. I hope I didn't offend anyone by wanting to treat AS. I was just speaking just for my brother. His quality of life is really not that great. He needs some skills or help to improve his life.

We didn't adopt him early on. It's a complicated story. We only adopted him around 7 years ago. My mother discovered him through a paper he published online. She basically tracked him down to living on the streets in India alone. She wanted to rescue him and bring him over here and give him a better opportunity at life. When we did get him over here - we really didn't know what to do with him. He was so against medical intervention and "tests". He had all these fears of being a lab rat. We respected his wishes and hoped that by providing a safe environment - he would just get better. I think we are to blame for that part as I think we enabled him to be more and more dependent on us. He is so dependent on us that I don't think he would survive on his own anymore.

I have been talking to him about AS for the last week or so now. He did go through the AS symptoms and he agrees with them. I even had him take some AS tests and he scored pretty high - like 43 out of 50 and stuff. It could be something else too. It's been so hard to get him to accept that he needs help. We already saw a therapist and a psychologist. Both didn't go well. It only lasted 3 or 4 sessions - he just says they are not connecting with him and they are not doing anything for him. He is not somebody that listens to people. He can be arrogant and look down on people. Even though he is helpless in lot of ways - he is very smart. He has his own theories about complicated stuff like quantum gravity and stuff like that - but he still sucks with math. Even simplest multiplications - he struggles. He spends almost all of his time on the computer. Going over scientific articles, listening to music and playing games. He is bored all the time but if he manage to find something interesting - he can spend days, weeks, months absorbing everything about that particular subject. If he does have AS - it might be making his depression and ocd worse like you guys said. Things can make him SAD so fast! A single sentence, a song, somebody looks at him wrong - he can be so depressed. He is very quick to anger! When he is upset - he will go lock himself in his room for days. He just won't come out. We would have to slip notes saying we are calling for help to get him out. It's the one thing that scares him - tests & medical people!

I have read that AS people don't feel no reciprocity. He is like that. He doesn't feel that he owe anyone anything. He doesn't do gifts either. During Christmas and stuff - he makes sure everybody knows not to get him any gifts. He won't be getting anyone gifts either. He really seems to hate the idea of obligation. In my anger, I have called him selfish - and it deeply hurts him. He doesn't view himself as a selfish person. One time he told me that he "gives" by choosing to communicate with us and not shutting us off as "people". He needs some coping skills for sure. I don't think anyone ever helped him and it enabled him to go deep into his isms and fears.

We can't be going through one shrink after other forever. Where do I go to find the right doctor? the psychiatrist or therapist? I can only seem to find one person that has AS listed in their "interests". I'm not very good at looking up things online.

Thank you

Treatment for AS is a matter of education--learning useful skills. If he has AS, he'll always have it, and will always be different; but, luckily, how different you are has nothing to do with how happy you are.

The usual way to start with an evaluation is to go to your family doctor. A general practitioner won't have the skills to do an evaluation, but he will have the connections to people who do know how to evaluate for AS, and can make recommendations. If you have a psychologist or counselor already, ask them. Your goal is to find someone who knows about ASDs in adults. This could be a developmental psychologist, neurologist, or psychologist specializing in ASDs.

If he was in a very bad situation and living on the streets, he could have something else going on instead of AS or along with AS. I'd suggest a psychiatrist first. Assure him that because he is over 18, they cannot do anything to him without his consent. As long as he isn't a danger to himself or others, they can't put him in the hospital without his permission, etc.

As for AS people having no reciprocity, that's not always true. I have it, as do many others. Not every person has every symptom listed, although that is a symptom of AS. Some people have a few symptoms, others have many, and some have almost all. It varies.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com