Can someone explain what this means?

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I am looking through my old medical reports and I found one from 6th grade for my school. It had a summary in it for school for a evaluation and I saw a line saying

"Dr. Smith, a private psychologist who provides therapy for Beth, believes the anxiety, ADD, and OCD are a function of the cognitive distortations of the autistic features."


So does it mean she thinks all those disorders I have make them look like autistic symptoms or did she mean she thinks those autistic symptoms look like anxiety, ADD, and OCD?

Sounds to me like it means that it only looks like you have ADD, and ocd, etc. But those things are really just manifestations of autism. But I am not a doctor. So I dont really speak in doctorese.

I would say it means that they thought you were autistic, and that the autism caused the OCD, etc.

I've been confused about all this as well because of contradictions and I tried to get re evalated in 2007 but got talked out of it. I was told to just accept the AS diagnoses and move on and people telling me online it wouldn't change anything and didn't seem to care if I really have it or not. It's like doctors couldn't agree with each other about me and I was told by one of my therapists that trying to get rediagnosed will just confuse me. I have had a bunch of labels and been under different IEP categories.

That's just the nature of doctors. Each doctor has their own opinion about autism, and about OCD, and about ADD, etc.

Probably go with what the majority thought, and go with what was consistent in your reports.

Anyway, truthfully, it really doesn't matter--because you're married and have kids and are functioning pretty well.

I was diagnosed with autism at age 3 by one doctor. He wanted my parents to put me in an institution.

I was also diagnosed, at age 7, with having the disorder "hates to lose." In other words, that doctor thought I was a normal kid. I really wasn't "normal" at that age. I did many Aspergian-type things. He based his "diagnosis" on a knock-hockey game we played in his office. I threw a tantrum when I lost the game.

There is a consistent pattern of me having social troubles, throwing tantrums, imposing my "special interests" on people, asking people in the street "why are you fat?" Things like that.

I once met a guy at one of my autism groups and another member asked him if he was on the spectrum and his response was "it depends on the doctor." I asked what it meant and he said one doctor will say he has it and when he goes to another doctor, that doctor will say he doesn't have it and so on. I thought if he was borderline on the spectrum because doctors had a different opinion about it.

I think I would tend to agree with the advice of these doctors. Don't put too much faith in labels, which is all a diagnosis really is. So a person in the US had Aspergers and then when DSM V comes out, they don't? Psychiatric labeling is a fluid situation, let ten or twenty years pass and things will be different in what they claim you have.

I recommend you look at specific things like OCD and work on that, whether with drugs, psychotherapy, behavioral therapy, and what have you; if nothing helps, you might try to understand the autism's contribution toward it and work with a counselor from that direction. (Like, reduce sensory overload and examine rigid thought patterns... and see if that reduces the symptoms any.)