ADHD misdiagnosis rate?

Post Reply New Topic

After reading a healthy amount of posts here on WP, and reading some interesting articles I've found around the web, it appears that many people with ASD/HFA are misdiagnosed with ADHD before receiving an official Autism diagnosis. Does anyone know, or would be willing to posit a guess about the ratio of people on the spectrum that were misdiagnosed with ADHD before getting an Autism diagnosis? I know I was put on Ritalin around age 5 for ADHD, and it wasn't until this year that I started the process of getting an ASD diagnosis.

From my experience I would say about 1/3 or maybe even half get misdiagnosed with ADHD before realizing they actually have autism or aspergers.

I agree with this. I think I read somewhere that it actually was around 50%. My mom used to insist that I had ADD because I seemed “spacey” and “overreact.” After looking at the ADHD criteria, it really doesn’t fit, only a few symptoms do at a very superficial level. I always felt that there was something else going on and that any attention issues I did have were sort of an offshoot or a secondary symptom of something else, if that makes sense. I haven’t been diagnosed with ASD but fit most of the criteria to a T. As far as my mother’s description of me, she is a textbook narcissist and has hated me my whole life and was always adamant that “something” was wrong. She’s just not familiar with ASD and AD/HD was a lot more mainstream at the time.