Compel Doctors To Review ALL Previous DXs

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Ive been diagnosed with depression, hypomania, "he's just shy", social anxiety disorder etc. Now at the age of 47 I finally get Asgpergers or maybe PDD-NOS. Even then I had to "suggest" the diagnosis to my psychiatrist who agreed. My depression was quite logical given the crap life I have had. In fact it would have been insane not to be depressed. But no "you're just depressed, take these pills" is what I got. Only one episode of mania and that was after I tried SSRIs for depression/social anxiety. What a surprise. But it was so easy then to diagnose bi-polar and say "you need lithium for the rest of your life". Seems to be I was diagnosed with whatever made the doctor "feel good". I've seen other people write the same thing. Even having doctors in my very immediate family didnt ring any bells. I relied on the professionals to tell me if I have Aspergers. THEY FAILED, grrr at them . However thanks to Doctor Google I figured it out.

Since self-diagnosing Aspergers I havent had depression, I've had hope. Frustration too, but hope.

Now how many patient files are out there with a wrong diagnosis that should be re-examined? There should be a public awareness of missed diagnosis of Aspergers for all people diagnosed with depression. Many people might get some kind of life back. Especially people my age.

I agree. I currently have the horrible label of Schizoaffective Disorder. I am for sure Bipolar, and my medications are actually for Bipolar and work well, but I am missing the vast majority of schizophrenia symptoms and I don't like that. And my psychologist ignores my aspie-like symptoms (though he made a comment I was Bill Gates-like), probably because I'm female, but I don't know if I'm really aspie or just eccentric with weird motor mannerisms and no social skills.

I see you're in Brisbane. I also see that you're self-diagnosed (which is a good way to find out what you may or may not have, but it's not conclusive); it's best to see an expert in regards to such, before you identify too much with AS. As if you're found to not have it, your depression might come back if you've been identifying with a self-diagnosis for too long (I've seen this happen).

Go to Minds & Hearts at West End in the city, near the museum; it's Professor Attwood's place. They'll be able to tell you if you have Asperger's Disorder or not with a high level of accuracy.

You say you are 47, realize AS was a very rare diagnosis until the dsm-iv, which came out in 1992, when AS and PDD-nos were included.
Most people in the mental health arena are unfamiliar with developmental disorders, so they are prone to diagnose people with behavioral disorders.

The fact is, being an educated patient helps, because you can explain what you think is going on, good doctors listen. Bad ones are not worth bothering with, the good ones will also tell you if they are unfamilar with the subject matter and will send you to someone who is.

may I offer you hope? I, too, spontaneously self diagnosed when I first heard of Asperger's Syndrome at 56. I read "Dr. Google" and found WrongPlanet.net. Two years later I found someone that could actually evaluate and diagnose me, and found I had more than Asperger's Syndrome to deal with. I did go to a therapist for a bit and he suggested that trying to function with untreated Asperger's Syndrome all those years was probably what got the rest of the comorbids (accompying mental illness) started and aggravated.

I can't say that any of the doctors FAILED, they just didn't know. But welcome to WP, there are a lot of us 'late bloomers' here that found out the mystery of our lives and have actually helped ourselves to work through a lot of lifelong issues.

I hope you find the same. and Welcome Home!

Merle

I was over 30 when I first heard of AS - and I have a BS in Psychology (since 1996) I even looked back in all my Psych. books and it wasn't mentioned once in any of them. As soon as I heard about it I knew that was me. I was 33 when I was diagnosed officially.

Hello and welcome.

I agree. There's probably an extremely large proportion of patient files with the wrong diagnoses, and not just those cases who should have been diagnosed AS.

I reckon I could have continued going through the mental health system indefinitely if I hadn't brought AS to my GP's attention. Even so, I'm almost completely left to my own devices as far as treatment and support are concerned. I've developed co-morbids over the years, though the social anxiety decreased a great deal after AS diagnosis, and am currently dealing with depression and GAD.

The BEST kind of government is really a DICTATORSHIP!(Lower cost, more attention, and FAST) Unfortunately, you need a dictator that is reasonable, smart, altruistic, and not corruptable. In short, we DON'T DARE do that! Some, in the US, say it is GREAT that government is SO stupid and inefficient, because everyone is basically a tiny dictator. If they worked together, and things worked fast, this country would QUICKLY be run into the ground. It actually works on the principle that the balance of power shifts every 2 years or so. So they have 2 years to destroy the government and, HOPEFULLY, it would take a decade.

Likewise, psychiatric review will work ONLY if done by a monolithic body(hopefully ONE person) that is reasonable, smart, and not corruptable. AGAIN, it will NEVER happen! The way it is NOW, a lot of idiots, bullies, etc... may be diagnosed AS, and people that have AS may be diagnosed as even NORMAL!

HECK, my LEAN bodyweight is almost a VERIFIABLE ABSOLUTE! Unfortunately, FEW have the resources to measure it properly(A dual chambered water tank with two scales). SO, people came up with OTHER methods to do it(By measurements against tables of normalized standars based on the afore-mentioned test)! The results?

GALVONIC: 170-193
YMCA: 196.38
US NAVY: 180.27

So they are off by as much as 26 pounds!

BTW my logical guess would be over 175 anyway, so my GUESS is not far off from some of the values. Still, I guess I am gooing to have to wait several weeks to find out the TRUTH!

It would be WORSE with something that is as subjective as psychiatry now is.

It is absolutely true that there are people who are being harmed with unnecessary medications and counter-productive psychiatric/psychological interventions, and unnecessary labeling with psychiatric/mental illness. Not only are they missing out on help that is appropriate, but they are also being actively harmed in the mental health system right now (by people purporting to heal and help them).

If they found out a "hidden" form or deafness, blindness, or epileptic condition or learning disorder had existed all along, had obvious potential to be misdiagnosed as mental health problems, and that virtually the entire population of these people, in the early 1990s was undiagnosed, at which time only a fraction of those under 18 were beginning to be diagnosed, while adults were inevitably turning up in the mental health system and being sentenced for life to unnecessary toxic medications and interventions likely to cause mental/psychiatric ill-health, would they just leave these people there? Would they continue to refuse to even attempt to diagnose the adult population, or at least attempt to screen for this population in regards to new admissions to mental health services? I do not know. It seems rather unlikely though.

The NAS has carried out research in this area. They found people committed to special hospitals who had ASDs, but were misdiagnosed and who (the research concluded) would not have been in this situation (committed to a special hospital) but for misdiagnosis. Other research found a significant proportion of men presenting for crisis mental health services, had previously undiagnosed ASDs.

Given the late entry of ASDs to the DSM, and the tradition of only diagnosing children, it is inevitable that there are adults who would have presented, or will in the future present for mental health services (even if people with ASD only presented at the same rate as the general population, in fact we are high users of these services compared to the general population) and were not (or will not be) found to be "clinically normal" (ie who got some diagnosis or other). It is obvious that these people must still be trapped in mental health services, being harmed rather than healed.

Last edited by pandd on 10 May 2009, 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

flamingshorts...I can relate although my story was a bit different

I would have never gotten DX if my high school counselor hadn't insisted it to my parents. However when I got counseling services for this the people running the counseling service were more about treating my depression with meds...after many years of bad s**t that happened cause of these meds, it occured to me. My depression was being caused by me not knowing that I had AS so technically shouldn't the cause of my depression be treated and not the depression itself?

It sucks how awful counselors and therapists are. However I sympathize with those who feel that taking anti-depressants is there only option. Too often I hear from my own friends and familys talking about how doctors/therapists are a bunch of quacks who just want to rip people off. These doctors may not be the brightest bunch but at least they're taking whatever mental/emotional anguish I'm going through at little more seriously than my family and friends ever will.

The interesting truth is that we know more about what is wrong with us more than any parent or doctor will DX. We know our symptoms and we know our triggers very well. The problem, mainly with me, is that my AS kept me from being able to succesfully communicate this important information to those who could help me.

We know what is truly wrong with us and what we really should be DX with on the inside. The problem is getting people to listen to us clearly.

They have found the gene . let us be tested.

I agree. I was way dx'ed before they dexed me with autism disorder.

I wonder about that, now, too.

I want to be tested. There is a company that, for $1000 and a dro pof blood, can give you a complete report of your DNA.

If tehy are going to dx us, they need it to be objective, not subjective. I may have gas and say one thing one day, and not have gas the next and say something esle. Then it's on the record forever.

Since when?

not yet, Sorenna. That is why babies aren't getting a blood test, or even in the womb.

Logically, there are SEVERAL genes! But I have not yet heard of ONE correlation between ANY! Again though, even if they DID find a correllation, absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence!

http://www.healthdame.com/2009/04/new-a ... ical-role/

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/i ... UC20090428

Here are two aources. Of course, it means nothing, really, I know that. But I still want to be tested. If I do NOT have the gene at all, it means I do not have it. If I have the gene, it still does not mean I have it. It means I have a propensity toward it.

However, I want to be tested to learn if it is "autism" or another neurotoxin.

Yes, it looks like these results are just a start:





Whether or not they'll ever get to a point where a gene test will definitively rule out (or confirm) AS 100% is another matter. It'd be great if they did, but if they just said that they did, I wouldn't be sure whether to believe them. Maybe they'd see a positive gene test result as an indication that the client would be likely to get involved with undesirable people, and label them a potential criminal? Authorities do strange things like that sometimes; you know how their attitude towards the "civil liberties v. national security debate" always seems to err on the side of treating us all like possible troublemakers. I wouldn't put it past them to completely ignore the phenotype if it seemed in conflict with the genotype. Genotypes are usually much cheaper to determine than phenotypes.

To me, it's a conundrum rather like the debate on surveillance - a great idea as long as you can trust the authority with the information, that they'll always be completely competent and incorruptible with such fantastic power in their hands. Technology is a wonderful thing, but in the hands of maniacs, it becomes a liability. And there are many strong motives to tempt authorities to stray from perfect integrity, they're only human after all.

So yes, I agree 100% with your desire to be tested like this and to want to know, but the problem may be that the DNA test material won't be so much in your hands but somebody else's.

Paradoxically, to be anxious at the thought of a thing one is involved with being under the control of others, is a known Aspie trait. So perhaps my fear of this (which is probably not much greater than my fear of a traditional DX by a shrink) is itself because I have AS?