Difference Between ASD and ADHD with comorbidities

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slytherpuff
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 16 Feb 2016
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Posts: 9

20 Feb 2016, 4:59 pm

So I've been really weighing the pros and cons between being psychologically assessed yet another time. I'm highly conflicted, because I feel like I could fit in several different diagnostic categories, and even though I'm struggling in life, my family is able to help me a lot so I have no immediate need for social services.

My current diagnoses:

ADHD (at age 7, without hyperactivity. My teacher in kindergarten thought I had hearing problems, was tested and I didn't. Mom's not sure, but thinks she mentioned central-auditory processing... Anyway, I was re-diagnosed ADHD at 19 in order to receive medication.)

GAD (at age 15-16, I likely had this for years before I was diagnosed. But in addition to regular GAD, I also have a lot of ocd tendencies, most bothersome is a preoccupation with getting dirty so I wash hands too much)

MDD (At age 16,17, 18? Not sure exactly when they put this one on the papers. Looking back into my childhood, I was always kind of low-energy so I think I had some depression for years before as well.)

My first psychiatrist thought I had "thought disorder", ones after that have implied they think I had ASD.

Thanks to the internet, I'm familiar with a lot of the personality disorders, and have elements from a few of those. I don't know exactly what my objective with this post is, but I do know I'd like some help analyzing what I should do as I feel very overwhelmed as far as how to move forward.

Edit/P.S. I've identified with anhedonia and depersonalization for a while, and looking back into kidhood I had both of those to some extent as well (as a kid I had more the DP, than the anhedonia). Are those common for anyone with high functioning ASD?



Cyllya1
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

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Joined: 26 Apr 2015
Gender: Female
Posts: 320
Location: Arizona, USA

20 Feb 2016, 5:36 pm

There's definitely a lot of overlap in ADHD and ASD. I have BAP personality traits (the kinds of things that would make you score high on an autism screening test regardless of whether you have autism-related impairments) plus ADHD and hypersensitivity, but I don't have actual ASD, and I still feel like my difficulties are shared by people here more than on the ADHD forums.

When I looked into this for myself, I found that an ASD diagnosis would hypothetically give me access to... social skills classes. That's pretty much all. Nothing about sensory integration or daily living skills. I've already given myself oodles of social skills training but have not come close to exhausting my self-training resources, so that would be fairly worthless to me. But ADHD gives you access to medication and "executive function training" (not sure what that entails, but it at least sounds relevant). It may be different where you live, so it could be worth checking around.

I haven't heard of depersonalization or anhedonia being common in ASD, but I don't know much about depersonalization, and anhedonia could easily be an effect of ASD-related sadness, the same way it could with ADHD. I think BAP personality traits could also result in behavior or preferences that seem like anhedonia to people who have a very different personality (e.g. "What do you MEAN, you don't want to go to this loud crowded party filled with obnoxious noisy strangers who act like their interests are limited to sex and beer?! It sounds fun to ME, so there must be something wrong with you!"), so watch out for that.


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