Other Concerned About Confusing Asperger's With Ptsd

[Renagade Therapist]

Hello, I have been dx with PTSD in the past, found an excellent therapist and eventually became a therapist myself. I've been helping now for over 20 years, I know what it is like. I have a growing concern recently about the emphasis on Asperger's and autistic disorders. It seems to be the "diagnosis" of the day and I, for one do not believe that there are that many people with Asperger's as they say. I am beginning to research how PTSD can cause Asperger symptoms and my concern is that the trauma is being overlooked in tx because there is so much attention placed on the SYMPTOMS and too many therapists do not look deeper. Early trauma can cause very poor, detached social skills and I have seen too many colleagues lately looking at someone being "odd" or withdrawn and they immediately throw the Asperger's card!! Any reactions? I will keep you posted on my progress : )

 

[Deleted member 1860]

How does a straight attachment disorder figure into all this?

 

[rainbow1]

Perhaps I am missing something here but having worked with many adults and children with Asperger's I don't really see the similarity with PTSD. I don't understand how the confusion would arise? Sorry, maybe just me not seeing the connection.

 

[Friday]

Misdiagnosis is always the bane, isn't it?

It's understandable that people want to know what's wrong with them, but it's also expensive and time consuming to do a full physical work up, take exceptionally long tests, get outside corroboration of symptoms spanning time & locations, and then run differentials. But it's also the only legitimate way to diagnose anything.

Welcome.

 

[Barberian]

Psychiatry is a best guess anyway. Put one patient in a room with 10 shrinks and you will get several different "diagnosis". Yes the diagnostic books are written out pretty clearly, but just like the Bible, different people get different answers from the same words.

 

[Hashi]

I'm not clear how PTSD can cause Asperger symptoms, at least not to the extent of confusing the diagnoses - could you explain a bit more what you mean?

 

[anthony]

I have seen too many colleagues lately looking at someone being "odd" or withdrawn and they immediately throw the Asperger's card!

This has been an issue for a long time now, in my opinion. Any kids or teens presenting with delayed development, they hand out both Aspergers / Autism like candy without really evaluating over a longevity time frame to see whether the behaviour is just delayed development. You then have parents looking to get their kids into private institutions, or get private teaching assistance, and one way to do that is to get your child diagnosed with these disorders, more often than not. There are parents teaching their children the symptoms, encouraging behaviours to mimic what they read.

IMHO, diagnosis for any mental health disorder should not be made without a 3 - 6 month assessment period. These days... one session and many therapists are diagnosing. As you're well aware, mental health diagnosis is not medical, it is a best guess basis, and this opens up a lot of doubt, mis-diagnosis and complications in getting people the right treatment. It's not like going to the doctor with a cold, them being able to run some tests and quickly ascertain whether you're full of crap or not, and just trying to pull a sicky.

The Internet has opened up a huge realm of self-diagnosis in both medical and mental health diagnosis, people read symptom profiles instead of understanding the underlying diagnostic criterion which well... isn't in the symptom profiles posted online.

I agree... this is a massive global problem. The fix won't occur until mental health diagnosis is strictly tightened for longer assessment periods and even better, when technology allows cheap diagnostic medical tools to measure neurological patterns and such in the physicians office under testing to quickly ascertain validity. I don't see that happening any time soon.

 

[joeylittle]

diagnosis for any mental health disorder should not be made without a 3 - 6 month assessment period

This, this, a thousand times, this.
The reason I like my psych is that she didn't diagnose me for about 4 months; and even then, she kept considering other ideas.

@Renagade Therapist, welcome to the forum. I think the biggest disservice any mental health professional can do is feel so responsible for coming up with an answer that they hand out guesses instead of informed guesses. Because let's face facts: it's all just informed guesswork until someone can isolate the gene, or the protein, or whatever else can be found in our bodily fluids.

I'm afraid doing away with Aspergers and calling it all a spectrum will probably make it very dicey for awhile.

As to confusing PTSD with autism - I can see how this could be possible in children, especially if they aren't being seen by a very experienced and talented clinician. You'd have to be able to rely on the kid's ability to self-report, and that's probably hard in the best of circumstances.

Interesting question.