Misdiagnoses

[DaisyRose]

I found this really cool article talking about how people with autism can get misdiagnosed. It’s a super common thing and this article goes into detail with how women are 10 times more likely to be misdiagnosed than men. I thought it was a cool read, so I had to share.

Misdiagnosis of Autism for Mental and Personality Disorders

Why autism spectrum disorder is sometimes mistakenly misdiagnosed.

www.psychologytoday.com

 

[Mr. Stevens]

Thank you! I work with people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders. I see many who seem misdiagnosed. They're usually older and/or female. It really bothers me, sometimes.

 

[DaisyRose]

Thank you! I work with people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders. I see many who seem misdiagnosed. They're usually older and/or female. It really bothers me, sometimes.

Thank you for helping people with intellectual disabilities. People like you are needed more often who are understanding and kind to others. Thank you for your patience and help.

 

[Swansong]

Any medical condition that can't be semi-objectively diagnosed with laboratory or imagining tests or doesn't have very obvious and specific symptoms probably gets misdiagnosed a lot.

When it comes to field of psychology and psychiatry, there's just a ton of very soft medical science and often doctors are making like at best somewhat informed guesses. So I don't think this is surprising at all.

 

[Patrick Bushdiecker]

When I was younger, I would be sent to the hospital when people didn't know how to deal with me. Every time they would give me "medicine" that made me feel sick. Every new doctor would have a different diagnosis. As an adult I have self medicated with drugs and alcohol, but maybe I was never sick. Recently I became aware of autism. That makes the most sense out of all of it. Today I take nothing at all. I have good days and bad days, and varying moments in-between. But I am alive, and very thankful for all.

 

[Bolletje]

I had a lot of misdiagnoses in my past.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

I had a lot of misdiagnoses in my past.

I was misdiagnosed? maybe? as a kid with NVLD, and there are also doctor reports of having had anxiety. Maybe I still have those things as well as autism? Or has it been autism all the time? Depression too has shown its face to me many times.

 

[Vindiesel]

If you go to a typical therapist then their wheelhouse is the standard dsm/ behavioral issues like depression and anxiety/personality disorders. If you think your autistic then you need to find a therapist/center that is explicitly geared towards autism.
A standard mental health facilities are not trained in autism or its manifestations to even have the inclination to tell you your complexity supersedes their logic and or will have multiple therapist get involved. They are overworked overbooked and lead to a misdiagnoses. (my wife is a therapist for the state)

Diagnoses at the end of the day is people judging people based off a particular set of criteria and its external manifestations (aka your behavior) through a lens of schooling, quantity and wisdom. The label itself is a generic representation of the authenticity of your individualism which is ignorant to necessarily define your complexity on an individual level. The label may give you a leg up on helping you self-help but therapist are there to help you with "your problems that YOU consider a dysfunction" and the label really isn't relevant only to insurance companies.

 

[Dagan]

Yeah, I had to go to a therapist at a clinic for over a year before the assessments and such. Everything at first was just trying to sort out and find out who I am every single day. I feel like everything else was ruled out properly before my diagnosis. The fact that still to this day afterwards, I display the same symptoms consciously or not, it's pretty spot on that I'm a spectrum alumni.

 

[Xinyta]

I have been misdiagnosed before too. Though, the weird thing was when I was being looked at, I also was dealing with seizures during sleep. From what my dad told me, my Landau Kleffner diagnosis was more a result of doctors at St. Louis Childern's Hospital looking to diagnose any patients with this new discovery that remotely came close in symptoms. No surprise. Seizures during sleep is one of them, supposedly.

The neurologist I went to in recent time told me that I don't have that and he could tell by looking at me due to dealing with people who actually have Landau Kleffner.

Now I am thinking my seizures during sleep were related more from stress and anxiety. Not some rare epileptic condition.

 

[vergil96]

I was misdiagnosed in many dofferent ways that were obvious for me when a therapistexplained what they thought was going on inside me - it wasn't true at all and I was close to giving up. I'm glad that I have finally found something that seems to work for me in terms of psychotherapy.