Your experience with ASD and comorbidities

[DesertRose]

Do you find this to be true?

""Many anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, are not commonly diagnosed in people with ASD because such symptoms are better explained by ASD itself...""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_comorbid_to_autism_spectrum_disorders

I was under the impression, that these things were usually first diagnosed, before the ASD was found or declared.

 

[eulimk]

When I was young I had terrible separation anxiety and panic attacks. I was medicated at a young age. Later I developed depression, in middle school and high school. When I grew older my mental health got worse and I was diagnosed with Bipolar I. Thankfully, after many years of medication modifications, therapy, and Buddhist teachings I'm now stable.

 

[Judge]

I was under the impression, that these things were usually first diagnosed, before the ASD was found or declared.

That was precisely what happened to me. Diagnosed with OCD, chronic clinical depression and social anxiety disorder. But at a time when "Asperger's Syndrome" was only recently exposed to the American medical establishment.

Not to mention that 21 years earlier doctors cited to my parents that I was "just fine". They had no explanation for my traits and behaviors in the early 60s. Only that my parents thought there was something "different" about me.

I essentially "slipped through the cracks" of medical science in the early 60s and 80s.

 

[Ylva]

No. Everything I tell any shrink or therapist about gets attributed to my autism. My depression, my anxiety, my history of getting harassed, my love of reading, my dislike of noises, my contempt for people who touch me at their leisure, my family problems, my friendships, and my atheism. (It's actually agnosticism but she didn't let me clarify.)

And it would be okay if they did something about it, but it all just gets handwaved as "that's just your AS". Like it doesn't matter then.

 

[eulimk]

Sounds like a terrible therapist. Are you taking any medication for depression or anxiety?

 

[Progster]

In my early 20s I ws diagnosed with social phobia, then later, a lot later, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Episode and Asperger's.

 

[Streetwise]

Do you find this to be true?

""Many anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, are not commonly diagnosed in people with ASD because such symptoms are better explained by ASD itself...""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_comorbid_to_autism_spectrum_disorders

I was under the impression, that these things were usually first diagnosed, before the ASD was found or declared.

It depends what form of autism spectrum disorder you have if it's kanners autism which is now called low functioning that is very very obvious and some other disorders which come under autism are very obvious as well .