Asperger's Syndrome = the new ADHD?

[Monstera_deliciosa]

@RickJay

I’m curious as to how Asperger’s Syndrome is different from psychopathy. You’re describing one of the classic symptoms of a psychopath (or, in modern terms, a sociopath.)

I used to wonder that too, from reading about pyschopathy/sociopathy, and then later, Asperger’s syndrome. Then I got to know someone with AS, and they are worlds apart.

From what I gather, pyschopaths/sociopaths do not think anything is wrong with them, or the way they relate to other people. Other people exist merely to be taken advantage of. I get the sense from Gus Gusterson (and my stepson, who has Asperger’s) that they come to understand they do not connect with people in the the usual ways, and try to look for ways to overcome this. For example, from what I’ve read (most specifically, an excellent book called Without Conscience (subtitled) The Disturbing World of The Psychopaths Among Us. by Robert D. Hare, PhD) very few psycopaths/sociopaths ever seek out help from mental health professionals, as Gus did.

I also get the sense from Gus’s posts that he loves his wife as much as he is able to, just as I get the sense from my stepson that he loves me as much as he can. Is it the same depth of feeling I feel for him? Probably not, but everyone, not just people with development disorders, experiences love in different ways.

[zelie_zelerton]

@KGS

<snip> basic “teenage angst”, for which the only cure is growing up & moving out of the house.

My youngest brother, for example, was diagnosed with ADHD – but as far as I could tell, the Ritalin didn’t have that much of an impact on his personality. In my (admittedly non-professional and somewhat cynical) opinion, he didn’t have the affliction at all…he was just a troublemaking brat.

I find myself returning to this little snippet quite often. To me, that says more about the OP’s feelings on problems such as ADHD and Asperger’s than anything else. Seems that something like unresolved issues over his sibling’s ‘specialness’ are driving his apparent disbelief in these conditions. Was it just me?

[Fear_Itself]

@Qadgop the Mercotan

Yes, it is a lot.

You’re comparing apples and oranges.

Fair enough, but just tossing out a figure is meaningless to laymen who are not familiar with PubMed.

[Gleena]

@Pábitel

Absolutely, I don’t want to give the impression that I am anti medication. I myself have taken anti-anxiety meds. But there is no anti-Aspergers pill that is going to be a cure.

I did come off as pretty anti-med myself, I’m not. But I’ve done my research, too - some of the pills the docs were trying out on my kid weren’t even tested in littlies - he was 3-4 at the time and still wearing the PDD banner.

In truth, as hyperactivity is sometimes a side effect or co-morbidity of AS, and he does (oh believe me, he does) show many signs of it, I have been toying with trying him on Ritalin. His doc really wants it, and his school work is suffering. Not from lack of knowledge, but lack of ability to hang in there and sit still and finish it all.

Haven’t decided yet, still reading. Also, my doc (and my reading) seem to indicate that even if a kid is on stimulants, they are encouraged and helped to ween themselves from them at 16-18.

Will see…but anti-psychs for him? No. No no no. Anti-depressants? Not at this age.

Cheers,
G

[KGS]

@Pábitel

Psychological problems are treatable by drugs/therapy and can be completely cured.

I don’t know who told you this, but you’re wrong. There is no absolute cure for depression, schizophrenia, OCD, or similar conditions – they can be controlled by medication (for those lucky enough to respond positively to meds) or minimized by cognitive & behavioral therapy, but that’s it. There’s also the problem of medications wearing off over time, or requiring adjustment as the patient’s brain chemistry adapts. (In that respect, people with AS are lucky – you’ve escaped enslavement on the “Med Train”, as it were.)

Bottom line is, nobody knows precisely how the brain works. What we do know is that it’s a combination of (1) Chemistry, and (2) Programming. To what extent one affects the other, is not well understood and likely differs greatly from person to person. Much of my aversion to current psychiatric methods is that they place far too much emphasis on (1) and not enough on (2). (Just TRY and find a therapist these days who utilizes good ol’ fashioned Freudian psychoanalysis…they hardly exist anymore!!!)

@zelie zelerton

I find myself returning to this little snippet quite often. To me, that says more about the OP’s feelings on problems such as ADHD and Asperger’s than anything else. Seems that something like unresolved issues over his sibling’s ‘specialness’ are driving his apparent disbelief in these conditions. Was it just me?

Umm…no. Or rather, yes…it’s just you. :dubious:

[jsc1953]

@Guinastasia

Being concerned about prescription drug advertising is one thing. It’s quite another to state that said conditions are just “made up”.

CBS Sunday Morning recently did a story on this very topic. It turns out that the conditions are not made up; but the label certainly is, and it’s made up by marketing people, not doctors. They showed a marketing company brainstorm session, where people were kicking around ideas for what name to give a set of symptoms that their pharmaceutical client happened to have a pill for.

The rationale is that a potential patient will be reluctant to tell his doctor “I occasionally get these funny twitchy feelings in my legs…”. But he’ll be much more likely to say “I think I have RLS”.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@Gleena

In truth, as hyperactivity is sometimes a side effect or co-morbidity of AS, and he does (oh believe me, he does) show many signs of it, I have been toying with trying him on Ritalin. His doc really wants it, and his school work is suffering. Not from lack of knowledge, but lack of ability to hang in there and sit still and finish it all.

Not just hyperactivity, but ADHD can be comorbid with AS. I’ve met people with three and four comorbidities - ADHD, AS, and OCD seems to be a common combination.

Haven’t decided yet, still reading. Also, my doc (and my reading) seem to indicate that even if a kid is on stimulants, they are encouraged and helped to ween themselves from them at 16-18

.

I don’t know where you’ve read that, but it’s craziness. It’s been about 10 years that we’ve understood that one does not ‘grow out of’ ADHD and certainly not AS. Some people with milder cases do manage to develop sufficient coping strategies that they may be able to manage well without meds, but they are in the minority.

You can go to ADD org’s site and get reams of good information.

[Guinastasia]

@Pábitel

Psychological problems are treatable by drugs/therapy and can be completely cured.

Nitpick-not necessarily. They can be treated, or managed, but not always cured.

As for being a slave to my meds, well, it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind. Quite frankly, the side effects by now are minimal, and while I do need to avoid caffeine and booze, it’s not that big of a deal.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@KGS

My point is, a lot of these illnesses seem to be over-diagnosed, mainly to fill a prescription for some brand new drug that’s being marketed. Who needs an expensive purple pill when TUMS or Alka-Seltzer will do just fine??

Um. Yeah. Because we’re all just DYING to have a diagnosis of a mental ailment just so we can take drugs.

I didn’t mean to suggest that such disorders are made up, however I do get suspicious when the big pharmaceutical companies appear to be driven towards creating a hypochondriac culture – or, in the case of psychological “conditions” (I’ll avoid the word “illness” for now), covering up the symptoms with medication rather than dealing with the root issues.

Fortunately science has been showing us (those of us who bother to read about new discoveries, anyway) that the ‘root issues’ are generally biological and chemical. Brains are hunks of meat. No different, really, from livers or kidneys or hearts. And like other organs, they suffer from ailments. It’s just that the symptoms of the ailments affect the brain’s functioning such that logic goes askew or hallucinations are created and behaviour is affected.

Sadly, people who really ought to get by now that brains aren’t magical airy compartments with nothing in them but fairy dust and stars still can’t grok the fact that the brain is an organ so that ‘mental illness’ is really in the end no different than any other organ illness. I’ll be so glad when the leftovers of the days when eclipses were thought to be caused by gods eating the moon are finally gone and we understand that there’s no ‘issues’ underlying the sickness of brains.

Of course, that’d ruin the fun for people who love to be condemnatory of others’ actions - they won’t get to feel morally superior anymore.

Case in point – ADHD. While growing up, I knew a kid who was hyperactive. He was pretty wild, even while medicated. Whenever he skipped a dose, he would tear his clothes off and run up & down the street, screaming his head off, for hours at a time. Thing is, he was the only kid I knew, out of dozens, who had that kind of problem. Decades later, I met a lot of kids & teens who were diagnosed with ADD and Ritalin-ized, and none of them came close to the wildness of Devon

And that would be because Devon likely had much more wrong with him than just ADHD or else he had a very severe case. Like any disease, you can have a mild case or a severe case of ADHD and you can have comorbidities to boot. Dr. Daniel Amen has identified several distinct types of ADD with different symptomologies and treatments. Check his site out. You’ll see SPECT scans of brains of people with ADHD. Maybe that’ll prove it’s ‘real’.

Heck, one of them confided in me that he asked for Ritalin just so he could sell it to his friends, who would crush up the pills & snort 'em like meth. (I’m not making this up!)

Oh well then. That must mean there are no acutal sufferers. :rolleyes:

Forgive if I am a bit testy. I lived for three years with a man with ADHD and, trust me on this, they are NOT just making it up. And they suffer. A LOT. People who make these unempathic (and, sadly, uneducated) judgements don’t help.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@Quiddity Glomfuster

Oh well then. That must mean there are no acutal sufferers. .

Oh scuz. ACTUAL. Hope that’s the only one.

[OneCentStamp]

@Quiddity Glomfuster

Oh well then. That must mean there are no acutal sufferers. :rolleyes:

As opposed to chronical sufferers?

[JCorre]

So if these symptoms sound very familiar to me. How would I go about confirming it?

[Mr.Slant]

@Gus Gusterson

SNIP
I can’t speak to that question from a clinical point of view, but I have been accused, jokingly and not so jokingly, of being a psychopath. I was at lunch with some coworkers once and the guy beside me asked, “So what do you do on the weekends?” I answered, “Boring stuff. Woodworking, watching TV, stuff like that.” His response: “Huh. I figured you killed small animals or babies for fun.” He was only half kidding.

Why assume that your only condition is Asperger’s?
Could you not be a sociopath as well?
Anyone with a clinical psychology background want to chime in? I can’t make heads or tails of the DSM…

[Mr.Slant]

@Captain Lance Murdoch

Don’t be so quick to bash drugs for AS either.
SNIP
I just want to emphasize to parents out there that are faced with these issues that drugs are not something to be avoided like the plague. They can’t fix everything, but they really can make a positive difference in your kids’ lives.

My absolute greatest sympathies to your dear loved one. Growing up with Asperger’s bites the wax tadpole.
If I may, however, I would like to point out that there ARE no drugs for Asperger’s.
Asperger’s is as intractable to medication as is gravity.
Your child may have other problems on top of Asperger’s due either to biology, environmental factors or simply poor Aspgerger’s management skills, but the Asperger’s is not in and of itself being treated.
I am quite happy that the prescription medicine regime you mention has resulted in forward progress for your child. My best wishes to you both!

[KGS]

Here is the DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome:

A. Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

1) marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviours such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction;

2) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level;

3) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests or achievments with other people (eg: by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people);

4) lack of social or emotional reciprocity.

B. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:

1) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus;

2) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals;

3) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (eg: hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements);

4) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects

C. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (eg: single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years).

E. There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behaviour (other than social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood.

F. Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder, or Schizophrenia.

So it’s a lot more than somebody who’s uncomfortable with social situations.

I’d also recommend the book A Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a fictional mystery story told from the point of view of a teenager with Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s a great read, whether you’re into the psychological side of it or not.

[Frylock]

@KGS

Here is the DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome: So it’s a lot more than somebody who’s uncomfortable with social situations.

That’s a very strange link to bring up in this context. Mistake or intentionally absurd?

-FrL-

[bobkitty]

@Mr. Slant

Anyone with a clinical psychology background want to chime in? I can’t make heads or tails of the DSM…

I’ll try to cover this one in layperson’s terms.

First off, AS is in a different subset than sociopathy (what we call Anti-Social Personality Disorder). As already mentioned upthread, AS is a Pervasive Developmental Disorder and is noticeably at a very young age (as opposed to A-SPD, which falls under “personality disorder” and isn’t diagnosed until adulthood). It also requires the intercession of medical doctors- specifically neuro/neuropsych doctors- to finalize the daignosis, because while the psych folks have diagostic criteria, it’s the neurological testing that differentiates a true AS sufferer from, as the OP kindly stated, a brat.

Secondly, if you’re faced with a typical AS person, especially one that’s undiagnosed, you know right away something is… different. Their social boundaries are off- they don’t look at you while talking, they stand too close, their style of speech, tone of voice, and facial features are… I think “robotic” is the term I hear most often, but I think of it more as “forced,” they have little concept of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in interpersonal relationships. They are easily manipulated into doing things that are inappropriate because they want to fit in and think the best way of doing it is appearing “cool.”

A-SPD people are, in a word, charming. They know how to manipulate people and situations, and they’re damn good at it. They would never allow themselves to be manipulated into doing anything. While the AS person is withdrawn and solitary, the A-SPD is the main focus of the party, because they like the attention and they like having more and more people they can get things from.

I think someone else already mentioned it, but… AS people know there’s something different about them. Sometimes it bothers them enough that they seek out help. A-SPD don’t think there’s anything wrong with them at all- the world is ripe for picking, and what’s the big deal of living life to its fullest?

One final thing… an AS person may do something illegal because someone else got them to do it, or because they didn’t understand it wasn’t accetable/the right thing to do. An A-SPD person would do something illegal knowing it was wrong, but not caring if it got them what they wanted.

[KGS]

@Frylock

That’s a very strange link to bring up in this context. Mistake or intentionally absurd?

Whoops…that’s a result of having too many open tabs before morning coffee. :smack: Here’s the link I meant.

The perception of AS is that it applies to anybody who has difficulty in social situations – which is such a common thing (especially among us Internet Nerds) that it’s easy for anybody to identify with that aspect of it. Indeed, the more I read about Asperger’s case studies, the more I see myself – or, at least, the teenager I used to be. I’m convinced, that if I were growing up today, I’d be tagged with that diagnosis. But some parts don’t match at all; stereotyped behavior, for example.

My concern is that we may be heading down a path where EVERY child with minor social disabilities may be tagged as having AS, in the same manner that every child who gets restless in class was tagged with having ADHD. It’s a double-edged sword, since many people are looking for some sort of excuse as to why they feel so different and unable to fit in, and that plays right into the whole psychiatric money-making machine (whether medication is part of it or not).

I don’t mean to denigrate anyone with the genuine disorder…in fact, I find it discouraging to see how the whole medical industry has started to focus on making big profits, at the expense of actually helping people.

[Guinastasia]

@KGS

I don’t mean to denigrate anyone with the genuine disorder…in fact, I find it discouraging to see how the whole medical industry has started to focus on making big profits, at the expense of actually helping people.

You have yet to demonstrate that this is so.

[Keweenaw]

@KGS

I’m convinced, that if I were growing up today, I’d be tagged with that diagnosis. But some parts don’t match at all; stereotyped behavior, for example.

This statement dosen’t make any sense to me. You’re saying that you think you would be diagnosed with AS despite not matching the criteria you linked to?