Have you committed your AS child to a psych hospital?

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One other question - has your son been seen by a speech therapist? We are exploring pragmatic speech therapy for my 10yo; if it hadn't come up as part of his DX, it never would have occurred to me to seek it for my son, but it is the area where he needs the most help. Google pragmatic speech therapy and see if the results fit.

We tried RDI without success, too - I get the impression that it is sort of AS therapy finishing-school; if you've done all the other therapies it might help, but if you have glaring deficits that haven't been addressed as we do, it's not sufficient.

I have done Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for bipolar - it's only sort of talk therapy, but with a much more practical bent. You pick an issue you want to address, and you talk it through in terms of why/how it happened and what you could do differently next time to stop it.

@momsparky, ds received speech therapy when he was 2 yrs old. I wish the drs that diagnosed him when he was 9 had suggested for him to receive speech therapy to improve his communication skills, but they did not, and we didn't know how important for him to have the therapy since ds didn't want to talk then except to say "I don't know," or to mutter "Un on no" when he was in third grade. I feel that we lost a lot of time and opportunity to help him in this area. And is now manifesting into a bigger problem as social challenges increase in college or a grown man.

Thanks for helping me look up pragmatic speech therapy. I have printed a few practices and will make calls today. This place has been very helpful. I can't quite thank everyone enough for their support. It's my first time here and I'm glad I found it. Thank you all! Anyone else with a suggestion, feel free to make it. Thanks in advance! BTW, I'm in Delaware.

I am relieved to read your responses this morning. You'll find the right road. Often, on this board, we really challenge parents to twist their perceptions and views, and that is not always that well received. We never know if we've just misread things, or if the parent wasn't open to it, but we keep on trying because sometimes somehow one sentence or piece of information strikes the right chord. I like it when we help

Because of your son's age, I think he went through the system, so to speak, before it had started to figure things out. Speech therapy hasn't been on the books for this condition for all that long. But now it is, and most of us would probably put that on the list as the number 1 most effective therapy. When my son was diagnosed 6 years ago I was completely shocked that a speech professional was involved. My son, after all, speaks very clearly, comfortably, and in a highly expanded vocabulary (some AS kids are like that). But his speech is not always appropriate, hence speech therapy. He's woven in and out of the therapy over the years, as he acquires age appropriate skills, and then the bar changes, and he needs help again, but the speech professionals have been the ones most in tune with who he is as a unique individual, and the most creative in finding ways to keep working with him (this year he didn't meet any of the official qualifying criteria, but the speech therapist decided to try out a lunch bunch social skills program, and put him in for that). Who would have thought?

I think the speech therapy and the cognitive behavioral therapy that you are planning to look into are both solid options. Some of our adult AS members have enrolled themselves in cognitive behavioral therapy and been happy with the results, and that is something I like to see when considering a therapy.

Thanksgiving break seems like it is well timed for your situation. Your son most definitely needs to agree to what happens next, and he also just needs some time to simply grieve. We may not always think of the loss of dreams and expectations as a real loss, but it is. People need to go through all the stages of grief when major life blows happen. Let him do that process.

Also, I haven't given up on his getting his degree, and I hope you don't either. There is a way around every obstacle. Just, well, it can get dang tough to find that way. Help your son with that. I know you can. That is the one thing I've found my AS husband and AS son both struggle the most with: what to do when the original plan fails. They both think there is no choice but to throw in the towel. But, there is a choice, and by walking them through it over and over as these situations happen, I'm actually getting them to start to believe it. But it is so unnatural to them, it really surprises me. Something I've just always done; but they just can't.

I did want to talk a little about this. I have some personal experience with anti-depressants and I would note a few things:

1) They are not designed to help someone get over a difficult period. They are designed to correct a long term chemical imbalance in the brain. That isn't something that comes and goes.

2) The dirty little secret is that blind studies have shown repeatedly that anti-depressants are no more effective than placebos. They most definitely do something, but how much of that something is what actually makes the patient feel better is very much up for debate. A great deal of the effect is simply that the patient now feels he has been given a lifeline, and sometimes it is that hope that was needed more than anything. Realizing that, the odds of a positive effect if the patient doesn't believe he will get one are much lower.

3) They are extremely difficult to go off of. The medications chemically alter the brain, and removing that chemical wreaks havoc. One shouldn't start anti-depressants thinking they are a short term solution; they almost never are. People who start on them, stay on them.

In many ways, I think anti-depressants have become today's version of antibiotics: the miracle drug everyone wants, and the prescribing of which allows doctors to keep visits nice and short. Twenty years ago no one wanted to hear that antibiotics couldn't fix a bad cold, and since people usually visit doctors when they are most sick, everyone believed from their own experience that the antibiotics really worked. It wasn't until we saw the negative effects of the over-prescribing that the medical profession started to seriously question the practice. The same happens with anti-depressants. Everyone believes they will work, so doctors can usually prescribe them and send home happy patients. But it really isn't that simple, and at some point the negative effects of this casual practice will accumulate. You need to remember that these drugs were supposed to be a last resort for patients who with stubborn and persistent depression, and for many of those patients they have made a huge and important difference. But before taking that road, always ask yourself: is it really indicated in this situation, or am I looking for the equivalent of an antibiotic for a bad cold?

Swiftlorain,

I am not a parent but I just had to chime in here, because I had a similarly difficult experience my senior year of college, which was last year. I had never really had an easy time in college, but senior year was when it really got to me. I think it was because I was starting to realize that graduation was getting closer and closer, and that I would actually be expected to go out and get a job or apply for grad school, and do all of the other things that I was so ill-prepared for. Everyone had been telling me my entire life that things would get better, get easier, but they never did, and I didn't know how to help myself, or what to do. I basically became very depressed, started sleeping through classes, cried a lot, and had one meltdown after the other. At one point I was calling my mom hysterically several times a week, begging her to let me drop out. Even though school had been my life up until that point. I made it through and graduated, but some serious psychological damage was done in the process, and I feel that I have not yet fully recovered.

I think that talking to your son over Thanksgiving break is an excellent idea. The fact that you all know his diagnosis is a huge advantage (my parents and I were not aware of my AS until very recently). Ask him to really think about why he feels the need to graduate with the rest of his class. Is it truly an important goal that he has set for himself? Or is it that schoolwork has been his main focus for so long that he simply feels like he must graduate in 4 years? What does he need in order to feel healthy and happy? Suggest that maybe dropping a class or even taking a semester off and attending therapy might be a good choice for him, so that he doesn't completely stress himself out and go over the edge. I had a friend in college that took a semester of classes, then took the next semester off, then took a year of classes, then took the next year off. She will graduate nearly two years later than the rest of our class, but I certainly don't think any less of her for it, and the time off seemed to do her a lot of good.

Since only a quarter of the school year has gone by, now is the ideal time to have a heart to heart and decide what your son would like to do. Good luck to both of you!

Hello again

I guess the first thing I should talk about is therapies. For starters, I assume that you are referring to the therapies of "Relationship Development Intervention" and "EEG-guided repetitive trans cranial magnetic stimulation". I am not familiar with all the alphabet soup surrounding the names, so I just googled the acronyms you gave and those were the results. I am going to assume that is what you are referring to and go forward from there.

Primarily I should say that I am somewhat skeptical of any therapy which claims to fundamentally alter the way the brain works, such as these therapies claim to do. I understand that the entire point of learning is to develop and use new neural pathways, and thus learning by definition is altering your thinking pattern. But these therapies don't claim to teach, they claim to somehow alter major parts of how the person perceives, interacts with, and understands the world. And I don't think that neuroscience today is anywhere close to even understanding how people perceive the world, let alone actively modify how it happens.

There is a whole lot of therapies out there, just like these, which are based on spotty to non existent science, with outrageous claims of success, and use anecdotal circumstances to prove their claims of effectiveness. Just because somebody happens to show improvement while going through the therapy doesn't mean that the therapy had anything to do with the improvement. After all, autistic people may be different, but they are still people, which means they will still mature and grow just like anybody else. Most likely, any improvements that are attributed to such therapies are just coincidental at best, and the therapies themselves are ineffective at what they claim to do. I am not terribly surprised that your child said that he didn't see any benefit.

But anyways, you were asking about cognitive behavioral therapy. This is basically a broad name given to all sorts of therapies, often referred to as 'talk therapy'. I should have been more specific and said that I meant cognitive restructuring. Click the link below for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_restructuring

To summarize, it is commonly used as a way to deal with anxieties and stress. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of socializing, and many other fear based problems are good candidates for this method. The basic idea is to identify the problem, rationally think through the problem, and change how you perceive the situation. If you can change how you think about the unknown from being fearful, to being cautiously optimistic, then you can alleviate a good deal of anxiety. I have used this method with myself very often to good effect. In reality, you can do this yourself without the aid of a therapist, but it requires that you be able to detach yourself from your emotions and think clearly. If your child struggles with that, then a friend, you, or somebody else whom he trusts can help him out.

It isn't going to rewire his brain, or unlock hidden and hidden abilities, but it will allow him to be more pragmatic and reasonable about dealing with the difficulties that he faces in life.

Next on the list is medication:
For starters, allow me to say that medication is not evil or anything. I know other people who use medication, and have benefited from it. But there is a troublesome tendency amongst people to use medication without first properly identifying the problem. When people are stressed out or depressed, they tend to jump strait to medication without bothering to address the cause of the problem. And this doesn't really work, because unless you address the source of the problem, the medication does nothing but mask some of the symptoms.

To keep the explanation simple, there are 3 basic causes for depression:
1. Life sucks.
2. You think life sucks.
3. You have a chemical imbalance.

Reason #1 is pretty strait forward. You get depressed because something bad happens in your life. For example, somebody in your family dies, or your future and all the plans you made for it are going up in smoke because you can't pass college classes. This makes you depressed. In this situation, medication really doesn't do anything because the problem isn't a chemical imbalance in the brain. Unless you learn to deal with the problems that are making you depressed, you aren't going to make any substantial improvement. So obviously, the best solution in this situation is to find ways to deal with the difficulty.

Reason #2 is caused by being overly pessimistic, and fatalistic. It is the 'Everything is going wrong and my life sucks' mindset. This can occur independently of any actual problems. I know a few people who are doing well off financially, and have no serious problems, yet are depressed anyways over relatively trivial manners like not being able to go to Florida for Easter break. However, in most cases, this cause occurs in combination with reason #1 (life sucking) to make the depression worse. In your son's case, he is most definitely having some difficulties, but they are not insurmountable. Yes he may graduate a few months late, but it isn't as though he will never graduate or be able to live a happy life. Yet he is focusing too much on the negative aspects of his current situation, which is causing him to become more depressed then he should. In this case, the best solution is just talk the problems out and change your outlook. Generally some sort of talk therapy (such as the cognitive restructuring therapy that I mentioned earlier) is an effective method of doing this.

Reason #3 for depression is a chemical imbalance. This most commonly occurs when the hormones in your system undergo a rapid change. A common example is a mother having recently given birth. The hormones in her system are rapidly returning to non baby mode, which can cause problems such as chemical imbalances and depression, often referred to as postpartum depression, or the baby blues. This can also occur when starting a new drug, going off drugs, or it could have a genetic cause. In these cases, the problems are not the result of life sucking, nor are they the result of a fatalistic and pessimistic mindset. And as such, trying to change the environment, or getting the person into talk therapy is not going to have much of an impact. As DW_a_mom has said, these are the situations that anti-depressant drugs are designed for. When the depression has a biological source that has resisted less medical attempts to resolve, then you treat the problem with drugs.

So all that to say, your child is having problems because he is facing difficulties, and he is overreacting to them. And the best way to deal with that is to give him the tools to deal with his own problems, and also help him to stop overreacting and making things worse by talking through the difficulties. Drugs really aren't going to do much to help other then mask some of the symptoms. There are, of course, some instances where somebodies' safety is in jeopardy, and using drugs may be a necessary stop gap measure until the person has stabilized. But as I said earlier, I don't think your child is a threat to you or anybody around him, at least not from what I read in your posts. Your son may benefit from a stress relieving aid such as inosotil, or 5-HTP, or maybe some anti-anxiety medication, but I don't think that should be your first, and definitely not your only action.

The next item to discuss is communication difficulties. I completely understand your child's difficulty in this area. Effectively communicating information was probably the hardest skill that I had to learn. I understand how this is confusing to understand because your child seems able to communicate just fine. He is able to answer basic questions, and also runs the radio at his school. So obviously he is able to talk and get words out. But the problem is that you don't realize what exactly this involves.

You see, if your son is anything like me, then language is not his natural method of thinking. For most normal people, they process all their thoughts verbally. Such that their is a little internal voice in their head that does all their thinking, and in order to talk, all they need to do is open their mouths and let the words come out. This doesn't happen for your son. When he has to say something, he has to take his natural (non English) thought process, and translate it into words.

This is a very difficult, and time consuming thing to do. And the more information, and complexity, he has to process, the more difficult it becomes. Answering short questions is simple because it only involves the translation of one thought. Reading announcements on the radio is relatively simple because there isn't much thought translating involved, all he has to do is read pre-prepared information. But trying to properly articulate a complex, multi-faceted, and detailed argument for design class is much more difficult because suddenly there isn't just one idea to translate, there are hundreds. If you want a better and more detailed description of the problem, then I suggest reading chapter 5 in the book in my signature.

But all that to say, your child is having some difficulties with communicating ideas, and he needs to work on this. And to that end, he needs some practice with articulating his thoughts. As others have said, speech therapy may be of some use, but I can't vouch for it as I have never seen nor been to a speech therapy session for an adult. But I can tell you what worked for me. You see, I used to have a very difficult time articulating my thoughts up until I was about 19 years old. What finally taught me to organize and express my thoughts clearly was playing an large online computer game (MMORPG) where you had to type out your sentences all the time in order to communicate.

Up until then, I had never really spent much time trying to communicate complex thoughts to other people, and as such, I never developed the skills for doing so. But once I started having to type constantly just to play the game, I picked up a lot of the skills involved in quickly translating my thoughts. As they say, practice makes perfect. I also started regularly posting on various game forums around the same time, which further sharpened and refined my ability to get what was in my head out in proper English. Now I will admit that I still sometimes struggle with translating my thoughts in real time (when I don't have the luxury of rewriting my sentences), but ultimately I have acquired enough communication skills that I can fulfilled the minimum requirements for engineering communications.

So all that to say, my advice is to get him an activity where he will need to communicate and interact with other people in an effort to share ideas. Since the objective is merely to get comfortable and proficient with idea exchange, then any medium will do. To that end, I recommend doing it with a hobby or activity that he will enjoy. Online games are a good example of this. I personally am a huge fan of the game Dungeons and Dragons. It is very fun, and a very good way to build effective communication skills. Your son may need to be slightly more outgoing and interact a bit more then he usually does in order to gain experience, but if he wishes to graduate and get a job, then basic communication is a requirement. And there are far worse requirements in life then joining some people to play D+D on Friday nights.

And lastly, your son needs to learn about handling stress and dealing with the anxieties that he faces in life. And to that end, I have a couple suggestions.

For starters, suggest that your son come visit Wrong Planet, and make some posts here. That way he can learn about dealing with life's problems, while also practicing his communication skills.

Secondly, take a look at the book listed in my signature. It was written with the intent of helping parent's who are new to the diagnosis understand some of the issues that their child is dealing with, and also give some useful advice. Obviously, as you are not new to the diagnosis, some of the information may not be that useful to you. But there is still a lot of good insight in there which may help you to understand some of the problems that your child is facing, and also find some good ways of dealing with those problems. In the worst case scenario, you will spend 3 hours reading a free book, and not learn much. Anyways, take a look and see what looks good to you, and feel free to recommend any sections to your son which you think may help him.

Thirdly, you will probably want to visit (or more accurately, have your son visit) http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/
It is a blog written by an autistic women in college which talks a lot about the challenges involved in college and how to deal with those challenges. Obviously, not every post will apply, but there is still plenty of good information in there.

And my last point before I go to sleep:
Make sure to remember that this is your child's life. He may be young by your standards, but he is still the person in charge of his own decisions, actions, and destiny. You can advise him, help him, and support him, but it is up to him to spend the time, effort, and work required in dealing with his difficulties. Trying to force progress on him in a silly proposition at best, and a counter-productive idea at the worst. So whatever decisions your child makes, just know that they are his decisions to make, and you can't force your will upon him.

Hey All -

Using Trackers 1,2 & 3 description of depression - I want to address a point I haven't seen discussed.

Often #1 (situational) can trigger #3. this has happened to me (one of the most positive, non depressed people I know ). It was basically like PTSD induced depression. It absolutely took meds to get me out of it. No amount of proper thinking did a thing. I was able to force myself to do the minimum required, but I had completely lost myself and couldn't get out of it.

So.... yes, it is probable that anti depressant meds are over perscribed (aren't all meds?), but I think that we may be simplifying the issue here. I believe that this issue would be best addressed by a true professional (not the primary care doc) rather than an online forum.

Of course.

We issue cautions and considerations, but not recommendations and conclusions.

I just want to give an update on my son. He's home now. Actually he's been home before the thanksgiving holiday. Since my dh had 3 days off, we went ahead and drove up to get our son. I spoke to my son about bringing him home to take a break from school. He's reluctant, but he eventually agreed after a long drama. I feel for him, and if I were in his situation, I would be angry, sad, and feel helpless too. But reality is that this is just the course of things as a result of his actions, which were a result of his reaction to disappointments, which were a result of his disorder. He needed help and he needed it even before he went to college. Had I known this would happen, I would have worked harder at having him get therapy for his speech trouble before encouraging him to go to college. But there's no looking back. Only looking forward.

He'll be officially on medical leave after this Tuesday, and will not be able to return to the same college for nine months (school policy on psych disorder based leave of absence). He does not quite know this yet. I had just spoken with the student health center's director explaining to me the details. I think he thinks he's going back for the spring sem. But I think he does need at least a year to get some speech and behavior therapy before going back to school.

Now the question is how to find the most effective therapist for both speech and behavior. We're going to see his behavior therapist for the first time on Tues. I don't know what to expect to hear from him but I expect my son to give it a shot.

Thank you all for your opinions. I am so happy to have heard a differing opinion on this issue and glad we didn't take our son to a psych hospital. He is doing well at home, busy with playing video games, listening to music, and playing his guitar. Though I'm sure he's wondering what would happen to his future. I'm afraid to broach the topic until we see his therapist because I don't want him to lash out at us or worse, run away.

Thank you again, and again, especially to tracker. I hope that ds won't have to take meds either, but I think just to relieve him of anxiety, I think meds might be the answer. I don't know.

Thank god for this forum. Thank you Alex Plank for creating it.

I'm sorry to hear about your son. I know you have an instinct to "help"him but I think being that he blames you and your husband for his current situation, I think that is a very strong indicator that the best think you can do right now is not involve yourself in his life, even if he is not doing well.

He is an adult. You cannot hospitalize him without going to the courts and having him declared a danger to himself or others, or incompetent in some way. This is not easy to do, even when the person actually is a danger to themselves or others. He can fight the proceedings and he will likely resent you for even trying to do this. You cannot help someone who does not want your help, which he clearly does not.

This is what I would do. I write him a letter. Tell him you love him very much, and you are sorry if you made the wrong choices in life regarding parenting him, but they were hard choices to make and you did your best to try to make the right ones, but you are not psychic and you are not perfect, and you hope he forgive you. Tell him you do not want to be his enemy. You will not force him to do anything he does not want to do, and you will listen to him and do the best you can to help him, he just needs to tell you what he wants.

I do not think he feels in control of his life and I think it's very important that you instill in him the sense that HE is in control, not you. By not forcing anything upon him, it also puts him in the position of having to take responsibility for his actions. If he gets arrested for something he gets arrested and the courts can deal with him.

I've had friends of whom being arrested and having to face the system was actually the best thing that ever happened to them, because it helped them realize that society views them as their own person, and taking the responsibility for their actions was a small price to pay for the sense of self and respect as their own person that was conveyed on to them.

I am very glad to hear your son is safe at home, and I wish you the best of luck.

You've missed her updates. They are figuring it out