Is Chronic Depression comorbid with Aspergers?

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Magnanimous
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11 Jul 2014, 4:28 pm

Obviously I'm asking because I kinda have both.
And my mood pretty much just fluctuates between Absolute Apathy, Shameless Snark, and the borderline Suicidal Grimdarks.

On a conscious, thinking level... I don't really care about it so much... But trying to chain down the grimmer emotions and crush them into a nasty little quantum singularity where the sun can never shine drains me of energy sometimes... to the point where my whole body aches just from the process of forcing myself NOT to feel anything.

And obviously the alternative is far worse.



kraftiekortie
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11 Jul 2014, 4:33 pm

It could be....but definitely not always.



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11 Jul 2014, 5:19 pm

I think a lot of people on the Spectrum suffer from chronic depression. I know I do. I think it might be because there is a lot of mental exhaustion just trying to navigate through daily life.


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em_tsuj
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11 Jul 2014, 9:23 pm

I don't understand the question. Are you asking if everyone who has Asperger's Disorder also suffers from chronic depression?



Deb1970
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11 Jul 2014, 9:59 pm

I think so. I've been depressed all my life.


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BelleAmi
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12 Jul 2014, 2:12 am

Magnanimous wrote:
Obviously I'm asking because I kinda have both.
And my mood pretty much just fluctuates between Absolute Apathy, Shameless Snark, and the borderline Suicidal Grimdarks.

On a conscious, thinking level... I don't really care about it so much... But trying to chain down the grimmer emotions and crush them into a nasty little quantum singularity where the sun can never shine drains me of energy sometimes... to the point where my whole body aches just from the process of forcing myself NOT to feel anything.

And obviously the alternative is far worse.


Recognise all this - it has got worse for me as I get older, I used to get highs, which were great as I could be very creative, in that phase. But over the past few years the highs have decreased, leaving me in a bleak place. Grimdark is good - it fits.


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12 Jul 2014, 2:32 am

Currently taking low dose escitalopram for social phobia and OCD symptoms...
Have had depression most of my life (diagnosed ASs at age 45).

ASS can cause chronic depression, but those chronically depressed do not necessarily have ASS



jrjones9933
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12 Jul 2014, 7:15 am

Psychologists thought that I had depression for years, but it turned out people were the main cause. I think my condition differed somewhat from normal depression, since it depended more on circumstances than on chemistry.



Adamantium
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12 Jul 2014, 7:23 am

Depression is a common comorbidity with autism spectrum disorders.

A recent study by Dr. Lisa Croen of several thousand adults with autism in the Kaiser Permanente health system in California showed higher rates of many psychiatric and health issues among autistics than in a control group.

Notable among the higher comorbidities were depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar, suicide, ADHD, conduct disorder, personality disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, hypertension, obesity, diabetes and many other health issues.

Stories about the study from SFARI's news stream and John Robison's blog.

Interestingly these two accounts of the study report the statistics on depression in slightly different ways:
Jessica Wright's story on SFARI.com:

Quote:
adults with autism are more than twice as likely as controls to have depression

John Robison's blog:
Quote:
123% more likely to have been treated for depression

There is no conflict here, they are reporting different data from the same study, but it's interesting to see how selection of which part to report changes the sense of the report.

My own notes from a talk Dr. Croen gave on this study indicate that under 18% of the control group and over 38% of the Autism group had depression.



Last edited by Adamantium on 12 Jul 2014, 7:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

MjrMajorMajor
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12 Jul 2014, 7:24 am

^^^ I'd guess it is both for many depression suffers.

I had serious bouts of depression as a kid. I remember being told that I had forgotten what it was like to feel happy.



jrjones9933
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12 Jul 2014, 8:08 am

MjrMajorMajor wrote:
^^^ I'd guess it is both for many depression suffers.


That makes sense. I guess I want to hope that I can achieve happiness without SSRIs or whatever, by changing my behavior and perceptions.



Magnanimous
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12 Jul 2014, 8:35 am

em_tsuj wrote:
I don't understand the question. Are you asking if everyone who has Asperger's Disorder also suffers from chronic depression?

No, not "everyone" ... Just a far higher probability of the two occurring together.
And without 100% knowing the cause of either... it would make sense to assume that the the genetic and / or environmental factors would be closely related.



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12 Jul 2014, 4:12 pm

Suicidal thoughts are much more common, anxiety is much more common too.



Joe90
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12 Jul 2014, 5:12 pm

Well, the way I see it, Asperger's is enough to make anyone depressed, so yeah, why wouldn't it be a co-morbid? I've always felt ashamed of having it, probably because I wanted to be like the other kids. It's just that I basically started off in life just like a typically developing baby, and showed no peculiar behaviour that caused any concern for anyone. It wasn't until I was 4 years old was when everything all came up on to the surface all in one go, and everybody was worried and confused at why I was doing this, and my parents got accused of child abuse, so they had to prove that they were not abusing me in any way at all, and so psychiatrists and doctors and what have you investigated in other ways until they diagnosed me with Asperger's....4 years later. What troubled me was that I have a few memories of life before 4 years of age, and I felt normal back then. I was on the other children's wavelength, and remember interacting with the other children all right at preschool when I was 3, and I didn't have any significant delays in any milestones. I was a very sociable baby and toddler, even in photos of me as a baby I looked like any typical baby, as in having a sociably happy expression and smiling at the camera from a young age, and I have me on a video at an Easter egg hunt when I was 3, and I was just like the rest of the kids there, nobody would ever think I had Asperger's, not even the most professional social worker in the world. Even my mum says that.

That is why I have always been bitter about having Asperger's, and it did cause depression. I began getting so depressed that I felt I was becoming mentally ill with it, and I was also getting angry and jealous of my NT peers because they are going out with friends and finding boyfriends or girlfriends and having fun, and there's me trying so hard to meet people and yet nobody wanted to be friends with me. Thankfully now that I am on anti-depressants I can deal with those things better and my depression has kind of gone (it just comes back mildly sometimes but not often). The loneliness lark still bothers me, but I can still live with it without becoming angry and depressed, and also I haven't been dwelling on having Asperger's either. No, I haven't accepted it happily, it's just been pushed to the back of my mind and I am more able to focus on other things.


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