Is it common for people with AS to have ADD?

Post Reply New Topic

It seems that a lot people with AS do have attention deficit disorder?

Sorry, but this is an over generalization...some people with AS have ADD and some, like myself, do not have ADD.

I don't know, exactly.

They tried to give my brother ADD meds because he was disrupting the class by being so quiet...

(I'm not kidding.)

It's hard to tell how many are ADD and how many are just being diagnosed quickly so the doctors don't have to work hard making an educated real diagnosed.

Though I do think that it's quite common for people with an ASD to have ADHD as well.

I am asking if it is more common for someone with AS to have ADD. I am not asking if 100% of people with AS have ADD.

It seems to me that most people with AS would have ADD. There is a component of not being able to concentrate on our surroundings that factor in with a lot of our characteristics. For instance. Most people with AS have a fascination with a lot of things which distracts us from everything else around us.

From what I've read, I get the impression that to say one has both is redundant, in one sense. That they are related and that you can't have both as two separate things. However, despite the current DSM saying not to give a duel diagnosis, I don't think duel diagnosis is always redundant because treatments are different.

Is the question do a lot of people with an AD have an ADD diagnosis (semi-officially or unofficially) or is it do a lot of people with AS have ADD traits?

Some researcher once came up with the idea that those with Asperger's have an attention deficit in everything but their special interest and everything out of their routines.

But they're able to concentrate on their special interest if not disturbed by outside stimuli. If they're on their own, this theory said, and comfortable, they can easily concentrate and work on what interests them.

People like this would have an attebntion deficit, but not AD(H)D.

And distraction by concentration/fascination about something else is not anything like the core symptoms of AD(H)D either.

So if a person with AS would be busy thinking about... trains (whatever) while they cross the street and thus miss it's not like AD(H)D. If someone concentrates on a topic and thus does not notice something else, they're actually showing how they are able of paying attention, just to the wrong things.

AD(H)D would be... 'oh, look, a blue car... and there's a woman in pink walking over there... oh, it's not green yet, no... ahhhh, I love that car... wait, I wanted the cross the street! I should be walking, so I'm going to walk... woooah, A CAR HELP'.

Yeah, that's what happens to me all the time hehe

I plan to concentrate on the bloody traffic, but I immediately am distracted and again distracted and yet again distracted. If I#d be distracted by a most fascinating car that would be my special interested and if I'd spent minutes being fascinated by that car and forgetting to cross the street, then it would be AS and not AD(H)D. If I saw the car, would be fascinated... and distracted because there's chewing gum on the floor, it would be AD(H)D that made it happen and not AS.

And the theory said that people with AD(H)D do of course have hyperfocus and are of course not incapable of being able to concentrate at all.

But their attention deficit and impulse control deficit is different from that of those with AS in that they cannot concentrate on an what interests them when they want. They just can't control it. Their focus can't upheld for a long time, because they actually have generally impaired attention ability.

It's like... they manage to pay attention for a few minutes because they might think it's real interesting, but after a few minutes they just can't any more even though they really want to focus further.

I think this idea about attention deficits in AS and AD(H)D actually fits.

Well, it fits me, which is not saying much seeing how I'm just 1 person.

Edit: Yeah, I'd say the attention deficits as described above differ significantly. Not so much in their result, because in both scenarios a person is at risk to get run over by a car. But what got them there in the first place was quite different.

Off topic, but

How zen. How on earth did he manage it?

I have AS and ADHD and the two other people I've met with AS also have ADHD.

There are also a lot of children and youth who were first (mis-)diagnosed as ADD or ADHD and then were later diagnosed as having Asperger's.

So how many just kept their former diagnosis, how many of those are misdiagnosed and correctly diagnosed?

I was told by the lady who "diagnosed" me that a diagnosis of AS ruled out ADD....that's the first I'd heard of that..So instead of being an ADDer with alot of AS symptoms, I am really an Aspie with alot of ADD symptoms....

He didn't, the teacher later admitted that he was so introverted that she didn't know how to teach him.



(he passed the class, and she still wanted him on ritalin.)

Well, at least she noticed. That's not nothing.
That's something!

From what I understand AS, ADD, ADHD, SPD etc etc all fall under the same umbrella and you can have varying degrees of everything, with little bits thrown in here and there to make life interesting.
My son, age 7.5, was originally diagnosed ADHD and then two years later as AS. He is most definitely still ADHD and has concentration/focus problems, which I admit can be directly related to the AS.
It is a tricky thing to pin point as they all seem to feed into each other ???

She said his quietness was major problem that needed to be eliminated, we asked any other problems? and she said 'he's just too quiet!'.

It could have been that a lot of children were not misdiagnosed with the ADD (or ADHD), but actually had both ADD (or ADHD) and asperger's syndrome.

I was diagnosed with ADD 10 years ago and later AS. I thought I was misdiagnosed with the ADD. I recently realized that there is no question I have both.

Has anyone else heard of the thing where a diagnosis of AS rules out ADD?