Why do people here assume all ASD diagnoses are correct?

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I apologize for my last comment, someone implied they were self diagnosed. Regardless, it's kind of a personal thing. If you don't feel like you have it, you don't have to respect the diagnosis.

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I'm sorry, I have to address Ettina's comment though.

I know I can be judgmental but there is some fishy s**t out there. When you have to deal with it for 15 months then you'll understand. This isn't just some kid I met for a month and left. This kid was told by his MOTHER that he could not do anything and that he had to be shielded from stuff. Not only this but she had him evaluated 3 times until she got a diagnosis for Asperger's. After that he was just mommy's little angel. As I learned more about the family I became increasingly horrified.

The guy is very lazy. I tried to help him out with stuff and he wouldn't do it. I tried for literally MONTHS to teach him how to do things and he would refuse and play video games. I know, sounds like typical autist behaviour. But his brother does it too. His brother is supposedly an NT but he has barely much going on for him either. In fact the brother had some serious problems himself that were pretty much ignored, such as anger issues and the like. Nope, this kid is mommy's little baby after a fished diagnosis. The real fun was when I decided, f**k it, I'm gonna help him learn how to take classes, I will pay out of pocket and work with him to take a class, and I get yelled at by super mom here because "that will stress him out too much". Even better - I told him he had to learn how to drive eventually (you know, sometime) and all he had to learn how to do was to realize that a car is relatively safe, and she screamed in my ear and told me how horrible of a person I was because she felt like I was putting too much pressure on him. Well, I told him that eventually he would need to learn how to drive. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Imagine the pressure when he loses his only source of transportation and he cannot get himself to work or school or to the store.

This is NOT NORMAL. It became clearer through further events that she was purposely avoiding teaching him how to drive because she felt like he could never do it. Because, you know, someone else can tell you what you are capable of doing. He never even had the chance to say, "Mom, I'm not sure if I can do this". Mom DECIDED FOR HIM.

He is also abusive. He would pull me aside in public and intimidate me and talk down to me like I was a kid for stims and stuff like that. I'm sorry, that's NOT NORMAL. And he was a real hypocrite too, because when I tried to help him out, I had to be gentle lest I hurt his poor feelings. (Of course just harrassing me is a-okay because poor little schmuckums has aspergers!). Guess what, I have problems with s**t too, and yes, some things are based in executive dysfunction - I find it extremely difficult to concentrate on certain things and I have a lot of trouble with what many adults do with ease. Most of us here understand that. I'm not saying that what works for me works for everyone. But there's something fishy as hell when you have a parent that lets their adult child do nothing, does nothing to help them learn how to live, and suddenly, oh no! They're lazy! And won't do anything! And it's not just the autistic kid either. All over a series of "Just keep asking until you get what you want".

Yes, I have considered a lot of things, I've known this guy for 15 months. I dated him, I dealt with his bulls@#$, and holy s#$% did I deal with his mom's bulls#$%. I was on his side for the majority of the time I spent with him, despite the stress that his mom and him made me feel from their aggressive tactics. I really tried to rule out every disability that I could before I came to this conclusion, because I really didn't want him to be the victim of this kind of abuse. I was wrong, and I found out that sometimes the world isn't so pretty. I had been told from that crazy sonova b***h that I could never accomplish anything because I was autistic. Because, you know, a diagnosis tells you how you can live. The woman told me "If you find the right person they'll do it for you". Yes, she actually said that. She told me that if I didn't get diagnosed from one person that I should just keep trying until I do. YES. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. (I got diagnosed on the first test though, and have had multiple tests positive in the past as well). Do not act for one minute just because I have some harsh words to say that it doesn't happen because it does and I had to put up with it for over a year. There are some screwed up people out there.

That was a taste of it. This kid must be spoon fed this bulls#$%.

YES, we all know that people on the spectrum have problems, but this guy... dude. The more I learned about how he obtained the diagnosis, the more I learned about how he was a fraud, and didn't even realize it, because his mother obsessed so much over the title and flaunted it like as if it really matter that he didn't even know any better. Out of everyone here, he is really the true tragedy because he never learned how to grow up, because he was told he couldn't do better, and that he shouldn't do better, because he was feeble minded. But he wasn't. His only problem was that he had little motivation to try harder because he was overly protected from the world and never learned how to live. He had no motivation to do anything besides play on the computer because he never realized the importance of being independent, because his mother outright told him that he would never be able to do it. And to me, that is completely unforgivable. (I still don't think this justifies his abusive behaviour though. He knew better, I confronted him on it and he would use a roundabout excuse to get around it.)

Please do not act like everyone is innocent because I learned the hard way that they are not.

Your old friend reminds me of my ex except his mom didn't tell him he couldn't do things and he wasn't abusive. He was also lazy and refused to do things and always had excuses to not do it. I did try and help him too. He had no AS diagnoses. He had ADHD, anxiety, and possibly OCD and my mom thinks he may have had schizophrenia or something because she could tell he had more going on with him than ADHD and he didn't think he had a problem. I also thought he had aspie traits.

It always seems like to me when someone has a disability, they are automatically innocent and can't help what they are doing. People have tried to justify how my ex treated me and how he acted and making excuses about him and my mother told me people who are doing that are him too so they feel attacked when I talk about him so they jump to defense. As she says, anyone can be a jerk. I also think anyone can be spoiled or be a brat or be lazy.

To the original poster: This doesn't make it right, but some of us see it this way:

We don't see a bunch of people who seem to have gotten a diagnosis they didn't need. We do see a lot of people who need a lot more help than they're getting, either with succeeding in this world and the way it has been set up, or with coping, or with trying to help others be more tolerant of them so they can survive. So we assume that there are people out there without a diagnosis, but who need it -- not the other way around.

^^I second that emotion^^

I'm not even sure what the phrase "worship the diagnosis" is supposed to mean. There may be the occasional helicopter parent, who sees difficulties where they may not be, but I doubt that anyone is being diagnosed who isn't struggling with one level of disability or another, so if AS is being misdiagnosed, then it's probably some other neurological disability being mislabeled. I don't think there are many perfectly healthy people being diagnosed as autistic.

If the diagnosis seems to crop up more frequently these days than it did in years past, keep in mind that a great many of us HAD autism all those years and only discovered what we were struggling with for decades, very recently. Our autism didn't appear out of nowhere because of some diagnostic 'fad' - it was always here, it just wasn't labeled before. Remember, in the US at least, until AS was added to the DSM in 1994, nobody was even looking for it. That certainly doesn't mean it didn't exist or that nobody had it.

I for one, don't "worship" the diagnosis, but I am immensely grateful to have it, because I know all too well what it's like to deal with the handicaps on a daily basis year after year, being told that there's nothing wrong with you and your shortcomings are all your own fault.

I don't assume every autism diagnosis is correct.
People get misdiagnosed a lot. With any condition.
I gave up trying to understand what I "actually" have some time ago. As for me, the counselors that diagnosed me with AS, ADD and GAD are as right as the one who diagnosed me with social anxiety, ADD, GAD and OCD tendencies.

I couldn't have said this better myself, Sethno.

I definitely agree.

I am not 100% sure mine is correct (ASD specialists can make mistakes too right even if they are a professional and an expert in it?). I have thought the same about ADD, depression, anxiety because I cannot relate to others with those conditions and they seem to have worse problems than me and be affected in a way I never was. I know everyone with it is different and everyone experiences them differently and not everyone is going to have the same symptoms or deal with it the same way or be affected the same way. But I don't dwell on the label making myself depressed and going crazy over it obsessing about it. It's always at the back of my head. I went to lot of doctors growing up because my mom didn't know what was wrong with me and doctors didn't know either but they knew I had something and what issues I was struggling with but they didn't know why. Then AS was the last label given along with anxiety and depression and OCD and I never went to doctors after that for testing because the diagnoses seemed to be good enough and answered our questions. I can't even relate to other people with OCD either because everyone with it is different and not affected by it the same way nor have the same symptoms.

Why do people assume autism is the correct DX? Maybe because the label is helping them and getting them the help and services they need and it's better to just accept it than dwell on what they have and the possibility of it being a mislabel.

Not everyone who keeps going to doctors is looking for a specific label, they are just trying to get answers about what is wrong with them or with their child. I know autism can be misdiagnosed just like other conditions. Sometimes a doctor doesn't know either what is wrong with their patient so they give them a label anyway for closest match just so they can get the help they need and it's the closest they can get to for an explanation for their problems. I wouldn't call them a fraud or fake.

I even think I may have a condition that hasn't yet been discovered. It was that way for lot of people with AS before it came to the DSM. They had other labels before it but it still didn't explain everything until they came across AS.

I think that sometimes about myself too.

I think that applies to me. I guess I won't know what my "real condition" is until adulthood.

Please research Autism and heritability more thoroughly before making this statement.




Some are misdiagnosed, but ASD has been becoming easier to identify as the science and understanding behind it, improves.
With better medical knowledge, identifications will be made faster and more frequently because of the fact they now understand people like us better. Also, self-diagnosis is on the rise. I don't agree with self diagnosis.



Seconded.

That is if they discover it.

I agree with the op.BPD is always ''misdiagnosis''but never ASD.

Well if you spent half your life trying to fit into society and trying so damn hard to understand why everyone thinks your strange i think that probably its a good place to start with thinking s**t! this exsists! or of course maybe its because we are a minority group of people that all just think in a similar way and people just hate weirdos in general. I mean Me included im not different i love to judge!

If this conclusion is from posts here (and I don't disagree, and have likely added to the attitude you dislike), I think the population sample is skewed. I believe my problems are best explained by an ASD diagnosis, so I am here. I've been most recently diagnosed with Aspergers, so I am here. At this moment in time, I describe other diagnosis as incorrect.

I can not say for certain that I will not one day say the same thing about ASD.

...but, the people who are here identify in some way or they wouldn't be here.

AMEN!! !! !! !