Psychologist says he doesn't think I have Asperger's

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Many professionals tend to use clinical experience rather than the DSM-IV-TR for AS (mainly because it sucks for AS; Gillberg's is far better), i.e., how you appear to the stereotypical presentation of AS.

Your verbal and non-verbal communication will be assessed..., if you don't meet the [correct] presentation of AS concerning such, you won't be AS (nor should you be).

Lucky you for not having AS in this dude's opinion.

I'll just add my name to the people who have gotten misdiagnosed and I can imagine your frustration. I developed a deep hate and resentment for Psychologists well before Aspergers came on the scene (that which is not collectively perceivable does not exist socially). It was either generalized anxiety disorder or depression. No drug they ever gave me worked at all, which makes sense to me now, but just confused me back then.

It's pretty hard to miss the obvious signs from the childhood for AS, but if you don't have your parents there, there is no 3rd party proof of them, and if you know about AS, chances are they're going to think you WANT to have it. And, since you don't make whooping noises and plaster your hands to the front of your thighs like Jerry on Boston Legal, you can't have it.

Then there's the worst part -- in an attempt to make AS look good, the media has said things like, "Einstein, Bill Gates, etc. had/has Aspergers Syndrome and look how they turned out!" This only serves to make people think those who want to look smart will claim it to seem special.

Any mental disorder of any kind is invisible unless it has physical manifestations (which is why Jerry does all that stuff, me thinks... is the audience going to understand the complex problem of offending people without knowing it because he doesn't realize they are making a connection, for example?) People don't get it and they don't want to. They just want to judge you negatively to make themselves feel better. It's best just to ignore the whole thing and talk with others that seem to have the same troubles, like on WP, without worrying about the name, which defines nothing yet for almost everyone else. There are no drugs, no treatment for adults, and I suspect any treatments for kids might be harmful (is it good to shield a child from the cruelty of the NT? Naivety can kill them later.)

no

Agreed.

Ever since I started coming to this board, I've seen bunches of threads about how psychologists have refused to give someone an Asperger's diagnosis. Then, everyone comes out and says the psychologist is unprofessional and that the poster should seek someone better. I'm not trying to sound mean, but has anyone ever thought that it's not the psychologist who is wrong? I don't know. Maybe I'm naive for trusting psychologists, but I just get the feeling they might be right every now and again.

Just because you don't get the diagnosis you want doesn't mean the psychologist is wrong or unprofessional. I guarantee that if you go to enough psychologists you'll eventually get the diagnosis you want, whether you really have it or not. In the end, which of the psychologists is truly wrong and unprofessional: The first or last?

Again, not trying to sound mean, but think about those things before you get up-in-arms over not getting the diagnosis you want.

Not trying to be mean. Seriously, I can't stress that enough.

I think as others have already said, professionals quite often see one person and base all others on them. Text book style diagnosis I call this....

But its not that simply and we are all different.

When I was diagnosed I more or less had to tell them, I corrected the assessment report 4 times myself.

Unfortunately lots of professional have only done short courses and had limited experience. Mind took out a book she had never read before!

I always say your the best judge to know and you often have to convince others unfortunately.

So if not happy see someone else, and go over prepared. I did, writte down a list of everything I could think of before hand, so that I would not forget and even differences as a child are relevant to a diagnosis.

Like I may be able to look at people now, but could not as a child, as a child had speach disorder, do not now. Anyway found writing list before hand really helped. But I still felt like I was being judged and had to convince them, instead of getting any real support.

If you can see someone like Tony Attwood I would, as not many other professionals as good around.

In my experiences most psychologists and psychiatrists don't really know a whole lot about AS/HFA and may have trouble recognizing it except in its most obvious forms. They may have had only a few AS patients and falsely assume that all AS people are exactly like that. If a professional who specializes in ASDs says that you don't have it, then that's probably the case. (Even so, it's good to make sure that the professional in question has experience diagnosing AS in adults, and in females if you are one.) But if just any professional who doesn't specialize in it says "you can't have AS", that might not necessarily be the case. At the very least, people should inquire as to why the professional arrived at the conclusion. His/her knowledge of AS will show through in that. If they have good reasons for thinking you're not aspie, that's certainly something to consider. But if their reason is based in stereotypes--believing, for instance, that all aspies don't desire any social contact, or never make eye contact, or are always obsessed with only one topic--then it might be time to seek another opinion from a more knowledgeable professional. I'm officially diagnosed by a psychologist who has worked with aspies for many years, and my current psychiatrist discounted the dx within five minutes of meeting me, basically saying that I appeared too "high-functioning." Not all professional opinions are thorough and well-reasoned. There are lots of people on these boards who were told they couldn't have it who ended up getting dxes, I believe.

Perhaps with time some people get to a point where they cope really well with it. I am reading one of Atwood's books (The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome ) and it says sometimes you can have AS and not get the diagnosis because everything is fine in your life. When things fall apart (divorce, death of parent, loss of job) the symptoms become much more noticeable and so the person gets diagnosed then.

I got stuck with ADHD label (which I don't entirely believe). Anyways, although I may eventually decide to go to a psch, another label is not what I am asking for.

As far as the MRI, brain scans are mentioned in Atwood's book too. And actually, ADHD shows up in a scan too. That may eventually be the thing people do (and the possibly use of information gained that way is actually scary--read The Naked Brain).

We are [in personality], but then, we are all the same in our social impairment, i.e., we all have troubles with verbal/non-verbal communication and reciprocal social interaction; this is what the professionals look for.

srriv345, all "aspies" will have an obsession if one is to use Gillberg's criteria, this is what Professor Attwood uses; all "aspies" I've seen have had trouble with eye contact, not a total lack of, but a marked impairment in such (as well as a lack of gestures, facial expressions and body language).

The social impairment of AS isn't much different to classical autism; the latter just has more stuff tacked on.

Don't panic I was diagnosed with many things before Asperger's (Frontal Executive Dysfunction, Social Anxiety/Avoidance, Generalized Anxiety). They are not untrue, either. Phychologist will focus on learn behaviors. I don't see how you can diagnose anything to do with th head in one hour. I had never even heard of Asperger's at the time. I was my shrink that has been seeing me almost for a year that said she though I had it, and even she was not sure, because I had read Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime I was confused and a bit moody so brushed it off. She brought it up again when we decided to stop going 6 month later (though I'm going to see her again but that another story). That is when I perused Asperger's and ADHD with emphasis on finding out what was causing my executive dysfunction and other cognitive problems.

I know what it is like though it is very frustrating. It took since as long as I can remember to get started. I still don't know what is causing my cognitive problems and how to overcome them. It is true that you best option is getting referred to a centre that specializes in ASD or PDDs. Psychologist and psychiatrists don't necessarily have the training in fact the majority don't. Even my shrink had the balls to admit she didn't know for sure. Keep fighting.

I'm in the same boat. I recently saw a psychiatrist, who after forty minutes, said that he doesn't think I've got AS, reason being, I can adapt, and have adapted, to social situations, I've learned to talk to people in pubs and clubs, he said it was hard wired in, and could not be changed, well, here's my two-fold response:

1) Hard-wiring needs programming, matey-boy, so there's something to make it run! So people CAN overrule hardwiring!

2) If you can teach dogs to adapt, to learn new tricks (Pavlov, anyone?!) then surely a human being with ten times, if not more, brain capacity can do it!

Maybe my adaptability has covered it up, but my advice, which I have already started to take myself, if pull out of that one, come back around, and go fetch a second opinion! In the end, the only one qualified to diagnose yourself is you, and those closest to you (parents!) the only reason we go to these people is so it's all nice and official-like!

So, if I think I'm schizophrenic, that means I am, right?

"Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction" means exactly that. No matter how much you've "adapted", no matter how well you can mimic your favorite TV character, said severe impairment is going to show itself through the cracks.

There's just too many areas of social interaction affected in ASDs to hide them all.

Agreed. I had a friend in college with AS who had received a lot of training in social skills growing up. Guess what? You could *still* tell he was AS. I've known a bunch of people with AS (my college was full of them, especially this one organization I was in), and my experience has been that you can identify Aspies pretty quickly (within 10-15 minutes). There's just something different about their interaction style. My mom, who's a psychologist, hadn't spent 5 minutes with my roommate before realizing she was on the spectrum.

I think the issue is that social skills and rules learned consciously by those on the spectrum tend not to be as flexible or as natural as those learned unconsciously by NTs.

How? How could a untrained person who's psychiatric knowledge comes from wikipedia pages be more qualified to diagnose mental conditions than a trained Ph.D. professional? You wouldn't diagnose yourself for a physical illness.

But some professionals I've seen mentioned on this board and others take an extreme view of the traits that isn't really warranted. For example, some professionals think that all aspies are obsessed with one and only one topic, while many aspies have multiple obsessions. Many professionals think aspies can never make eye contact, while eye contact can be learned or faked. It's even true that some aspies make too much rather than too little eye contact, but some professionals don't realize that. And that's not even mentioning the various other (ignorant) positions which I've heard of some professionals taking--girls don't get Asperger's, people with Asperger's never get married, etc. It's false and ignorant.

Well, Phage, since the age of about 30, I've been right about every single physical ailment I've had. And some have been off the track things too. Medical diagnosis is ONLY an art, it is helped by hard science in a smallish proportion of cases. Arts can be learnt over time and with experience. Reading the research papers helps. I assessed my aspergers and had it confirmed by a 'PhD professional'.

Diagnosis is an ART not a science at the moment, and unfortunately not every "artist" is good in every field. Meaning, diagnosticians have specialties that they are more familiar with, that they've simply had more experience in, and they're going to be better at diagnosing. So, what that means is that not every diagnostician out there is going to have a specialty in ASCs. And there are many neurological conditions which are so complex and so varied from person to person that WITHOUT THAT PERSON TO PERSON EXPERIENCE they will not have the tools to diagnose all ranges of ASCs. It just won't happen. Because the DSM, ICD, and diagnostic training courses are inadequate to teach a person how to identify such variety.

And in ASCs, there is variety. And aside from what some people on this thread think, we CAN be good enough to blend in so that our deficits are not as apparent with limited interactions.

I'm not saying that there aren't autistics/aspies who aren't obvious as hell no matter what they do. But this is a SPECTRUM of abilities and some can hide their deficits better than others. These are not "social" disorders: there are many things that are affected in ASCs, which include social interaction.

And, YES, there are very sh***y diagnosticians out there too. Not all, but frankly there's a load of people in these fields who really don't have the talent nor dedication to be in them and do them WELL.

Some examples of the ridiculous things diagnosticians have actually said:


"You can't be autistic because you're married and have children."

"You can't be autistic, you're too introspective."

"You can't be autistic, autistics don't speak."

"You can't be autistic, the autism spectrum are childhood conditions."

"You can't be autistic because you have a job."

"You can't be autistic because you don't act like Rainman."

"You're not mentally ret*d, you can't be autistic."

"You make eye contact, you can't be autistic."

Is any of this professional? No. Is any of this taught in medical school or graduate school? No. And yet it happens. Why? Because diagnosticians are as human and flawed as the rest of us. We make generalizations to suit our own points sometimes (maybe many times). We have egos and we would prefer not to be wrong. We get tired, we sometimes have low energy and don't put all our effort and ability into a task as we should. And we can be wrong.

Having medical training or graduate training does NOT guarantee the person KNOWS what they're talking about. Those types of trainings are not meant to give enough specialization into a field as ASCs so as to be a perfect diagnostician. That only comes with experience and a genuine talent. Which is why so many self-dxed auties may have a hard time getting a diagnosis because they go to people who don't have the experience or who honestly may not have the talent to be in the field they're in.

Trust the MDs, the PhDs, the PsyDs, the social workers once they've EARNED your trust. It is safer than assuming they're able to treat you simply because of the degree(s) hanging on their walls.