Is AS being overdiagnosed?

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The reason it "feels right" for me is that I repetitively had people trying to diagnose me with ADHD as a child. I've been tested, and no, I don't have it, I have some executive functioning challenges associated with an ASD, but am one of those without an ADHD co-morbid, yet many people tried to force doctors to diagnose me, and doctors wanted to diagnose me.

The thing is, its not that its necessarily overdiagnosed, its that its misdiagnosed. The same is true for AS. Both of them have people being diagnosed when they don't fit the criteria and missed when they do. Those of us who have seen the people who were misdiagnosed with something they didn't have (or the only reason they weren't was because of an amazing pediatrician like in my case), have a hard time not feeling like its overdiagnosed, because that's the side that we see.

No matter how much I know that ADHD is likely not actually being overdiagnosed, the fact that I had to deal with that, as well as having seen people make minor ADHD into this huge thing that people need to treat them like they're the center of the universe for working around, makes it really hard to get through the emotional reaction of "its being overdiagnosed".

Doesn't over diagnosed mean it is being misdiagnosed in people often?

I was suspected as having ADHD as a child but never got diagnosed with it. They said I had ADD and my mom knew that wasn't the correct diagnoses. There was at one point when I thought I may have ADHD because I get hyper but mom told me I don't have it and I just have ADD. Okay I realize now hyperactivity is also common in people with ASDs.

I think it is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. Kids who act out for various reasons are sometimes slapped with the AS label and kids or adults who may have autistic tendencies but are better able to compensate are brushed off or not noticed.

This, in my opinion, is as a result of 1. Diagnosis being based on outward symptoms and 2. No one fully understanding what autism really is as well as Drs having their own idea of what it is and using their opinion as a baseline for diagnosis.

These are the reasons that I find diagnosis hard to put much stock in, personally.

What I was meaning is that they're diagnosising people who don't have it, and not diagnosising people who do. The overall rates are not necessarily wrong, and the number of misdiagnoses compared to the number of diagnoses might be small, but we're seeing where it fails.

Yes, I know other people currently diagnosed with AS who either were diagnosed with ADHD or someone wanted to diagnose them with ADHD.



Yes, misdiagnosis does happen. I wouldn't argue otherwise. I've been misdiagnosed with two conditions I do not have.



I don't get this last bit. What do you mean by "minor ADHD" and people needing to be treated like the center of the universe? How can you tell whether any particular person's ADHD is minor? Per what I've read, it tends to be more impairing than depression or anxiety (not more impairing for everyone, but on average), but often tends to be characterized as trivial when it is not.

He's said things explicitly to me - for years I was the person he trusted most in certain manners because he was obsessed with me. What I mean here is that I've seen a possibly sociopath, definitely narcissist use what he explicitly has told me is very minimally impairing diagnosis of ADHD to make himself out to be the most amazing person ever. It's actually just him being a narcissist, but he used the ADHD diagnosis, the one which I happen to be most prone to think of overdiagnosis in anyways because of people trying to diagnose me, as a tool in ways that make it look like a false diagnosis in someone where its a correct diagnosis. It was just an odd case where he told me things he told nobody else, because he was obsessed with me and I'd not yet been aware of how much he was just manipulative and a narcassist (which he also explicitly told me while I was giving him his second chance at being a decent person in my mind).

The truth is that he does have ADHD, it is just a mild case for him, and its not trivial for many others. I just need to explicitly not let that case cloud my view about others and need to remember that explicitly at times. The fact that others with ADHD don't make a big deal about it, and this is the case that I've seen turned into a big deal, just makes it hard to take seriously in all but the most severe cases, which is something I feel incredibly guilty about because I know it really is debilitating to many.

Ah.

Apparently personality disorders are common comorbids with ADHD (significantly less common for people who have an ASD and ADHD), unfortunately. Many of them end up in prison because they have ASPD, although I think it is less likely for those who have borderline, histrionic, or narcissistic PD.

Thank you for the clarification.