Adults don't have Asperger's Syndrome

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Or at least this is what one might assume after a not so brief look around with the search engines.

There are little, if any resources for adults with AS. The world of AS treatment It is a "desert" devoid of all but children.

So I'm curious...

Why are there so few resources for adults with AS?

If a child has AS and receives some type of treatment, what about this treatment would not be applicable to an adult with AS who never received treatment?

If there is no reason to treat an adult with AS who had never previously received any treatment, or AS is "grown out of", then why bother treating children?

I'm confused. I cannot come up with any logical reason for the absence of resources for adults in light of the abundance of resources for children.

Assuming a human lifespan of eighty years here for simplicity.

If you're ten, and simply teaching you things will work quickly and be easy for a developing mind, and it will improve your quality of life for seventy years, that's a good investment.

If you're forty, and it would take a long time and a lot of work to help you because you're used to everything not working, and it'll only improve your quality of life for forty years... why bother? Especially when there's a finite amount of resources.

Also, more young people get dx'd, and so the diagnosed population is a bit bottom-heavy right now, with the diagnosed adults being those who survived to their current age but did not thrive. That's a specific subset of people-- the group of people who are adults, have Asperger's, have issues that impair their functioning, are not misdiagnosed and survived without services through childhood without, say, committing suicide.

After my Bipolar label lost its stickum, I dug the term Asperger's out of the DSM-IV myself and presented it to my therapist. His response: "Asperger's is a children's condition."

I had to ask, "What would an adult with an Asperger's childhood look like?"

We ticked off my symptoms together and he began to take me seriously.

Children grow up.

dp

The organisations are more interested in using children in their campaigns because they get more sympathy and therefore more money.

Also, Asperger's has only existed as a formal diagnosis since 1994, so few adults are diagnosed at the moment.

Well this is not very encouraging. I am 40 years old and next week have an appointment with the mental health authority. I want to be taken seriously by them for AS. But I am beginning to think it will be a waste of time. I suffer mainly with depression and so they will probably want to concentrate on that. But I think AS is the root cause and so it would be better to look at that.

I am not expecting treatment however. I don't think there is a pill or therapy that can help.

I don't know why this is... when I was a kid, they fought strong and hard to teach me social skills, they put me in classes and everything, before the dx even existed. Now that I am an adult, the mental health people want me to ask my relatives to help me with it. They site that my relatives know me better than they do. But still, it's like they are not putting as much effort into it.

Another reason is that society is more complecated and busy now. Social rules and ineractions seem to be less formal and life change happens far more then it used to 30 or 40 years ago. Temple Grandin talks about this. Children from past times had less to adapt to and now social pressure has replaced following instructions and authority. Lessons are more abstract and less concrete. children with AS are being diagnosed now more to validate this system and adults who have it who are not diagnosed are finding life tougher in todays society. thats my opinion.

Well, a 2 year old NT doesn't have that much better social skills than a aspie 2 yr old, but if social skill training begins at 2 for the aspie, explaining things to the aspie that are obvious to the NT, then the aspie child has a better chance at retaining the knowledge. But if you wait until he is 40, he is already set in his aspie ways and changing will be difficult no matter how much he learns.

I was lucky to be diagnosed, as a child. Did I grow out of my AS? No. Is it really such a big deal, that I didn't grow out of my AS? Not really. Does it bother me, that I wasn't around, in "The Age of Treatments and Cures"? No, I was quite happy, that I was allowed to be a kid, and have a childhood. Most kids with autism, don't get to have a childhood, these days, due to pressures to put them through therapy of some sort. Would I take a pill, to "Make it all better"? No. I'm already taking pills for Depression. I don't want to take a pill, to make my autism, all better. That would be very insulting, for me.

If you look at the resources for children, they are almost entirely educational or about how to raise a child with AS. The government is required to provide children with an education until they are adults. So the government pays for some of the educational interventions. Parents pay for the educational interventions that they can't get onto an IEP and also for any aditional resources for raising the child (like specialty summer camps). Since AS isn't defined as a mental illness, insurance companies won't pay for resources although they may pay for therapy for co-morbid problems like depression or anxiety.

So there are three ways that resources get paid for.

government

insurance

individuals

Since the government is not required to educate adults- as they are required to educate children- that means they will not be paying for any educational resources. They aren't going to pay for social skills training or any other sort of training an adult may benefit from because that is not their mandate.

Insurance companies pay for medical resources. If a problem isn't medical it doesn't concern them.

That leaves individuals. When people are children, (many)parents will spend as much money as they possibly can to mold their children into the sort of adults they envision. Parents are the ones paying for many of the resources you see advertised. But once you are an adult, few parents are willing or able to continue spending thousands and thousands of dollars on interventions. That sort of parental spending is only possible when there is an end in sight. Parents aren't money machines. That leaves the individual with AS to pay for the resources out of pocket. Individuals with AS who have the money to spend on interventions just aren't a large enough group for there to be lots of things available.