AS and Mental Health

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Can Aspergers actually make co-existing mental health problems worse? Because a nurse (I'm in a pyschiatric ward right now) said that my Asperger's is part of the reason why I am not fully responding to medication.

well, possibly.
since for aspergers, your brain is 'wired differently', it is quite possible that mental health medication has different/unexpected effects, since they are made for and tested on NTs.

for one example, you probarbly know ritalin (or simular medication); it is used to calm down people with ADHD, while the active ingredient (i thought it was speed), is used by NTs to energise themselves for a party...

It seems like more often people are talking about being over-sensitive to meds.

Not sure with regard to meds but i would def say that cognitive therapy backfires when you are senf out to "test your assuptions" only to have them proven right.

I agree with your posts.

I am under-sensitive to most medications. I always seem to need the highest dose (not only psychiatric medications) for anything to take effect, if any effect at all.

Also - I think I said this somewhere else on the forums - I get a paradoxical reaction to diazepam (Valium). As opposed to calming me down it makes me fly into a violent rage. But interestingly, lorazepam and clonazepam work well for me.

I agree that because meds have been tested on NTs, it is not studied how autistics react.

I've found that some medications have absolutely no effect, and others have terrible side effects even at a low dose. Took me a long time to find an older type anti d and atypical anti psychotic that I can take without terrible side effects, that actually work.

That would be my typical response to meds and to any kind of mind-altering agent. Case in point; I am terrified of any kind of general anaesthetic, as the one time I was given it, it failed to knock me out. However, it did completely disconnect my mind from body, and I was in some kind of a stupor for a week! I just about broke my face trying to walk through a closed elevator door at the hospital after the procedure, because the door had opened and then closed again, and it took that long for my eyes to send the message to my brain, and then to my legs. Another terrible experience I had, was when I was about 25, and I had dental work done, and the dentist gave me a pain pill in the office as a preventive for when the Novocaine should wear off. The pill may have been Percocet, or something like that. It did NOTHING for the pain, but it caused hallucinations and scared the crap out of me. I was told it was fine to drive to work after that appointment, and I did... But I'm lucky I didn't have an accident. I had to go from the dental office in Ventura County, CA to where I worked in West Los Angeles. I used Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon Road to get over the hills, and there is one tunnel to go through on that road. However, I counted a half dozen of them after I had driven through . I could not remember why I had been to the dentist either, until later that day. It was as if I had taken some kind of ultra-strong narcotic (as if I had experience, LOL... Never done that).

I am so scared of drugs now, that I have actually had surgery without anaesthetic. That was more favorable to me, than the fear of the drugs!

Charles

I second that!! !! !!

As for medications, I don't get any response from them other than a whole load of nasty side effects that make me feel worse. In the case of one antidepressant it gave me a migraine that made me appear drunk for a week and in the case of another I had an allergic reaction to it and ended up down the A and E for antihistamines before having the emergency dr out 3 times because I couldn't get out of bed for 5 days until it had flushed out of my system properly.

I am on an antidepressant that I don't have side effects with but its next to useless on its own as an anti depressant and it does absolutely nothing at all for my social problems either.

Personally I have found that diet and exercise is far to superior to anything else I have tried for depression. It's fabulous.
As for my social problems...I've still not found anything that helps much with those, but then I am not diagnosed with an ASD (although I think I may have one that has been missed as I have never been assessed for it) and my therapy treatments seem to be geared more towards slightly more conventional less quirky individuals. Inevitably it always fails because they try to make me less quirky and it backfires.

I think so. When I had depression and suicidal ideation I didn't find therapy helpful because I couldn't talk about my feelings (I'm not good at recognising them). Being socially isolated also made the depression more severe. Being disorganised meant that I couldn't sort out my accommodation, so I ended up homeless. Which made me more depressed.

The medication was useless. The Lorazepam helped with anxiety, and the Zopiclone helped with insomnia. But none of the anti-depressants helped, even on the maximum dose. They just gave me strange feelings.

Yes I agree. Autism and medications do not go well.

I have tried the following antipsychotics:

risperidone
olanzapine
amisulpride
haloperidol
zuclopenthixol
clozapine
aripiprazole

Only the combination of olanzpaine 20mg and aripiprazole 15mg has worked for me. All the above (even at high doses) failed on their own.

Luckily I get benefits so I don't have to pay anything at all for prescriptions!

I've been in psychiatric wards 14 times in the last 6 years.

And the stress of this ward is making me go non-verbal a lot.

At the age of twenty, ive only been in the psychiatric ward once, but i had a horrible experience with ritalin while i was in there. I have heard that AS patients "cant hold their liquor"(for lack of a better metaphor) and that is probably why it only took 2 mg of Risperidone and later Apripazole to make me gain weight like a shark invading a tuna farm. It only took 20 mg of Ritalin to turn me into a shaking-overfocused mess. But I dont know that it makes its comorbids or even coexistig mental or medical conditions worse. I have Depression and Purely obsessive OCD as a result of the AS, and I hear that IBS and other digestve problems exist with AS too. None of the conditions seem worse in me than it would in an NT suffering from those conditions.

By the way, how did you manage to get on the internet in a psychiatric ward? the one i was in wouldnt allow any electronics, I almost went mad without my music.

That's unlikely. Most ASD people respond to medication for psychiatric disorders other than ASDs themself. You just might be one of those people that are treatment resistant to medication.