ADHD as well as Aspergers???

Post Reply New Topic

My son has Aspergers... he has a diagnosis and he and I have been learning and coping the best we can.

My daughter, on the other hand, didn't seem to have the same characteristics as him, but still very odd in their own way.

Today we got an official diagnosis for ADHD, but she is going for more tests ($450 worth - ouch) to see if she has Aspergers as well (which I strongly feels she does, however I don't think is as serious of an issue as my son who needs constant therapy to get by).

Does anyone here have BOTH?? I didn't even know you could have both at the same time....

Yes, I do. I was diagnosed with both recently.

Studies indicate that a significant number of people - ~75% - who are diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder also meet the criteria for some form of ADHD.

I can tell you I'm not ADHD - Asperger's is about the only thing 'wrong' with me.

Interesting, I'd not heard that before - I'd have not been so surprised if it had been the other way round (75% of whom are ADHD also have ASD) simply because ADHD is one of those disorders that likes company, my understanding is that in most cases a person with ADHD will have some other little quirk (not meaning to sound flippant by using the term 'quirk') like dyslexia or tourettes.

I don't know if any large scale studies have been done, but so far everything points to a high rate of comorbidity.

Going the other way, there are a lot of people who have ADHD who are also autistic, but the percentage itself isn't very high. I've heard numbers from 5% to 20%, although 20% strikes me as excessively high. The number might be closer to 5-10% if the 75% figure is accurate.

My daughter is diagnosed with both. There is a possibility I have both as well.

All of your replies are very helpful!! ! Thank you so much for letting me know. Looks like I have to go find me some books on ADHD.
I can just see the eye rolls now when I tell people she has this.... you hear people talking all the time how ADHD is over diagnosed - oh, but I tell you... she is a handful, and she will have some major problems when she leaves grade one... this is just the beginning.
I don't worry so much over my son, other than his inability to get social cues or how the kids call him "uncool" - that just kills me... but Natalie, will have lots of problems with school work and her impulsiveness....

yikes..... a little stressed here

Yeah, it's possible to have both ADHD and Asperger's at the same time. I do.

Yup, i've got ADD (no hyperactivity), diagnosed from birth due to temporary lack of oxygen to the brain during the pregnancy. I also have Asperger's syndrome, which was diagnosed near my 18 years old.

Yep. I'm ADHD and Asperger's. I got endless energy, I'm easily distracted, always tapping or fidgeting with stuff.

I'm new here I joined because I think I may have both, I'm ADHD diagnosed, but I'm beginning to think that there is more to it. I have a lot of ASD traits, but some of my ADHD things would seem to contradict. Its confusing....

I'll add that many people with ADHD-Primarily Inattentive (or as many people like to call it, ADD, no hyperactivity), actually often do have some level of hyperactivity, often subclinical. They might not meet the full criteria for hyperactive/impulsive symptoms, or they might have all of them but not to the degree that would count as symptoms.

Also, hyperactivity presents differently in adults than in children, and can be missed entirely.

Because I am pedantic.

Last edited by Verdandi on 22 May 2011, 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, as other posters have said. I also have both (diagnosed AS at 12, ADHD at 16 - although I suspect I'm closer to ADD). I have definitely had significant issues from both, and a big problem is that they symptoms often combine or exacerbate each other in different ways to affect presentation of both disorders.

Special interests is one such area - outwardly I don't obviously appear to have a particular special interest, but what happens to me is I get super obsessed and intensely focused on one thing at a time, but I cycle quickly through these things due to attention deficit - eg. I'll be obsessed with mathematical connect-the-dots puzzles one day, and bore everyone around me silly going on and on about it - go shopping to try and find books, print them off the internet, etc., then the next day my interest will immediately jump to painting or something else.

It also can be extremely traumatic at times, because if I am embroiled in something I'm super obsessed with or very interested in (an AS characteristic) and all I want to do is focus my full attention on that activity, I find my attention is constantly jumping and it's an immense struggle to do so which I often lose (ADHD) and so I can't. This frustration often brings me to tears.

I agree that it is a big problem ADHD has been so over-diagnosed in the past so as to lose much of it's credibility. For me it was and is a real disorder too - all my life I have been notoriously disorganized and constantly losing things, forgetting to do things, going to the wrong places, losing track of time and missing classes, and even often getting accidently locked in abandoned classrooms in Primary school. I've never been able to focus on active tasks for long periods of time (although inactive tasks such as reading, or watching TV, I can manage). I had reached the point at the end of Grade 10 where it seemed I was going to fail high school, and then I went on ritalin for year 11 and 12 which I studied over 3 years and managed straight A's - but I couldn't continue using ritalin into university as its side effects exacerbated my Asperger's symptoms and problems.

I've researched this as thoroughly as I can on the internet, and I haven't found anything beyond anecdotal evidence. There is one study that says there's a high rate of misdiagnosis, but there was something dodgy about how that part of the study was managed and the consequence was that one of the people involved was academically discredited over it.

I mean, I am not saying that no one is ever wrongly diagnosed with ADHD, but I do want to know what the basis for this perception of an almost institutional level of overdiagnosis.

This is my perception as to why ADHD is not perceived as a credible disorder: The symptoms are seen as moral failings. You're lazy, undependable, you don't care, you spend all your time watching TV/playing video games/etc. When NTs hear what the symptoms are, they think, "Well, I lose my keys sometimes too!" even though they lose their keys rarely or at best occasionally and someone with ADHD can lose their keys on a daily basis.

There are many comorbids that can exist alongside Aspergers. Take a look at the following link. It is not from a professsional but it very interesting in explaining a possible link between Kanners autism, OCD, AS and ADHD as simply being determined by the onset age of the effect. The ages listed are not readily apparent... look at the bottom of the chart just above blue highlighted row of "goals".

http://theemergencesite.com/Tech/TechIs ... rs-ADD.htm

What this person is calling ADD is more like Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which is commonly comorbid with hyperactive type AD/HD (I speculate largely because hyperactive ADDers are driven to despise authority early on by being misunderstood by people who mistake their impulsive foresightless behaviours that they are just as much innocent bystanders to and victims of as everyone around them is, for premeditated ones, and by being punished for things that they assume the authority figure knows that they didn't intend because they don't realise that most people don't share their experience of constantly finding an action has been taken or word spoken by their body without conscious awareness or without automatic anticipation of consequences, so they quickly come to feel that authority figures are solely self-interested and disinterested in fairness and justice and so are not worthy of respect). AD/HD itself is not rebelliousness or caused by it, but mistaking it for rebelliousness can cause rebelliousness.

I'm not diagnosed with anything, at least yet. I think I exhibit the symptoms of AS and inattentive ADHD (or ADD), maybe some SAD too, seasoned with some kind of memory problem (short and long term). I always had some difficulty with focusing on tasks by demand, and I've found that I unable to hyper-focus on my interests too, as normally is expected from an Aspergian to make good use of his special interest. This not means I can't have obsessive activities, only that there are more of it, and I'm not in those interests as deep as one might think.

I have some record on credit of my parents that seems to underpin my ADHD. During classes I always played with something, did something under the desk, stared ad the ceiling, the blackboard, and I was always placed in the first row. My mother tried to protect my interest by speaking to teachers about my problem (having good use of her respect as being a high school teacher herself), and most of them let me do what I wanted without too much interference with my affairs.