Aspergers and Mental Illness

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I have been treated my entire life as someone who was mentally ill. I have been going to a mental health center for 4 years and have been in therapy since the age of 3, when I attended a theraputic nursery school. I was hospitalized twice when I was 13 and 14 years old for severe depression and have been taking psychiatric medication since I was 13.

I now know, after my recent diagnosis that I do not have mental illness or attention defecit disorder, even though some of my symptoms look like I do. I still need some assistance with some daily self-management issues and would love to be a part of a support group for adults with AS. But nearly all the programs around here are for mental illness, physical disability or mental retardation, or for children with autistic spectrum disorders or parents with children of autism. I need help but I don't belong to any of those groups. If I can't find anything, I may have to look for another mental health center which I want to avoid if at all possible.

I feel frustrated because not only do I not fit in to the normal(socially accepted) population but I don't fit into the disabled population either, except that I do get Social Security Disability, but I got that based on having mental illness. I need help and guidance and I'm grateful for this board but I need some services to help me get through this time in my life.

It's not uncommon for heath centres to treat people like us like we're serverly mentally ill.

It happened to me at the place I got diagnosed, I got treated like some freak that couldn't cope with ANYTHING at all.

It insulted me more than anything and more than once I was tempted to slap the doctor in the face.

There's not much you can do to change these peoples train of thought, as half of them are probably NT's.

I know how that is. It's very difficult being kind of inbetween regarding such services. Our society, mainly NTs, don't feel satisfied unless people are put into neat categories and labels. This doesn't work, because people aren't black or white, apple or orange. However, that's the way it is.

I wish you good luck on the SSD. I had alot of trouble in public school, because I wasn't considered to be mentally ill, yet they felt I didn't need much help because I got good grades. So I said, "Do I need to fail my classes to get the help I need?" That got some attention to the problem.

What I'm saying is, I know what your going through. I hope things work out, perhaps with more awareness about Autism going on, people will be less likely to be so quick to label someone.