Is Aspergers its own disease or an umbrella of others?

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Hello,

I was reading that people with Aspergers typically have other diseases in addition and most commonly including Anxiety, Motor Skills and Spacial problems, Social Skills/Shyness, Depression, ADHD, OCD, and Paranoia.

Its interesting because when I look at a list of Aspergers symptoms I have almost the whole list of all possible symptoms. I also have some anxiety, a little bit of depression, as a child and still have issues with motor skills, still have social and shyness issues, with ADHD I have problems with distraction, needing stimulation and restlessness, I have pretty bad OCD. I have to keep everything on my desk perfectly neat and in order and I make lists of everything I can get my hands on, have very rigid routines for when I get ready for work in the morning etc. I can be a little paranoid at times, but not that much.

Now all of those diseases are independently their own disease, but they are also common for persons with Aspergers to have. It almost seems like Aspergers is not its own disease but an umbrella for many related psychological issues. The reason I say this is because there seems to be an overlap in symptoms from Aspergers to ADHD and OCD especially. Just curious.
Thanks,

Let me correct your terminology a bit first, here--I'm being picky, but someone has to say it first: Asperger's and autism are not diseases. A disease is an illness, a body out of balance; it's damage, a departure from a state of health. Autism is a disability that results from atypical development, but an autistic brain is a healthy autistic brain, which works in a way that causes impairment, causes disability, but is not out of balance or damaged because it was never normal to begin with. The term "disorder" is probably a better one for autism. "Neurodevelopmental disorder" if you want to be specific.

Okay... done with the semantic nitpicking.

It's very common for people with AS to have other diagnoses, too--more common than not, in fact, especially depression and social anxiety disorder. But that is the case for most psychological disorders: Most people who are diagnosed with one, are diagnosed with more than one.

Autism does run in families; if a child has autism, their siblings are also more likely to have it. Most identical twins of autistic children are also autistic. That doesn't mean it's a single-gene disorder, but it does seem to be highly heritable in a way that can be passed from parents to children.

Autism is a pattern that doctors keep seeing over and over, in various people--the same impairments, with language, communication, socialization, and cognition being atypical in similar ways. Those people often have other disorders, too, but the pattern of autism repeats from person to person, looking familiar from one person to the other, but never quite the same--that's why they call it a "syndrome", a set of symptoms that repeatedly occurs together.

Whether autism is one thing, or a bunch of things that tends to happen to the same person, isn't really that important when it comes to diagnosis, because as far as the doctors are concerned, they've identified a pattern, given it the name "autism", and found out that the label is useful. If a label is useful, we use it. We don't quite know what causes autism, but we do know that whatever it is, it's easy to inherit and it follows the same rough sort of pattern wherever you see it. That's good enough to work with, at least until we know more.

Okay thank you. I didn't mind the correction. Its better for me to know the correct ways for something.

I understand the main difference from Aspergers and Classic Autism is with Aspergers the speaking and development as a child remains largely intact. As a child I spoke early, at about 6 months but I walked late and bad hand writing and rode a bike at around 11 or so. So from what you talked about it seems that Aspergers is Autism with in many cases other situations like OCD, ADHD, Anxiety etc.

Are there any symptoms of Aspergers that occur only in Aspergers and not in OCD, ADHD or Anxiety etc? The only ones I can seem to find that are specific to Aspergers alone are having obsessions and motor skills problems?

I tend to think it's a bunch of things all lumped together. maybe in the future - researchers will be able to unbundle it in the process of better understanding how autism works. I hope so.

I just found some that are specific at least to Autism:

Not making eye contact, lack of empathy, obsessions, focusing on a small part of something instead of the whole item, rigid routines, and having friends who are younger than they are as children. These actually described me well as a child. I remember being fixated with wheels on cars and trucks when I was pretty young like 7 or 8. I used to notice how the wheels on a truck looked different from the front wheels to back, and I remember when I rode rides at an amusement park I was looking at the gears and pulleys driving the ride instead of my parents who were waving to me. So this is pretty interesting.

Autism is separate from any co-morbidities. I'm not diagnosed with anything other than Asperger's, i.e. while I may suffer from depression and have hypo(- and maybe some hyper)sensitivities they do not warrant a diagnosis according to the professionals. I don't have OCD or anxiety.

It's also not like there's a pattern that looks the same in everyone on the spectrum. The problem is exactly that there's no pattern, particularly in adults. Everyone looks different and many of us can pass as "normal". That's why you should get a diagnosis from someone specializing in autism and not just any doctor.

Aspergers is a form of Autism. If you get diagnosed it will be most likely be "Autism Spectrum Disorder" because "Aspergers" has been dropped as an official diagnosis in the latest manual.

It is not surprising that an Autistic person is more likely to be shy, depressed, anxious etc. It is not Autism per say but having a different neurology them most that is stressful. Specifically not understanding body language or motives of others and they not understanding yours often leads to bullying, rejection, failures in social, relationship and career goals and that can certainly make one shy, depressed etc. Add being sensitive to light, touch, sound etc make social situations stressful. Some Autistic people do overcome their fundamental differences from others to be successful socially and career wise but it is stressful.

I'm beginning to question the neurotypical assumptions behind autism as being referred to as a disorder.

To me I think autism or asperger's should be viewed as a personality trait instead of a disorder . I realized that just because we may not be able to socialize or empathize with other's people's emotions, usually NTs doesn't mean it is considered a disorder. True, I myself may not be able to deeply empathize , but that doesn't prove that what I have affects my daily life and in addition, autism is not a disease but whatever is associated such as OCD (which I happen to suffer from) is also co morbid with any forms of autism and I would consider the comorbidities the disease itself.

For me the paradigm shift should be viewed as autism as personality and like NT personality no two are alike. I think this would be recognizable as long as NTs would stop viewing at a disorder.

I read a really interesting book called The Gift of Dyslexia: by Ronald D. Davis in which he has an interesting take on this issue.

He was a kanner's baby himself and although the book is called the gift of "Dyslexia" the book is really about this theory that all these things (ADHD, DISLEXIA and AUTISTIC SPECTRUM) are all relatable and part of a bigger issue (which could also explain why there is so much symptomatic cross over between them).

He also funded his own independent research on this issue which could be the most interesting thing of all (because a lot of larger research projects are often funded by those with an agenda towards autism as an illness and ways to medicate/diagnose it).

His research found that it was of course not an illness but a cognitive process and potentially one that absolutely anyone could develop as a child (or also potentially in the womb). As he see's it this cognitive difference could in fact be a gift because of the advantage (primarily use of disorientation and imagination) that comes with it.

A lot of the book is also about what he called "disorientation" which is where a conflict comes between how the autistic brain function and how the rest of the world requires it to function.

Personally i've read a lot of strange theories and conjectures about what autism may or may not be. But to date i have yet to find something that could make as much sense as what he has put forward. Pretty much all those strange things that didn't make sense before can start to line up a lot easier. Ie: why are the symptoms similar to other thing's? Why are there increasing numbers of autistic people being born? And why is there seemingly no way to find a "cure.

The thing is, in the vast majority of cases, we don't have any idea what the underlying cause of any of those issues are, so our only way to classify them is by symptoms.

More and more, as we start getting hints about the true causes of these conditions, we're coming to see that rather than being separate conditions, many of them may be different symptoms of the same underlying condition.

For example, a rare autoimmune disorder known as PANDAS has been identified as being associated with sudden-onset psychiatric symptoms, mostly tics and obsessive-compulsive behaviour, and sometimes other psych symptoms. In our current diagnostic system, one kid with PANDAS might be diagnosed OCD, one might get a Tourette's diagnosis, one might get both, one might get Tourette & OCD along with a couple of other diagnoses, etc. But really, all of these kids have the exact same syndrome.

Meanwhile, another kid may have Tourette + OCD, but not have PANDAS. Instead, this kid's issues may be genetic (many Tourette cases seem to be caused by a dominant gene that can also cause OCD, ADHD and sometimes other issues). So this kid may have the same psych diagnoses as a kid with PANDAS, but the underlying mechanism is completely different.

The same is probably true of most psych diagnoses. In the DSM, only a few conditions require a specific underlying cause (such as the disorders of extreme stress, like PTSD or reactive attachment disorder). The vast majority of diagnoses are basically lumping together people with similar behavioural characteristics relating to different, mostly unknown causes.

If you look at mental retardation, you'll see how a single diagnosis can be split apart by discovering the true causes, because unlike most symptom-based diagnoses, about 60% of MR cases have a known cause. Most of these individuals are generally not described as MR - instead, they're described as having Down Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, etc, based on what actually caused their learning difficulties. There are hundreds, even thousands, of MR-causing conditions, and each one has some distinct traits that make a specific diagnosis a lot more useful than just hearing symptom-based diagnoses.

These are some interesting thoughts about the book about Dyslexia and about Pandas. I was also finding that some people regard children with AS not to have a good imagination, but others say they do. When I was a child, my teachers and family thought I had a vivid imagination because I used to draw very detailed pictures which usually were of dinosaurs, planets, or engine / machine designs, all at the age of 7 when everyone else at my age was drawing teddy bears etc.