Does child abuse lead to Asperger's?

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My father is a narcissist. That doesn't mean he's arrogant; it means he has no regard for anyone else's well-being, yet does everything to elicit expressions of awe, fear or gratitude towards him. That's what he lives for. Any expression that implies he is a high and good person makes him believe he is a high and good person for eliciting it; as for any expression that doesn't imply it, he tries to change that expression by beating, humiliating, spurning, deceiving, terrorizing etc. He can instantly switch from hurling criticism at a victim to wearing an innocent, angelic face - because what matters, to him, is making the right impression.

I know for a fact that abuse can lead to and maintain schizophrenia, because this is what my mother developed because of him. Now, I'm wondering whether it can also lead to Asperger's, because I had many Asperger's traits in my childhood, and I can safely say I still have some.

After responding to the poll, please post with further details if it is convenient.

Honestly, my biomom is probably an aspie or at least has quasi-autistic features & depression. But I think her depression is partially attributed to my grandmother's treatment of her; I'd classify it as emotional abuse & she also definitely has a mental issue of some kind. My dad I haven't seen in years but I'd classify him as neglectful & generally negligent. Plus I have my stepmom (biomom's partner) who definitely has depression but may honestly have something else b/c she was definitely abused prior to knowing my mom. Abuse doesn't cause ASD's, but I'm sure it hightens the symptoms & may cause quasi-autistic features in NT kids as coping mechanisms. Plus I'd guess the kids who are abused & develop AS symptoms as coping mechanisms & have them fade away are definitely not autistic themselves, but are more likely to produce offspring with ASD's than other children who were abused and do not develop AS type coping mechanisms.

*I read something about orphans in Romania in the book "Autism the Enigma" that made me think of this*

You are either born on the spectrum, or you are not. Poor parenting comes after birth, and has nothing whatever to do with whether one is Autistic or Aspie.

They are two totally separate issues.

The poll makes no sense in relation to the topic's question.

Yes, but autistics *are* more likely to be abused--though they're autistic before the abuse starts. I was first targeted at the age of eight; but I was autistic long before that, from my earliest memories and almost certainly from before birth.

I'm not sure I like the poll containing antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders under the same option. Being histrionic is quite different from being a sociopath or a narcissist. (Although of course anyone can be both.)

One of my parents is autistic and the other one at minimum has a lot of traits and a lot of autistic family members.

I was abused as a kid but abuse doesn't cause autism. It can cause other things though. And still other things can be triggered by it even if abuse isn't the actual cause.

MrxxXxx, what evidence is there that one is born with Asperger's? Also, many of the conditions mentioned in the poll predispose one to child abuse and / or neglect.

Do some research. Dig around these forums. The evidence is all over the place. You can find it if you look hard enough. It's your choice what you choose to believe and what you don't. I've spent many hundreds of hours researching AS. I don't have time to spend a half hour finding it all, and posting numerous links every time someone asks this question. Especially when your tone sounds like you've already made up their mind to the contrary. I could be wrong, and if so I apologize. I just do not have the time or desire to get into this again.

I posted a similar question a few weeks back. I have long suspected that my mother is a narcissist and I wonder if my upbringing by her and a bipolar/schizo-affective cousin led me to develop coping mechanisms that mimic AS, as Peko wrote. I don't know if I for sure have AS, but I definitely have had trouble understanding people and connecting with them socially. I am sure my upbringing plays a part in that. However, I have cousins who had similar upbringing and they don't seem to have the same struggles that I do.

Because it's clearly neurological, the way your brain is. Are you saying that having a narcissistic parent could alter brain structure? Saying things like it is a product of child abuse is dangerous, do you know how many parents get accused of bad parenting when their child is autistic?

Incredibly excellent point!

for almost all of my "adult" life i've believed that i had a defect due to a failure to be nurtured at all by any parental type, combined with enduring abuses. now i know that was just a slight PTSD belief attempting to cope with my main challenges in sensing emotion and interacting with people. autism spectrum abilities are neurological and do not change or develop. it's obvious to me that my entire life contains clear evidence and manifestation of autistic traits. so one might say that it's possible to have the perception of a defect caused by being abused, and in fact emotionlessness can result from abuse, but certainly not autistic spectrum features in full.

No problem, MrXxx. I haven't made up my mind, and the results of the poll so far are raising questions for me. I'll see if I can stumble on some links.

That said, there is emerging evidence that child abuse is a risk factor for Schizophrenia (see Read et al 2005 Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica), yet the idea that parents' behaviours could cause the disease had quickly been abandoned once an excess of dopaminergic activity (i.e. a potential consequence of child abuse) became evident in schizophrenics.

kayef, my brother is fairly normal, though somewhat nervous and awkward. He has a tendency to obey authority figures and suck up, which made him somewhat of a lackey to my father, whereas I used to stonewall when confronted with hostility. I suspect the differences in our reactions to abuse led to the differences in our development.

buryuntime, everything alters brain structure. If a rat loses a whisker, the barrel cortex becomes reorganized. If a monkey trains to hear a particular tone, its representation in the auditory cortex spreads out. Psychological trauma is at least known to affect the volume of the hippocampus, and though I have read little on the topic, I would not be surprised if there was evidence of more widespread effects.

In any case, I will see if I run into some links.

NP. I will give you this though:

Most professionals agree Autism is present at birth. There is plenty of evidence that the very definition and reason for its existence as a diagnosis implies that it is present at birth.

I do think that child abuse CAN cause Autistic like symptoms, that mimic Autism, so to speak, but it isn't "Autism," the disorder as described in the DSM.

Autsim, the term didn't originally have anything to do with a disorder, but described a condition that could appear with many other disorders as a symptom. It didn't come into its own as a separate disorder until it was found that many children had these "Autistic" symptoms that couldn't be explained by any particular cause or known disorder.

An autistic kid's behaviors could lead some parents to abuse them if there were the tendency to abuse anyway, and abusive parents would be more likely to target the "defective" or "weird" kid with a rationalization that they deserved it more or that they needed to be "disciplined". That said, I did not experience parental abuse, only peer bullying, which has some things in common with abuse. Both would be more likely to happen or to be exacerbated by an autistic kid's "wrong" responses or behaviors.

Re. Schizophrenia: I think this is part of a larger picture: Stress is a risk factor for schizophrenia. It's probably one of those triggered-genetic things, where you might avoid your genetic predisposition if you have a low-stress life (physical and mental stress, but mental is probably more important), but would get schizophrenia if you didn't. It really doesn't seem to take very much; just the normal stress of high school, college, or a new marriage. And since abuse creates stress, it would naturally be a risk factor for schizophrenia. Also, you have to remember schizophrenia runs in families; and if "abuse" includes neglect due to a parent being unaware of their own illness (happens when people don't know they have schizophrenia, or don't have enough support when they do know), then it might be a case of common causes.

Re. Autism being something you have at infancy or before: I remember one group that studied home videos of infants later diagnosed with autism and found significant differences in the infants' behavior. I wish I had a link to it. But they are different from the time they are very young. It's difficult to tell those things from interviews, though, because parents will remember kids differently when they have a diagnosis versus when they don't; so they used home videos instead.

primaloath, it did just occur to me that you may not have understood why I feel the survey is irrelevant to the question, "Does abuse lead to Asperger's?"

Let me explain:

First, you asked the question. Then, you posted the survey asking us whether or not our parents had ever been diagnosed with anything, and what it might be.

It looks as though you might be trying to determine from your survey whether there is a connection between having Aspgerger's and having abusive parents, which is fine, and is very possible. But the question makes it appear as though you're looking for the connection as a possible CAUSE.

The problem with that, as you can see for yourself in several of the responses, is that a high number of answers that say, "Yes, I had parents diagnosed with this or that" doesn't prove anything other than that they had parents with psychiatric problems. It doesn't prove the parents were abusive. And even if you had asked, did you have abusive parents, who were diagnosed with this or that, it still only proves that, yes, we had abusive parents diagnosed with this or that.

There is nothing in the way the survey is worded that offers any evidence at all as to whether the answers explain the Asperger's. As you can see from several answers here, it has been pointed out that parents with Autistic kids often abuse their kids, as a direct result of not being able to handle the Autsim well. In other words, there is no way to know from your survey which is the cause of which or even if either caused the other.

That is why I said the poll makes no sense. It really doesn't reveal anything in connection to the question.

What you need to know to find out if abuse causes Autism is to ask these questions:

Were you abused?

Did you have Autsitic traits before you were abused?

If not, did you develop traits after the abuse?

Of course, that's a very simplistic breakdown, and not the kind of questions a real study would ask, but they are the kinds of questions the researchers would determine they need answers to in order to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Does that make sense?