Late diagnosed ASD & Mental Health

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I was just wondering, are there others out there who had a mental health diagnosis (depression, anxiety etc) long before they had an ASD diagnosis?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about mine, and trying to understand how much of my earlier diagnosis actually related to my ASD, and whether that meant ASD could have been diagnosed earlier, if the GP had been more prepared to look at the symptoms.
Also what that means about future occurrences of MH episodes, in the light of the ASD diagnosis.

Does anyone else have different thoughts about their MH diagnosis, before and after a late ASD diagnosis?

It happened to me. Like a lot of people with ASD, I found it really hard to leave school. For me, my mental health crashed after that and the only reason was that I didn't really understand myself or why I was so different. Basically, I just blamed the differences in things like social skills on myself and that they were just my fault and that made me terrible mental health-wise. That being said, a lot of people with a diagnosis still struggle, it is a pretty common thing. You can get over it, I did, and apart from getting the odd feeling of being left out and such I have found a stage in my life where I am where I want.

Your answer is yes and I am not assessed yet.

I was diagnosed with depression about eighteen years before I was diagnosed with autism. Depression and autism had nothing to do with one another.

Then I was misdiagnosed with Schizoid PD when I went for my first autism evaluation, about six years before I was diagnosed with autism. The misdiagnosis and the interview part of the evaluation was upsetting and demotivating. I lost a lot of trust in psychology and in the neuropsyc evaluation process in particular.

It seems like the mental health field is mostly geared towards the mental health problems and emotional needs of non-autistic people (or maybe just emotionally delicate people, of which I'm not one), so I won't rely on it anymore. Both seeing therapists and looking up problems has not helped me much, so I probably wouldn't bother with either of those if I ever had new mental health problems unless the therapist has experience with autistic people or the advice/research I look up comes from an autistic person.

diagnosed with depression and eating disorders in my teens, had problems at school (mainly behaviour problems but that was based on my struggling with various things and just pushing back/playing up). Been a very up and down person all my life and was diagnosed with Aspergers in 2016 at 37 years of age

Yes

Thanks for the responses so far.

I think that in my case I needed to make a differentiation between "depression" and "clinical depression" (in the sense of something that can be managed by some kind of serotonin-related drug).

I definitely was depressed, when I first saw my GP about it.
But, after many attempts to find different drugs which might be able to manage this effectively, a therapist chose to mention that it seemed that my depression was a function of my world-view being out of kilter with the rest of those around. That was the beginning of the "journey" (although I hate that expression!) which culminated in my aspergers diagnosis.

At the time, it was an "aaaaaaah" moment, and seemed like a real insight.
Plus a kind of relief, as it seemed to mean I could approach it a different way, and not rely on drugs, which I didn't want. Later, when depression recurred, I could suddenly see the disadvantages, as it meant I knew drugs wouldn't work, and I just had to get past it.

I'm happier with my ASD diagnosis, as it's something I can see a lot of positives in (as well as some negatives) but I do always wonder whether my MH would have been treated differently if the ASD had been known earlier. Or whether the GP should have investigated further, and I could have been diagnosed much earlier.

I suppose we never know what "could have" happened!