Value of Professional Diagnosis of Aspergers

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My hypothesis is that if polled, Aspies will indicate that most who have professional diagnoses of Aspergers syndrome had several different diagnoses prior to being diagnosed as Asperger's If this is true it will reflect badly on the reliability of psych diagnoses

I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS in 1988 at age 9, then was diagnosed with AS in 1996 at age 16.

misdiagnosed with panic disorder, depression, ocd, anxiety, personality disorder.... those are the ones i remember anyway!

i've been diagnosed with autism 3 times, and un-diagnosed once!

Was diagnosed with clinical depression, generalised anxiety disorder, psychosis [...which is now off my medical records as the doctor acknowledged the misdiagnosis] and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder...then Aspergers.

Psychology is just a bunch of worthless made up stuff. Too bad so many people believe it like a religion.

Well, historically, those with autism cannot talk, and those that did, rarely did and/or spoke with echolalia only.

Then they found out that there's a whole heap of people with autism who can talk, albeit with a distinguishable dialect, but they could talk adequately (ironically, the research was done at the same time as the aforementioned autism with severe verbal difficulties).

The latter got pegged with many different labels back in the day until Asperger's came into being.

Some of us were still misdiagnosed when the label came into being; my mother kinda thinks that most of the professionals I had seen at and around my "breakdown" were useless (many in a psychiatric hospital), misdiagnosed with panic disorder, and diagnosed with OCD, the latter is in addition to the autism.

I have a pamphlet that my mother grabbed at Attwood's that states many adults with AS are usually picked up due to secondary mood/anxiety disorders that manifest due to being unable to cope in the land of confusion. It makes sense.

I was just considered 'weird' by or 'mildly eccentric' by everyone who came close to me; it wasn't until a friend who worked in the autistic field mentioned that I could well have AS that anybody considered it a possibility. I managed to get by, even with a long history of disastarous social / personal relationships. In the end, I summoned up the courage to talk to my Dr. about it, who then referred me to a specialist, and even then I had to 'present my case' of how and why I was there, and how I thought the DX of AS was appropiate; his response was, "well yes, looks like it is AS, but why do you need to know? You seem to be coping ok"
I think because AS is on a spectrum, and there's not a pass or fail test to DX it, that profesional opinion varies so much in diagnosis, that coupled with the fact that still comparitvely so little is known about the condidtion. This makes it hard for both those who have it, and those who are responsible for recognising it in others.

I didn't get a formal DX until a social worker labelled me with "Chronic Personality Disorder". Aspergers was next, and that was by a proper psychiatrist. It has since been confirmed four times.

I was never misdiagnosed, but a child psychologist I saw when I was self-harming aged 15 was of the opinion that all children who self harmed had been abused. She had a session with my mother on her own and apparently asked her some VERY weird questions. All the literature she gave me was related to children who'd been abused. When I refused to fit into the pigeonhole she'd marked out for me, she said that she clearly wasn't helping and there was nothing more she could do with me. Rather than passing me on, she just chucked me out. I didn't feel able to seek help again until I was in my twenties.

So, whilst I do believe that it is worthwhile getting autism/aspergers diagnosed, I do take everything psychologists say to me with a pinch of salt.

I only got diagnosed the once (in 2006, when I was 26), but that was enough for me, and very worthwhile in that it actually helped me to understand why I do the things I do.

Of course, it didn't help with all of my other emotionally-crushing personal issues, but still...

I was first diagnosed with sensory integration disorder (which is also an accurate diagnosis) and then Asperger's.

I've been diagnosed with ODD, Bipolar Disorder, Depression and NVLD before getting the AS dx. None of the others fit very well. I'd question my psychiatrist about the Bipolar dx and he'd have to look for ways that I might fit the label. This was at the same time that he was heavily medicating me with antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. He has received an award for his clinical work with bipolar individuals.

at ten, after a 50 minute session - - chronic depressive. had my very first dose of prozac (which made me crazier, but there were no black box warning in '94 so they just figured it was my own psychosies).
later, i had anything from bipolar, bipolar II w/borderline traits [i affectionately refer to this dx as 'teenager'], etc.
14 years and a bazillion 'professionals' later, i got a dx from someone who specifically works with and within a program for people with AS. she told me outright that she would not dx me unless she was certain. i told her that i would expect nothing less.
and here we are.

Before my parents were told I was autistic, there was only one hard-and-fast diagnosis that I can remember -- bipolar. That was given by someone who took a family history, but not a developmental history. (And I later learned he called nearly all his patients bipolar.) Before that, there were things like 'schizoid traits', but nothing definite. At the time I was diagnosed with autism, though, they also diagnosed a bunch of other things simultaneously. So I put that there was one other thing beforehand. But then afterwards there was a bunch of other stuff before they went back to autism, and there wasn't a poll option for that. (Basically I had a lot of things going on at once, and some of it was hard to figure out. I was developing some physical problems that some autistic people develop, as well as severely depressed and trying my best to run away from reality and who I was, at the time when I was finally seen.)