ADD and Aspergers

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I have aspergers and ADD and I have been on medication and it really helps with the ADD.
Is ADD very common with Aspergers ?

It is pretty common. Many times the ADD would get diagnosed, but not the Asperger's.

My son is diagnosed ADHD, but I believe he is AS as well.

I have AS, but I think I also have ADD as well. I seem to manage quite well without a diagnosis or medication.

I don't think it's common. I think to diagnose ADD just because someone with AS has attention issues is wrong.

I think an attention deficit in AS is common due to the nature of AS (restricted, narrow interests, rigid routines) while most with AS can concentrate on special things easily - such as their special interest - and will have fewer or no concentration and attention problems in a quiet, AS-friendly (sensory, social, routines) environment. Also, further stimulation usually distracts those with AS even more and makes their problems worse.

Those with ADD or ADHD (without a PDD on top) though tend to have a far more random concentration and attention - they're inattentive and (edit:) distracted even when something is very interesting - and they have the same concentration issues, the same hyperactivity and impulsivity in a quiet, AS-friendly environment. Hyperfocus cannot be directed or controlled and they can't decide on what to hyperfocus. Further stimulation usually helps those with ADD and ADHD to concentrate better.

Which in my opinion strongly points to that attention and concentration deficits in pure AS are very different from those in pure ADD or ADHD.

Last edited by Sora on 08 Mar 2009, 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

that was very well said i believe. i do not often endorse things. you have covered much.

my attention is only able to be kept in my own little world. i am not interested much about experiences of other people that are not in my mindset which is narrow.

i have known 2 people with ADD and they are like frogs jumping from lily pad to lily pad unexpectedly. they have little capacity for attention to anything because they are thrill junkies. they like constant novel stimulation, and everything gets boring to them after just a few sentences.

i am not like that. i am intensely interested in my own mind about my own matters, and i can not bear to listen to other peoples sentences for more than a few seconds. but that is because they are so far away from what i am thinking, rather than that i have not the ability to stay still in my mind.

The research I've read is that 1 in 3 of us aspies are also diagnosed with ADD. Now, that doesn't mean we have it.

I've had a 50-50 split with doctors and professionals diagnosing me with it or without it. I've been on ritalin, provigil, adderal. None of it really made much difference for me, although it did calm me. I could sleep on it.

You see, as Sora pointed out, there are differences in the way attention is scattered. Anyone with AS knows there is a scatteredness to attention at times and hyperconcentration at other times. My AS BF is fully convinced I have ADD, and I tell him it's just a component of my AS. He still doesn't believe me.

People with ADD can concentrate on things they are interested in too. It's a fairly common trait, it just doesn't get as much attention.

Personally, I'm not convinced that ADD and AS are actually fully separate things.

I think I have ADD. My interests were mostly always very stimulating, exciting interests. I lack stimulation and I need some. Even when I'm physically tired I can't sit down because if I don't walk around, I get bored and depressed and start seeing black holes and thinking I'm going to fall into them and get trapped inside them and never come out. I got out of school just in time; I couldn't have done one more year of school. Also, before, in school, as the years went on I got worse and worse at concentrating. I daydreamed more and more and started wishing more and more that I could get up and walk around. I thought it was because I had a miserable life with a lot of the people at school picking on me, but it was more because of my probable ADD, which is the reason why they picked on me in the first place besides. It got really bad and depressed me and by the time I was 19 I was seeing black holes and depressed and thinking I was going to fall into one of the black holes in my head and never come out and be catatonic forever. They gave me an antidepressant instead of a stimulant. The antidepressant had the side effect of making me giddy, however, which stimulated me a little. But I still had black holes and still couldn't concentrate, though this was less when they upped the dose. Then I was put on antipsychotics on top of my antidepressants, which blocked the black holes, which was good, but didn't make me any better able to concentrate. It didn't stimulate me. Well, some of the antipsychotics stimulated me. Too much, to the point where I just wanted to lie in bed all day and was satisfied to do that, or not enough, where I still couldn't concentrate and had to pace a lot. They all refused to give me a stimulant, like Ritalin.


Anyway, I feel sad now that I can't watch any of the good movies my father has at home.

I have difficulty watching movies too. It's like my thoughts just wander off, no matter how good the movie is.
I also have a problem with being messy. My room constantly looks like a bomb hit it, and there are so many things I need to do that I never get around to.
Ugh, maybe I'm not managing it as well as I thought.

I am the same way with movies, but this has been a more recent thing to have developed. Most recently it was the Ben 10 movie with my 5 year old brother. I could not keep my eyes on the tv, and just kept focusing on other things, and I was actually curious to figure out the storyline. Then my brother got bored and changedd the channel... I don't have this problem quite as bad at theatres, possibly due to there being less to focus on while there though.

Not only is my room messy, but anything I can put off till later when not following a routine tends to suffer as well... Its all about the routines, get a good routine going and everything else just flows. Unfortunatly, my room is not something that gets done often enough to put easily into a routine (gotta get a checklist for the week printed and laminated with incentives, that should do it for me).

EDIT: yes I am ADHD, and I got so distracted within this post I forgot to mention that.

My BF thinks everyone with AS also has ADD, but that people shouldn't be diagnosed with both. It's an odd opinion, but he swears he got it from the DSM.

i got both, got ADD before AS though.

i identified myself as an ADDer long before I knew what AS was. I have traits of both. I have long thought of myself as an ADDEr with aspie traits, but I was assessed by an expert as being an Aspie.
I really think that the ADD traits cancel out some of the aspie traits...at least for me...

Sweet new avatar. Raggedy Ann and Andy are SOOOOO under-apprecicated in our time!

Ditto here. Anytime I am in the minority on an aspie poll - I'm like, "Ah, must be the ADD.

ADD definitely seems to be the line of demarcation for aspies. The hyper aspies are (IMHO) the lowest, in terms of our understanding. We are rejected by both aspies and NT society.

Too "perky" to be autistic and too "spacy and aloof" for the NT's.

Both disorders are due to problems with the same part of the brain.

So it is common to have both.