Finding a Person to Dix Aspergers/Autism Spectrum Disorder

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to find a person to correctly diagnose what I have?

I live in Fresno County, California. Fifteen years ago, a psychiatrist diagnosed me with Asperger's Syndrome. Since another psychiatrist had diagnosed me with schizotypal personality disorder, I become worried and went to UC San Francisco for a second opinion. The person I saw there made me part of her class project; that involved me being interviewed by about 40 residents and professors. They concluded that I have nonverbal learning disorder. They said my symptoms were neither numerous enough or severe enough to qualify for Aspergers.

My wife, who clearly does not have Aspergers or anything similar, recently watched a few people on youtube with Asperger's describing its symptoms. The symptoms fit me well. She believes quite strongly that I have Asperger's Syndrome. I also agree that my symptoms appear to match Asperger's more closely than NVLD. (My symptoms don't appear to me to match schizotypal personality disorders at all and the folks at UCSF agreed with me on that point.) Although the UCSF diagnosis involved many experts, I consider it somewhat suspect since it is fifteen years old.

I'd like to know for sure. Then I can begin to go about finding the right treatments/coping strategies.

NVLD is a tricky disorder on its own spectrum. It's also a learning disability not a psychiatric disability. Thus there are several possible diagnosis that you could have:

1) Autism Spectrum Disorder Type I without NVLD - this suggest that you had Asperger's Syndrome but never had the learning and social deficits associated with NVLD. In other people it could suggests that they had PDD-NOS or HFA.
2) Autism Spectrum Disorder Type I with NLD - this suggests you always had both Asperger's Syndrome and NVLD.
3) Social Communication Disorder with NLD - this suggests that you never had Asperger's Syndrome but had NVLD.
4) Social Communication Disorder w/o NLD - this suggests you had a language based disability other than specific language impairment called Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder. This would be rare, 1-3 are much more common.


I think it's okay to go with your prevailing diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome or go for testing to confirm the findings of 15 years ago. I think regardless of the label, you can focus on changing your social interactions and learn anything you can. The major difference is whether you have narrow-interests and repetitive behaviors or you don't. If you don't have these, than the UCSF would be correct saying that you had NLD w/o autism. If you don't, I would be going about making them up. You only should get an autism label if you have had pervasive interests (things that were extensive and for a long period of time). If you had an obsession that lasted for a couple of weeks, that doesn't count.

I personally was diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome. I unlike you was seeking to only have the NVLD label. That in and of itself is enough for me to work on my symptoms and improve my social interaction. But sometimes I need to go to autism groups for the social training / interaction because there just aren't any with NLD groups. There just isn't the funding/research. For the meantime, I have had autism ruled out and am really happy and relieved at least for now; Social Communication Disorder (SCD) just seems more like the right diagnosis albeit at the moderate to severe level.

Even if you have NVLD via Social Communication Disorder and not autism, you can work on Cognitive Behavior Therapy with your therapist. That could help. You can also get a life coach to help both with work and leisure social interactions - that can be a huge help and is much more interactive than counseling.

viewtopic.php?t=329391

Maybe you could post on the thread above, you would be more likely to get responses (because that recent thread was opened in the general issues forum).

However, please don't copy and post the exact text of your opening post here (the rules forbid cross posting).