I'm new - Cousin recently diagnosed with Aspergers

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Hi - just found this forum after spending many frustrating hours on the net looking for concrete research and information. Thank goodness I found you!

My cousin, who I have only recently met, has just been diagnosed with Aspergers. It's a long complicated story - but she grew up in a physically and emotionally abusive home, was a target for bullies in school, struggled with grades. She joined the Navy three years ago, and has been the target of sexual predators more than once - and the victim of a number of sexual assaults. She's 23.

She has been diagnosed with PTSD, panic disorder and now Aspergers. She has no contact with her parents, and her other adult siblings are also young and dealing the aftermath of child abuse themselves. Her oldest sister and I are trying to work through our own understanding of what her needs are, and trying to figure out how and what to advocate for her. She's still in the Navy and is under the care of a military psychiatrist.

She's stationed overseas, and its hard to judge from here in the US over Facebook chats, exactly what is going on. Her sisters are in no way prepared to be able to support her when she gets out of the Navy a year from now. When she came home on leave in Oct, I had a panic phone call from her sisters who picked her up from the airport - she was thin, hair falling out, throwing up and unable to take bright lights. I directed the girls to get her to an ER, and thats where the psychiatric intervention began...but we still had to send her back to Spain where she is stationed a few weeks later.

I guess the point of my post is to ask for your help and your insight. We are a bit desperate, as we feel that she is unable to take care of herself, and that she is a danger to herself due to her inability to react appropriately to sexual harassment and assault. She recently rebuffed a predatory advance by a fellow sailor, and reported him, as we have encouraged her over and over to do. I am so proud of her for taking that step to protect herself! Clearly the counseling and the family encouragement are helping her, but this was only one incident.

How do we talk to the psychiatrist? What are the questions we should ask? Are there things (treatment, work environments) we should be demanding that the military provide for her? Who can advocate for her within the military structure? What clinical research is out there? Are there clinical studies on risk of sexual victimization in Aspergers adults?

And what the heck do we do with her when she comes home? What kinds of services are available? She failed out of community college already. She is a terrible roomate. How do we cope - are there support groups for families of Adult Aspies? (Everything is about kids and parenting - what about being the rest of us!?!?)

Gosh this was a lot of questions - I hope you can help.

Being in the military complicates things. How did she come about her diagnosis? I've heard that Asperger's was cause for a medical discharge.

It really is a long story.

Her parents abused and neglected her and her siblings. All of her sisters tell me that she was always 'not like them' and that she has always had strange quirks. My mother tells me that her mother (my aunt) once said she thought that she might be autistic (but did they seek diagnosis or treatment, no, they just ignored it and told her she was going to be nobody in life).

So - the family abuse has recently come to light (me and my siblings are supporting and funding a lawsuit for our cousins), and we have started to get to know these wonderful girls. Through our conversations, my cousin let it be known that she was suffering what was clearly PTSD. When she came home on leave after deployment to Bahrain, we got her psychiatric treatment and she was diagnosed with the PTSD and panic disorder. When she got back to base she was told that a diagnosis of aspergers would get her sent home. So she asked to be evaluated, and she was given an affirmative response. She's been told that she will not be sent home, and she continues to report for duty and continues to receive counseling and psychiatric care through the military.

This is OK with me, IF she is receiving appropriate treatment and care - but I don't know what that is? Her immediate family is in no condition to help her transition to adult civilian life. Me and my siblings live all over the US, not any of us her hometown. She wont have health insurance either, so as long as she is safe, we would prefer that she stay where she is and get treatment while we figure out what the heck to do for her when she comes home and how to continue treatment.

I think perhaps someone at the VA would better able to help you answer some of your questions. As to a support group for adults with AS, they are scarce but existent. However she may be more suited for one specifically for women, and those are very difficult to find. I believe there is one somewhere though.

Why? I'm sure there are positions in the military where someone with an analytical mind would be of great use.

Why? Who the hell knows why? The military makes up its rules and that's that. No amount of special pleading and accommodations will allow a near sighted person become a pilot. A perfect example of military thinking is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

Because of the concern that people could die unnecessarily.

When I was in the Navy, my boot camp CC mad a big deal out of the two things we needed to excel in the military: attention to detail and following orders. She went on to talk about how when she wasn't CC-ing boot she worked as a machinist. She said she had to be able to follow orders -- for example what thread size screws were required -- and pay attention to detail -- making sure her screws came out perfect -- because if she didn't, her bad screws and bolts could cause a ship to sink, killing sailors. She made a huge deal out of how important it was to follow orders and pay attention to detail. Those two maxims were hammered into our heads every day.

A person with Asperger's can be great when it comes to attention to detail. We can have a lot of focus and care deeply about doing a job properly. And we can be great with following orders if we've committed ourselves to that path. But the place where we could be worrisome to the military is in understanding and interpreting those orders. You can't properly follow orders you don't understand and since one of the big hallmarks of Asperger's is difficulties in communication, that makes the military afraid that we will kill soldiers or sailors or flyboys or marines when we don't follow orders properly because we didn't understand those orders.

Have people with Asperger's joined the military? Many times, yes. Have they been good service men and women? Most definitely. But all without the military knowing that they have a developmental disorder. Because of the huge demands of every service person in the military and because of the life-or-death consequences that often hang in the balance, I cannot blame the branches of the military for refusing to keep service people with known Asperger's. It's just a risk that the military isn't willing to take.

I can see that, but it's still a bit unfair. I think it should be on an individual basis and not on a label. I know I would do horribly in the military, but not everyone with AS has the same issues as I do.

But the military doesn't do anything on an individual basis; it's not designed to function that way. Categorizing and labelling are how the military maintains its efficiency. There is no "I" in team.

And "unfair" shouldn't even be a consideration. The military is not about fairness and accomodation of individual needs. It is about developing a tight, efficient team for national defense. The military is one place where the ADA does not (and, in my opinion, should not) apply at all.