What was your diagnosis before autism?

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Thanks to B19 for this idea!

Were you diagnosed with something else before you were diagnosed with autism? Or, were you diagnosed with something and have come to know that you are actually autistic?

If you have retained any additional diagnoses along with your autism diagnosis, I am personally curious about that and would like to know.

Important caveat here - in Britain, if your GP, or you and your GP consider you have some diagnosis, it is not legally binding. It takes a high level Psychiatrist employed by the NHS to officially diagnose.

So, me and my doctor considered BPD for a bit, something that scared me. Now officially diagnosed ASD aspergers type.

As I have described previously on WrongPlanet.net, I was diagnosed with:

DSM-II 296.2 Manic-Depressive Illness, Depressed Type; twice in 1978
DSM-III 296.3x Major Depression, Recurrent (MDR); in 1980 and again in 1982
DSM-IV-TR 296.33 Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent (MDD) in 2006

Yeah, so five diagnoses. I disagreed with each diagnosis because the totality of any assessment were conversations along the lines of "Do you have any friends?" "One." "Do you want to have more friends?" "Nope." "Do you talk with other students at school?" "Not really." "You don't say much, do you?" "Only what I need to say." "What do you do for fun?" "Read nonfiction books or watch movies." "Do you socialize with others at your church or Boy Scouts?" "No." "Well, you certainly seem to be depressed!" "I don't think I am, no." "Of course, you are!"

I even described to one or more of the five clinicians that "I disagree with these diagnoses of depression. If you were to watch me with my friend or while I am reading, you would see me laughing, joking, talking and enjoying my activities, so where exactly is my depression?" In 2006, my clinician admitted that she was "restating" a previous diagnosis of depression. Really?!? Is restating the then 28-year-old diagnosis of depression, as if it were rumored, as well as incurable and lifelong, what now passes as a clinical assessment?

But, for anyone with knowledge about autism, we can now read my conversational example above and see clearly that autism would be a better "fit" with my behaviors and characteristics than depression. I realize that my earliest diagnoses of depression couldn't likely have included an understanding of autism, but the most recent such diagnosis certainly should have considered autism. Nonetheless, my initial clinician made an understandable mistake while the other clinicians simply repeated what the initial clinician had mistakenly diagnosed.

The ramifications of such professional laziness are staggering.

As an infant, I was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder. As a teenager (in my early-to-mid-teens), I was diagnosed and re-diagnosed with varying combinations of agoraphobia, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, selective mutism, and social anxiety disorder. As an adult (in my late 20s), I was re-diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and the label impulse control disorder (not otherwise specified) was added. I was first assessed for, and received a diagnosis of, autism spectrum disorder as an adult (in my early 30s).

Prior to receiving the ASD diagnosis, I always referred to myself as "being diagnosed in circles around ASD". I had an 'official', psychiatrist-imposed label for nearly all of the observable manifestations of ASD, but I was not actually assessed for ASD until well into adulthood.

Finally getting an ASD assessment required a significant amount of self-advocacy and persistence. Over the years, doctors and mental health professionals of various sorts explained time and time again that (a) they only had knowledge about classic lower-functioning autism and (b) they had no education about or experience with ASD in adults. I begged for a referral to a professional who did have the knowledge, education and experience, and was told again and again that there was no one who conducted adult ASD assessments. One doctor, observing my frustration, told me that DSM labels are irrelevant; treating symptoms (i.e. anxiety) was the sole priority. Another doctor told me that having a full-time job precluded an ASD diagnosis anyway. Another explained that diagnosing ASD in an adult, let alone in an adult woman, was all-but-impossible -- so give up.

Many professionals, while not in disagreement with the high probability of ASD in my case, were discouraging of professional assessment nonetheless. For various reasons, they all ultimately seemed content to settle on the litany of other labels listed above.

I fought for the ASD assessment, eventually finding myself at a clinic that specializes in ASD. Lo and behold, it is not impossible to be assessed for ASD as an adult! I was interviewed by a doctor who specializes in ASD and then assessed using the ADOS-2 Module 4. After a lifetime of struggling, being misunderstood and misdiagnosed, I finally received an ASD diagnosis at age 33.

Auditory processing disorder
Language processing disorder
Cognitive disorder NOS
Dyspraxia
Sensory processing disorder
ADD
Language disorder/delay
Cluttering/Stuttering

"different","painfully shy", "loner","space cadet", "fa***t, homo, queer", "a person who does not reach his potential' ,"drug addict","honest to a fault", "spaz" (spastic).

My husband had a garbage can of diagnosis while in IP psych.

Schizoid Personality Disorder (I never believed this one)

OCD (I know friends who have this. Both with just only compulsions or obsessions besides the combination of the two. He didn't fit this at all)

SocAD. (believable)

GAD (that's a garbage diagnosis for insurance)

Major Depression (believable)

The shrink just told me he was Schizoid and my best bet was to divorce him and move on with my life. He wound up inpatient a second time for three weeks, and I really pushed for the ASD testing.

He did the testing after that last admit. It was SO SO (horribly) hard to find anyone to do gold standard testing around here. That was 6 years ago, and not much as changed.

The bulk of the testing problem, is it is all out of pocket around here. So clinicians would rather do 6 kids with some insurance, than wait around for 1 adult to plunk down $2K from their wallet. Our clinician worked for his money, and we never felt screwed over. Though we did not have an extra $2K just hanging around.

Also doctors around here don't usually agree with adult diagnosis. The belief is, if you managed to eek through school, college, job, children and relationships, the problem is your sh***y coping skills, not a childhood developmental disability.

Now my husband's diagnosis is

Aspergers (or whatever it is called now)

Depression

Anxiety (more related to the ASD, but it makes the insurance happy)

If my husband's diagnosis is only Autism, insurance wouldn't cover his therapist, so he needs the others to justify mental health appointments. (which all deal with his ASD issues)

We live in the midwest.

As with the previous poster...

My husband couldn't have ASD because he...(this was from 2 big deal shrinks)

Managed to go to college.
Get married and stayed married for 20 years.
Had a child and could interact appropriately said kid.
Hold one job for 25 years.
Could shop.
Drive a car.
Nothe have a meltdown in public.

His issue was being a hypersensitive drama queen in the middle of a supposed midlife crisis. Wonderful....

My folks sent me to a string of shrinks since I was 8.

Wasnt officially dxd with aspergers until like three years ago at age 58. Actually a previous shrink gave me the label after my family suggested it to her a few years before that. But that was a BS "diagnosis". But when I was 58 I saw a specialist who gave me the official thorough three day examination, and concluded (I think rightly) that I had it.

I must have been one of the last Americans to be dx'd with "aspergers" apparently since they axed it from the DSM about that time. Today I would be dxd as having "high functioning autism with no language delay" ("half of a dozen" ,instead of "six").

I consider that dx to be "being diagnosed with autism" (to answer your question)since its on the austism spectrum, rather than "what I got dxd before I was dx'd with autism".

But before that dx?

Oddly enough during that entire half century of going to shrinks prior to that asperger's dx I was never diagnosed with anything as far as I know. And I was never prescribed drugs ( a good thing) either.

Maybe in the files I never saw I was labeled with something specific sometime, but as far as I know I was never labeled as anything other than your garden variety neurotic kid I suppose.

Some of the shrinks I saw were helpful in limited ways, and some were total incompetent idiots. Even the good ones were limited in what they could do in that pre 1994 era when autism hadnt been broaden as a category to include me.

But I am not aware of getting any diagnostic label. The shrinks focused on family stuff. Bad parenting, and like that. Starting off with whats wrong with me, and the proceeding to whats wrong with my parents, and then ending up with what was wrong with my grand parents (thats how psychotherapy generally progresses).

And there were indeed "software issues" (ie neurosis) with my family that some of the better shrinks were helpful with. But autism is a "hardware problem" that none were trained to address.

I could have checked "aspergers" but since even that was late in life (and its still my only dx) I should check something else. But there is no box of "nothing", or "just neurotic". So I checked "other".

My diagnosis was "Undateable Nerd."

At least they were wrong about the undateable part, at least after 33 years of marriage...

I didn't have a diagnosis before Autism, I was diagnosed at age three, so it was my first diagnosis. I've been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Episode, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Schizoid Personality since then.

Official diagnosis.

Major depression
Dysthymic disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder.
Myoclonus
strabismus
Amblyopia

Nonofficial but known to have or have had.

PTSD, current & present when young
Poor coordination, current & present when young
Bedwetting until 15-16 years of age
Bowel control issues, minor as an adult but major as a young child, current
Executive function issues, current & present when young
Severely uneven intellectual abilities confirmed through weschler IQ test, current & present when young
Auditory-tactile synesthesia current & present when young.
Extreme nervousness when facing task that is difficult or haven't done before or in large social situations, current & present when young.
Selective mutism, current & present when young.
Unable to find things that I should be able to find easily as it seems I become blind to the item I'm tying to find even though completely out in the open & have looked multiple times in the area where found, current & present when young.
The list goes on & on.