Want to help my 17 year old son with Asperger's depression

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Hello, my name is Tyler and I am the Father of my 17 year old son who has Asperger's and has been dealing with very severe anxiety and depression for about 6 months now.

My son was attending High School and was halfway through his Senior year when he suddenly stopped being able to go to school anymore. About 1 month ago we caught him with a knife to his arm and were able to stop him, but he spent a night in observation the local hospital. Stress had always been challenging but we always found a way to get him into school once we figured out what the core issue was. Sometimes it was a confusing project or unclear direction, other times it was swimming class and or a difficult social situation but once we "solved the issue" he would go back to school and things would be somewhat fine.

Starting last year at the end of the year he started to complain of feeling less emotions and kind of uncaring or unfeeling about things. He had been taking Zoloft since middle school but since we read that this could have some negative affects when taken over a long time we tried to ween him off. At first everything seemed fine but then right when he got accepted to 3 of the 4 art schools he wanted to attend in the fall he then hit a wall and is now having sensory and social issues that are very much like he had when he was much younger. He will say very often to me when he is curled up in a ball on the floor of his room that everything is just "too much". It’s like his sensory is going haywire and everything is overstimulating him.

I want to help him, and we have been taking him to see therapists, and psychiatrists as well as practicing as many healthy option as we can like meditation and breathing and exercise as well as trying to do our best to feed him a healthy diet. Of course, he is incredibly picky and will only eat basic foods and this list has shrunk since his depression kicked in.

I go home every day and talk with him about not feeling stressed and tell him we will support him no matter what he does as long we know he is healthy and safe, but it seems like he cannot get himself past feeling like he is failing or slipping behind somehow. My wife and I have always been there and told him as long as he is trying we will never be upset with him and it will be OK that are there to support him. It all seems like it is really not getting through in anyway though and I feel like he is getting worse or at the least that he is just stuck in a negative loop. Now he is starting to develop stomach issues and he is not eating and he has major negative personality shifts when he doesn't eat. He gets so hungry he cannot think and when he cannot think he cannot tell me what he wants to eat which then keeps him hungry which then cannot allow him to think which them keeps him stuck in a crappy feeling loop. (some of you may recognize this pattern if you have picky eaters with low blood sugar)

He has tried Prozac, Setraline, Cymbalta, and is now taking Propanolol so we are not getting much help from a medication standpoint and don't want to put him back on the Zoloft as we are afraid of making a zombie again. So now he spends most of his time in his room and is only talking to me and his sister. For some reason he is now even afraid to talk to his Mom which is never happened before, and I really do not understand since she has always been very supportive of him too.

If anyone can help give me some insight, tips or just some hope to help me get through this I would appreciate it.

Welcome to WrongPlanet. My sympathies that you and your family are going through such difficult times.
I'm sorry that I don't have time to post too much right now, but your son's predicament has many things in common with my own later teenage years.

I think that this is a very important observation. A more accurate description might be this...
Over the years your son has developed some tremendous coping mechanisms. In reality, his sensory and social impairments most likely never went away (from his perspective), but his powers of analysis and reasoning have enabled him to hide them away. These coping mechanisms can be a good thing when used with care, but they come at a really high cost in terms of the mental and emotional energy required. What you are probably seeing is the underlying traits becoming exposed once again because he has burned himself out and can no longer maintain the outward appearance of reduced autistic traits. You will hear this called "passing" or "masking" very often on these forums, and you can find some very good writing about it here and elsewhere.

My first major "burn out" happened to me at around the same age as your son. In a very short time now, society will begin to see him as an adult, and he will know that there will be many profound changes due to this, which he may not feel adequately prepared for yet. His social scene will also be changing in ways which may seem bewildering to him. Seeing his peers dating, learning to drive, thinking about moving away from home, and becoming sexually active, quite likely make him more aware than ever of every little way in which he feels "left behind" or "immature" by comparison. It also means that the coping mechanisms he developed for a much simpler "childhood world" are no longer serving him as well as they used to - I can distinctly remember feeling that I had been sent back to square one in terms of understanding my peers behaviour.

I wish some good advice would come to mind - but I'll keep my eye out for the progress of this thread and get back to you if anything does occur to me.

Thank you this is very helpful I will look up passing and masking. It is just helpful to know what he is going through is not just isolated to him. I feel like I can just be doing more to help him and I just have not found the answers yet. He is a really nice sensitive kid and he is just going through hell right now. Makes you feel pretty useless a as parent.

Autism gets worse with stress.

And it gets very stressful when thing change.

In a lot of places there doesn't seem to be much help for making the transition from High School to "what comes next"
Perhaps going to an art school may be too much of a change. Or maybe he needs help to change his routines.

Getting him back involved in a special interest may help him get back on track again.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bgEAhMEgGOQ

youtube: CSULB - Temple Grandin - Focus on Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

Please see 1:05:35 into video. Temple is saying that people on the autism spectrum often only need 1/4 to 1/2 the normal dose for SSRI antidepressants, Tricyclic antidepressants, and Atypical antipsychotics.

And no, Temple is not a doctor, but she is pretty astute and she talks with a lot of people. All the same, please take this advice with a grain of salt as it were.

So, it was probably a good decision to try to ween him off the zoloft as you did. As far as a better medication to replace . . .

As I understand, treating depression is trial and error in a respectful sense and it often takes four to eight weeks to tell if a particular medication is going to work. Even though your son has tried four medications in the recent past, you may not have hit upon the right one, combo, or amount. Definitely helps to have a doctor comfortable with tinkering and adjusting the medication.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/03 ... ug-choice3

And of course also important to phase down for the medication in steps, as your son did with the zoloft.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/03 ... ing-drugs3

Good luck with a difficult situation. Please hang in there and keep trying different things in a smart, medium way.

Thank you it is difficult for him and we are just going to keep trying everything we can. He feels like he is never going to get better from the depression but having sites like this help so much.

Your son sounds very much like mine. My son is 20 and was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 17. He is on Zoloft and his anxiety is much better. His depression is a little better. They are looking into uppng his dose. My sons sensory issues are mild right now. He won't use a towel because of the way it feels, loud noises aggitate him, etc.. I am trying to get my son to look at schools but since graduation from high school he has become comfortable working as a delivery person for Lowe's which we don't like because he does alot of heavy lifting. His psychiatrist tried to get him to apply for disability but he won't and I'm not sure how we feel about it anyway. I wouldn't want him to quit working and fall into worse depression. He loves working but is limited. He's late to work alot because there is a detour and he gets lost, he misplaces his keys, doesn't wake up with his alarm, etc...he wants to move out but there is no way he can because he has trouble managing money. We are trying to figure out how to help him become more independent and set realistic goals. It also bothers him that he has no dating life.

I use two alarms. A quiet and brief (20 seconds) watch alarm. And then 8 minutes later, an alarm clock with a music CD.

This 'quiet warning' method helps me to wake up more gracefully and peacefully.

My son is 19 with high functioning autism and about 8 months ago everything went haywire. He started having severe panic attacks, depression, and extreme sensory issues. Especially with his vision. He's been in the hospital twice and is now on 4 Different Medications which are barely helping him. He also spends all day in his room, mostly with a blindfold on because of the sensory stuff. He's always stressed and overwhelmed too. I definitely think it's the age and stage of life. It is a helpless feeling trying to know how to help them. Thanks for sharing your experience. We are going to try some color therapy glasses and maybe try to tweek his meds or try cannabis. Hopefully we can all find something soon to help our boys feel better. It does help to know you're not alone.

Hi again just thought I would update since my last post. Things are going a little better, but still very tough day to day. We are getting some "normal" (ha,ha what the hell is normal) schedule back but my son is still stuck in a holding pattern as far as getting back to going out of the house and doing anything more than just holding it together most days.

He is still having very acute sound sensitivity and also decision making lock up, or inability to decide even simple things like what to eat. (actually especially what to eat)

It is very hard feeling like there is so little you can do to help. We are on a very low dose of propanolol, don't think its really doing much so not sure if that will continue. He has also started taking a supplement called SAM-e which we hope will help him too. We are giving him CBD oil due to little to no side effects that we can see.

Other wise we are taking it one day at a time. My son does ask constantly when he will feel happy again which is pretty much killing me as a parent but I assure him that if we just keep working this will make him stronger in the future but I honestly don't know what is going on so that is really positive encouragement speaking and inside I am worried because I don't have any idea what is going on.

Well if anyone has any positive stories of coming through anything similar I would love to hear it so I can share it with him to help him look forward to feeling better.

Thank you again for everyone who takes the time to add any insights every little bit helps.

Have you ever read the book Been There, Done That, Try This? It's a book written by people with aspergers for others with aspergers. I've found some of their stories to be encouraging . even though my son doesn't look at it a lot ,it keeps me encouraged to read about those who have come through difficult times .

Thank you I just ordered it and will check it out. I am a designer and also a very visual person and so some of the mention of illustrations is something I think will help me understand better.

I wish you luck with helping your son feel better soon and please reach out if you have anything I can help with. My experience is only my 17 yr old son but if there is something that could help someone else just understand a little better I would feel like was doing the right thing.

I will be thinking good thoughts for you.

What you've written reminds me a lot of what we've gone through the past year with our non-ASD daughter. The stress is absolutely destroying even our teens, even "normal" ones. They've been on a high speed roller coaster for years now with no end in sight. My daughter crashed in the second half of her Junior year. Other teens are crashing in their senior years or first year of college. I know SOOOO many cases. Your family is not alone by any stretch. While the ASD is going to layer on and change some of the manifestations and considerations, and no doubt complicate all of it, I believe that this is probably at heart a "what the heck is going on with our teens?" issue.

Different families have successfully handled it different ways, but one element that seems to be a common thread to healing is removing the current list of obligations. One family swore by the residential treatment and schooling on a horse farm her daughter received. Others have pulled their children back home from living on campus at college. For us, the single most effective step we took was having our daughter take the CHSPE test here in California, after which she had the choice of accepting that passing score as her diploma, or continuing on to graduate with her class. She choose to leave school. The thing was, as long as she was enrolled, she couldn't separate herself from her own lofty goals, the high expectations everyone has always had of her, and the growing backlog of work (including multiple incomplete contracts that carried from the spring into the fall). That backlog was crushing her mentally no matter how much any of us tried to help.

Allowing her to jump off the roller coaster wasn't the only step we took, of course. She had a therapist for a while, and while it took a long time to find a pediatric psychologist, we did eventually have that, too, as well as some medication he prescribed. But things were getting so bad we couldn't even get her out of bed for appointments, which made outpatient medical treatment pretty dang impossible, and I felt strongly that impatient treatment was not the right answer for her. I think that while all those appointments were essential for a while as she dug into her issues, eventually those appointments also become one more obligation and back log that was adding to the dysfunction instead of helping with it.

We've now been on about 6 months of no obligations, no backlog, and we're slowly getting our daughter back. She did take on a few things over this time. The things she took on were project based with a known end to them, and she also made sure there was back up if she found herself unable to carry through. Little steps. Now, 6 months in, she has gotten a job that will be about 20 hours a week. So far she claims to love the job, but only time will tell if that holds. The place is super organized, and everyone working there is low-key. It's busy when she is there but the atmosphere is super laid back, and there is nothing that carries home for her. I don't know if she can sustain it, but it's been 100% her idea and her choice. We've stayed 100% out of it. We've told her she has no obligations from us to do anything but get healthy, and we're not concerned about the time line for doing it. But I do have a child who doesn't like being dependent on us so her instincts are driving her to slowly see if she can step out from home. School ... I don't know. She talks about Junior College in the fall but she isn't taking steps to complete enrollment. Maybe she isn't ready. Since our mantra is no pressure, we're really not talking about it. We learned that its impossible for us to ask questions about anything without her feeling pressure from it, so we don't. We decided our job in all this was to simply provide her a safe place to be. That seems to be what she needs most from us right now: space and time. She has a lot of internal changes to make to keep from getting into the same mental space again, and they aren't easy changes for her to figure out and make. So, for us, the decision was to simply give her space and time, and after 6 months we can see clearly that for her it has been the best decision we could have made. She's only 17; she's young.

I should note that through all this she seems to have found an anchor in her little DnD (dungeons and dragons) group. It is kind of a fluke that she has one at all, but even at her worst this was something she usually managed to drag herself to. Something like that could be helpful. It isn't parents and it isn't therapy. Is there a game store in your area that does Friday Night Magic? That can sometimes serve a similar function; my son (currently in college and living overseas) is a big Friday Night Magic guy.

I think, for me, back when I was in your spot, the worst part was not knowing what to do. As parents we want to solve. But most things I did in the effort to solve actually backfired. It was so insanely difficult for me; I felt so lost and broken, too. Completely confused. It was a huge relief when we finally made a decision on what our role in all this would be and settled into the long haul of seeing if it would play out in a positive way. My wish for you is to find that. I can't tell you what the right path for your son is, only share what the right path was for us and why. If you keep your eyes and ears open I think you will find a lot more stories out there, and talking with those parents will start to help you hone your instincts for what to do (or not do) in your son's case. Good luck.

Thank you for your post. Every story I read makes me feel a little better about what we are doing to help my son. I know I have gained a lot of strength from everyone who has shared with me.

I will carry on and wish anyone else who is struggling with a similar situation either personally or trying help somone else feel better, nothing but luck and positive results.

Take care.

If there are OCD aspects with rapid onset, and the extreme sensory issues might be such, I wonder if you and your family have considered PANDAS as a possibility? You'd start with a simply blood test to check for strep antibodies. Some doctors are skeptical about the whole thing, but pretty much any standard medical reference is likely to talk about the possibility of rheumatic heart fever (related condition also caused by strep antibodies) into a person's 20s and 30s.