Have you diagnosed anyone yourself?

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Something got me to thinking about how we might influence each other when discussing things like AS, ADD/HD, BiPolar, etc.

I have caught myself sometimes talking with a person and thinking they might have ADD.
At that point, I have a decision to make... if I tell them they seem to be an ADDer, do I just leave it at that, or do I launch into a whole diagnosis thing?

How many of you have done something similar to other people?

I've had recent incidents where I've told folks about this place because they said they may have AS or they have a family member who does.

Education is good, but at what point do you feel education turns into indoctrination?

Hope that all makes sense!

Never have.

Tim

There are several people I know who I suspect could have AS, but I don't think it's a good idea to say anything. I could be wrong and even if I'm not, they might resent me for it if I were to make the suggestion. Probably the best way to handle it, if you're on fairly close terms with them, is to talk about yourself having it. If they can identify with what you're saying, they might be prompted to do research and decide for themselves whether or not they have it.

If they ask for your opinion or for information about AS, that's a different matter, but only give them what they ask for. If they only ask for info about AS, don't tell them you think they have it. That would only be appropriate if they directly ask your opinion about it.

I always thought my best friend showed traits of AS, but I never said anything to her. I let her figure it out on her own. She'd heard me talk about it enough and it wasn't my place to tell her what was going on inside her head. I used to be one of those people who threw out diagnoses to everyone I knew. I learned the hard way that that's a bad idea. Lots of different conditions share behavioral traits, and it's easy enough for even trained psychologists to get a diagnoses wrong.

No.

Probably never will, unless I were to become more knowledgable in the field.

There are quite a few people at my school whom I suspect are somewhere on the spectrum. I attend a science and math magnet (specialty) school, and since people with AS/HFA are so good at math and science, they seem to be drawn to my school like moths to a flame. I'm fairly certain that at least half of the students are somewhere on the spectrum, and I'm certain that two of the teachers are too.

Most of my friends are into sci-fi. I can think of quite a few of them who might have it. Two have admitted to ADD.

Sort of the reverse of this is when I explain why I fall under the label of having ADD/HD, and they casually say something like, "Oh, I have some ADD too. I sometimes forget things, but I just write little notes for myself so I don't forget. You should try that too! It worked for me!"

I have, at times with certain people, then gone on to explain why their 'sometimes forgetting things' is not the same as my constantly forgetting things... like- work, fixing dinner, what I stepped into the kitchen to do and what I was doing before that....
Other folks, I'll just nod my head and say, "Uh huh, ummm yeah, sure, wow.".

I was talking with a woman recently about AS and she said she thinks her son must have it because when she, her husband, her son and his wife are all together talking, sometimes he "... just falls asleep! ".

Luckily I was able to keep from blurting out, "No... he was just B.O.R.E.D.!"

Personally, I wish someone had taken the initiative to explain ADD/HD to me long ago and how I might have it.
I would have been very grateful for the information.
Even when my former wife, a pediatrician, used to kid me, "If anyone has ADD, you have it!", it was all done as a joke.
I wish she would have taken it more seriously also.

I pretty much suspect my younger brother of being aspie too. In fact I say he's probably more obvious than I am. He has obsessive interests, namely watching Mythbusters, which I think he's gone through every episode three times now. He stims from time to time, hand flapping stuff. I don't have much idea of his social life though, but i think he has one or two friends. He very much a tech geek and is studying engineering. he had the whole learning disability thing like I did in middle school, ADD and such. Most of time he's not that talkative, but he can get going on things he's interested in. Not very good at keeping his room clean though...

I don't think I've really suspected anyone else I know of being aspie. Some people are just shy and geeky, but that doesn't really make them aspie in view. I suppose I have to know the person better to make that suspicion.

I have a great professor who could definitely have Asperger's syndrome. Obviously I am in no position to "diagnose," but I can notice if someone has significant AS traits.

I don't think anyone with AS, due to the problems it causes in perception and non-lingual communication has the correct abilities to diagnose another. Judging from all the 'which Celebrity has AS?' threads, I think this is obvious

I haven't visited that thread yet... probably won't since I don't know the names of most celebrities... or if I do know a name, I often don't know the face. Plus, they are not interesting enough to be part of my life.

When I used the term 'diagnose' here, I wasn't meaning a professional type diagnosis.

I guess my position might be different from those who do not work in the medical field.
Many people I have worked with in the medical field do unofficially diagnose other people.
Not to their faces most times, but it does happen.

It's like when you've spent a good number of years sticking people with needles (blood draws and I.V.'s), you invariably scan their hands and arms (sometimes heads and necks ) for vein quality and quantity.

I know Doc's who just have this habit of doing street diagnosis... "Hey, look at how her eyes bulge out... hyperthyroidism for sure!", "Ooh, see that baby... fetal alcohol syndrome! Yep!".

Although a good number of medical folks don't like to have to answer people's medical questions away from work, if someone mentions, in the midst of conversation, that they have been having this sort of problem with that sort of thing... if a nurse or doctor or other professional is listening, sometimes they will offer up some possibilities of what might be wrong and who to go to for a check on it.

So like I said, maybe because of my medical background, I tend to see this sort of thing as normal, whereas the rest of you might see it as not normal.

When I first learned of AS, I thought of other people possibly having it. There have always been a couple of traits that seem unrelated to me; the whole more rote than meaning thing to begin with. . .

There was this guy at my previous workplace who was a walking stereotype. He would not get any of my conversational/social cues - this was very conspicuous and I only knew of AS traits after quitting. This twitchy guy would either just stare at you from behind those inch-thick glasses while viciously scratching the palm of his hand or he would avoid eye contact altogether and seem very tense - this last thing was often accompanied by statement repetition. His overall demeanour was uptight and artificial.
He is and was older than most of the people running the company but he'd always been literaly afraid to move on from his sole area of interest: the nuances of the user interface of a certain irp; meaning he spends his days doing things like studying all the ways to input a bill with different options. He didn't seem to do any sports for that matter - so while his waist was very wide you wouldn't normally think of him as a fat person by looking at his face and shoulders; he was very odd to look at overall and more than I once I wondered why didn't he groom himself better.

Back to the previous point, his blindness to any human psychology or symbolic play was not just annoying but also dangerous. This person, out of naiveté and ineptitude, was partially responsible for the worst and longest case of harassment at work I had to go through ever - a big portion of my contempt for him arises from that.
I once visited one of the company's clients with him and - to my dismay - he blithely began saying things that just trod upon any possibility of further business with them; not without a reason were people decades younger than himself keeping in touch, keeping a schedule and arranging the meetings on both sides. Now, while my attention hand glided out through the window he was capable of tracking through hundreds of spreadsheet lines of invoices information. . . for hours.

Now, I have difficulty seeing how can both him and me be defined by the same condition. AS traits or not, I can easily explain him as one being severely limited, mediocre, not-smart and most likely having an anxienty disorder on top of that while I can explain each and every one of my problems as a result of ADD or at least one of it's definitions. I still can't see an essence to this; a dx based on external traits seems very unreliable to me.

I know enough about psychology and psychiatry to be dangerous, so I try not to diagnose people, although (and I realize this thread is meant seriously) if I were into it, I'd probably tell people they had something horrible which was going to kill them in six months (knowing absolutely nothing about things like that), so I stay away from it. I have gray hair so I do a pretty good doctor imitation. Trouble is, I don't know the first thing about it, and with my own problems, I just take the meds they give me and keep my mouth shut.
btdt