Adult diagnosis of aspergers/autism

I apologise for being pedantic about your post mollie I've been thinking about it and I was out of order.
I'm not denying females can have Aspergers but thought it wrong to say "female Asperger" rather than a female suffering from Aspergers and I didn't think being Autistic Spectrum made sense either. However I should have kept my opinions to myself.

Not at all, Ninathenana, I'm only just understanding all this and probably have used terms in the wrong way so no need to apologise. And if we don't talk about these things there won't be any understanding.

Asperger Syndrome is massively under-diagnosed, especially in females, because of the very different presentation.

Tony Attwood says they are finding more and more co-morbid cases, where someone has both AS and bi-polar, for example. Having one does not rule out having the other - why would it?

It's important to get the diagnosis right, otherwise people can be vastly over-medicated, especially as they get older.

Jane10, I've PM'd you.

My DH has 7 siblings, 5 brothers and 2 sisters, only 1 sister can read and write without great difficulty. my DH didn't learn to read until he was 13.
I have known him for 20years, he is now 71. in my total ignorance of these subjects I initially thought 7 of them were dyslexic, but over time I think 7 of them also have Asperger's, to different degrees, is this possible?
Most of them when excited or stressed get higher pitched in voice and repeat things often, My DH who is a lovely man, seems to of developed a coping system without realising what he does. this is starting to concern me now in case at some point he could be misdiagnosed as having dementia, which he has no symptoms of. Am I imagining this?

newist
The psychologist my son saw told us that it wasn't hereditary and having a family member with ASD makes you no more susceptible.
alchemillamolls
It's my understanding that there is no drug treatment for people with ADD

Thanks for that nina

ASD

There is strong evidence that genetic inheritance is significant in ASD. There is no medication for it. Its not an illness.

I think the reference to drugs was in connection to a comment about bi-polar disorder.

Well I thought so Jane but I wasn't going to contradict the professional. DS saw.
My DGSs' father has undiagnosed traits but he also has a chromosome disorder as do both boys. Specialists have said the boys are too young for them to determine which condition causes their current problems.

Precisely, there's no medication for ASD, so if you're wrongly diagnosed as having bi-polar disorder and are given heavy-duty medication for that, wrongly, it is a crying shame. Likewise if you were put on meds for dementia when you only had ASD - awful.

I understand that diagnosis has only been possible relatively recently and thinking back to my childhood (born 1953) I realise that those few children loosely labelled as 'naughty' or 'unteachable' in junior school are probably the undiagnosed people now in their early 60's.

I do have some misgivings however about the numbers of children being diagnosed nowadays; surely there must be a genetic element, it can't all be nurture or nature can it? I know the Rubella vaccine and Dr. Wakefield debacle further highlighted the problem of diagnosis.

I fully admit to being woefully ill-informed, so apologies if I'm being far too simplistic.

Don't worry, the whole world seems to be woefully ill-informed, including doctors!

Not quite the whole world!

Are some countries better, do you think, Jane10?

Jane loopylou mentions nature or nurture my understanding is that nurture has nothing to do with it.
Am I right ?

ASD can't be caused by bad parenting if that's what you mean. It appears to be genetic in origin but there are several gene sites involved. These are inherited but there can be 'de novo' cases due to copy number variation.
I have to say that this an area of intense research but, while I'm glad this is going on I wish there was more research into effective interventions that could help the 1:100 of the total normal population that we already have. Only a fifth of the ASD population is under 16.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31713147

I suppose I think the whole world needs to be better informed since the origin of autism is currently unknown.

Wouldn't you say you need to know causation in order to do a really effective intervention? Loads of parents try gf/cf diets for example, on top of other strategies.

Dr Wakefield and others appeared to pick up on the changes in behaviour etc around two years of age that began to develop as ASD and it seems he put this down to the MMR vaccinations.
However I remember reading a book by Lorna Wing (who was a pioneer in studying Autism) in the 1960s about the early signs of autism starting to becoming apparent around the age of two. That was long before the combined MMR vaccination came in in 1971.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Wing

There's an interesting thread over on, ahem, Mumsnet about this right now, if anyone's interested:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2497352-Guest-post-We-need-to-stop-looking-for-a-cause-for-autism

I entirely agree. Looking for causes implies that there may be 'cures'. It appears that there are different connections across areas of the brain in ASD. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Too much is made of the deficits caused by ASD and not nearly enough about the benefits we gain from having people among us with this style of thinking. We are a highly social culture though and value social/sociability higher than extreme focus/great research skills/honesty/loyalty etc etc which people with ASD are likely to contribute. People with LD and ASD are more likely to be noticed and thought to be more typical examples of the autism spectrum but the majority are missed and are just quietly out there doing what they do. Time to appreciate autism!

It is certainly genetic ( autism, Aspergers ASD) but of course, one child may inherit it and the next child not.
my eldest DGS has it ( from SIL) but is much, much, worse than SIL.
SIL never formally diagnosed, but has now done a lot of reading on the subject which has helped him understand why he is like he is, which is like a lightbulb moment! That is all an adult needs to do, read up on the subject.
SIL managed to get by all his life, and nobody really noticed, and lots of people are like this.DGS will never be able to live alone,and his autism is severe, even though he is very intelligent.Very likely too, that he will never work or have any relationships.

My DD in talking to experts was told that we all have autism traits, some people have a lot and others only a little, but when a person has so many of these traits, that pushes it 'over the edge' and makes them markedly different.There is no 'normal' in other words, which makes us all different and interesting, but when a child has too many of these traits it makes it almost impossible to pass as normal, and help is needed.

Gluten free diets may help, but not with autism! Autism often seems to go hand in hand with bowel/ gut problems, though not always.