• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 84 subscribers
  • Views 9683 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Misdiagnosis the other way: someone actually without ASD diagnosed as being on the spectrum

DragonCat16

I have tried to find the answer to this via web searches, but I just can't get an answer. I would like to know the statistics for people who have misdiagnosed with ASD when they are later conclusively found not to have ASD (i.e. they have some other condition, or they don't have any condition at all). All I get when I search are stats for people misdiagnosed the other way: people on the spectrum who were wrongly diagnosed with something else at first, or people on the spectrum who were not thought to have any condition at all until ASD was considered.

Does anyone know the answer to this? Has anyone here been diagnosed with ASD only to find out later that you're not on the spectrum, or know someone this has happened to?

Can anyone point me to a site with stats for this type of misdiagnosis?

Is it possible to fake being on the spectrum to the extent that a professional expert would wrongly diagnose someone with ASD? Would anyone want to do so?

Any info whatsoever about this would be greatly appreciated.

Parents
  • DragonCat16 said:
    Is it possible to fake being on the spectrum to the extent that a professional expert would wrongly diagnose someone with ASD? Would anyone want to do so?

    I don’t have personal experience of this, but when I was on an NAS course, the tutor mentioned that she knew of some individuals that had a diagnosis of ASD but definitely weren’t ASD. She thought their motivations for getting a diagnosis were to be able to claim benefits and get adjustments at work.

    On the same course we discussed how psychopaths are sometimes misdiagnosed as ASD because many of the traits are similar/the same, and the diagnostic criteria misses the crucial difference, which is that people with ASD have loads of affective and compassionate empathy, but we lack cognitive empathy (and psychopaths are the other way round). In other words, people with ASD do care about others but struggle to express it, and psychopaths don’t care but are good at pretending they do. But we know there is a common misconception that those with ASD have no empathy. So I always wonder when you get violent crimes and the news emphasising that the person was autistic so this was probably why they didn’t care about those they hurt, if the person was actually ASD or in fact a psychopath (not that people with ASD can’t commit violent crimes, it just makes me wonder given the overlap in much of the traits).

    I don’t know of any statistics regarding this unfortunately, but it’s an interesting topic.

Reply
  • DragonCat16 said:
    Is it possible to fake being on the spectrum to the extent that a professional expert would wrongly diagnose someone with ASD? Would anyone want to do so?

    I don’t have personal experience of this, but when I was on an NAS course, the tutor mentioned that she knew of some individuals that had a diagnosis of ASD but definitely weren’t ASD. She thought their motivations for getting a diagnosis were to be able to claim benefits and get adjustments at work.

    On the same course we discussed how psychopaths are sometimes misdiagnosed as ASD because many of the traits are similar/the same, and the diagnostic criteria misses the crucial difference, which is that people with ASD have loads of affective and compassionate empathy, but we lack cognitive empathy (and psychopaths are the other way round). In other words, people with ASD do care about others but struggle to express it, and psychopaths don’t care but are good at pretending they do. But we know there is a common misconception that those with ASD have no empathy. So I always wonder when you get violent crimes and the news emphasising that the person was autistic so this was probably why they didn’t care about those they hurt, if the person was actually ASD or in fact a psychopath (not that people with ASD can’t commit violent crimes, it just makes me wonder given the overlap in much of the traits).

    I don’t know of any statistics regarding this unfortunately, but it’s an interesting topic.

Children