Is ADHD really a separate thing or is it really just Autism?

This is really interesting. Anecdotally, from talking to other people diagnosed with ADD, I seem to fit many of the traits of the PI kind. I also talked about executive function problems at some length with the psychologist who diagnosed my ASD, as a result of which she referred me to the unit's occupational therapist with a view to looking into this in more detail. However, due to severe underfunding, all post-diagnosis follow up was discontinued by the autism unit (they had a 2 year waiting list of assessments to deal with!) So I have a pretty strong suspicion that I may have the PI form of ADD, but missed out on a good chance to get it confirmed.

The autism-ADD overlap interests me a lot. As I understand it, until quite recently, people diagnosed with autism could not also be diagnosed with ADD, as it was felt that the clinical description of ADD was a proper sub-set of autistic traits. Yet the hyper-focus, constant mental background noise, maladaptive daydreaming and procrastination, etc., which seem common to descriptions of ADD(PI), are hardly mentioned in my autism assessment report, despite the fact that I find them some of my most disabling traits, and they're also the traits that I find hardest to get across to support workers, disability assessors, etc.

At the moment my head is almost permanently clouded in negativity when I am on my own, to the extent that I find it hard to concentrate on anything unless it has a specific purpose, i.e. leisure activities are almost impossible to enjoy.

It's different if I have agreed to do something for a friend, because I don't want to disappoint them. When it comes to activities purely for my own amusement, such as Reading, watching Netflix etc, these are internally dismissed as being futile attempts to escape feeling depressed, so I cant enjoy them despite having so many things that I want to read or watch.

This horrible nihilstic fog seems linked to my identity problems & usually only appears when I am alone, so I can still happily enjoy watching Netflix with other people, or read books in a public place. It's like being plagued by 'Monsters in the Closet' that will only emerge to torment me when no-one else can see them.

Conventional anti-depressants & talking therapies are no help whatsoever, but I am quite hopeful that if I am diagnosed with ADHD as well, that the ADHD drugs might allow me to be able to disperse the fog at least a little bit, so that I can enjoy life more & actually be able to tolerate my own company.

When you describe your mind as being previously fuzzy, what did you mean? Was it the nihilistic fog that I tried to describe above or something else?

LOL, that reminds me of one time I woke up from a really confusing & very abstract dream. There was hardly any visual component & it was very repetitive. I eventually worked out that I was dreaming about running a program directly in my head .

When I am very focussed on a programming or analysis task, it's often like everything else ceases to exist, including my own sense of self. That is why I enjoy programming & problem solving in general so much, it turns the negativity in my head off by giving those faulty circuits something else to keep them occupied.

Like Pirate Santa, I definitely hyperfocus at work. I am also a programmer, and when it is most noticeable is when I am hunting down a bug. I will still be obsessively scanning through code long after everyone else has got bored and given up. The world shrinks to me vs the bug, and I will be like a terrier after a rat until I find it. I have even been known to dream about it.

Quick reply and I will reply in more detail later.

I was diagnosed with ADHD first in 2017.  I took medication for the first time 6 months after my diagnosis.  I was scared about addiction and so I avoided it at first.  I always scored highly in ASD tests as well.  However ASD was discounted because of my high verbal ability and I'm a fantastic 'masker'.  I can just act my way through anything - just can't keep it up and it exhausts me.

When I started taking ADHD meds my ASD got worse but my ADHD got much better!  My brain which had previously been clouded in fog started to work properly.  This allowed my intelligence to work properly if that makes any sense.  Intelligence is pretty useless without executive function to match it!

1 month after I started taking meds.  I went through 17 years of medical records for my son and put together and evidenced a case for a diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy for him.  The Consultant in Neurodisability agreed that I was on to something and he is being diagnosed and now gets help.

I could not have sat down going through all that stuff and putting it all together in reasoned argument without meds.  The thought of even doing that would have been unbearable.  My mind was constantly fuzzy.

Last week I had a court decision overturned in the Upper Court because the lower court had made an error in law.  It is not easy to get a judges decisions overturned due to legal errors and I am not a lawyer and I didn't have a lawyer to help me.  I don't even have a GCSE to my name.  I could not have done that without medication.

I will come back to you with other stuff later as I have 5 kids at home today!!

Hyperfocus can be an ASD and ADHD thing.  Special interests are really hyper focused.

Kind regards.

Is hyperfocus an ADHD/ADD thing? I definitely have that, but was told that can be part of ASD ....

Hi, really interested how you were newly diagnosed with both ASD & ADHD at the same time, the reason I ask is that I was diagnosed with ASD last year at age 55 & last week was told that I might also have ADHD, which I have been told to research.

The reason my ASD was diagnosed so late is that I am quite good at masking, so most of the time people just think I am a bit eccentric. I was referred for an ASD test a two years ago (which took a year)  because I had become severely depressed but was almost completely unresponsive to normal treatment, especially talking therapies which to me just sound like meaningless word games (at least so far).

Predictably, being diagnosed with ASD did nothing to help my depression, hence why last week I finally got to speak to a psychiatrist who seems to think that I might have ADHD as well, but which like my ASD is quite heavily masked.

He said that a really strong indicator of Adult ADHD was when I complained of having non-existent self esteem & that most of the time my head is far too noisy, with endless critical internal voices that just won't shut up. He also explained ADHD hyper-focus which I had never heard of before, but which sounds uncannily like my mental state when I am really concentrating on something. I'm not working at the moment, but sinec my career has always been in programming & data analysis, hyper-focus was pretty much my normal working state.

I have tried a variety of strong anti-depressants over the last four to five years, but my head just seems to completely ignore all of them & the psychiatrist agreed it was pointless to keep trying variations of SSRIs, SNRIs etc. Whilst there aren't any drugs specifically for ASD, he said that there are drugs targeted at ADHD which are actually very effective, but I would need a confirmed diagnosis before being prescribed them.

I'm disappointed that the things he picked up on are all things I have been saying for the last five years, but better late than never. I am supposed to read up on the subject before returning in a few weeks to discuss whether I think being formally assessed would be worthwhile. The only real problem is that the prospect of being prescribed something that might actually help, just makes my sub-conscious want to jump on the bad-wagon by matching to as many symptoms as possible & it is hard to be objective about it.

Did they diagnose you with ASD & ADHD at exactly the same time, or was one picked up on before the other?

Incidentally, I really can't do the eye contact thing either. Eye contact is just too personal for me, unless of course it's with a sexual partner, in which case that's the whole point!

Out of interest please if you don't mind, because this has become a bit of a special interest for me.  Those children that you mention who have excellent social skills etc.  What type of ADHD do they have?  Do they have the PI type?  The inattentive type.  What was previously thought of as ADD? Or do they have combined or hyperactive/impulsive type.

Possibly could be learnt behaviour.  That is painful to think about and I think I avoid thinking about it!  I get a bit defensive as well because society likes to 'blame parents' for ADHD and chalk it up to 'bad parenting' - especially professional type people who really don't understand it in the main.  But! it's a valid point.  I don't think so though because if docs were suspicious of that they would have flagged it up and I've have been sent on parenting courses before you could say "horrible documentary on ADHD on channel *beep* LOL. 

I had someone very senior in the NHS go on record once to say that she has never seen any one person manage the needs that my children have with such amazing understanding and has never seen anything like it before - so I reckon going by what she says I'm safe! lol

At the same time I am no Mary Poppins as a mother.  I would probably be an awful mother to NT children.  I asked the consultant who diagnosed me if my Autism could affect my children in a bad way.  She said that actually when diagnosing children the first hurdle she has is getting the parents to think in a more neurodiverse way and that with me there is not that bridge to cross so in her mind it was probably a good thing for my particular set of children.

None of mine have behaviour issues, at least not since medication and since  I had them placed in the right school environments.  So I reckon if their issues were mental health or due to upbringing/poor parenting or environment then medication would not work for them.  Medication for ADHD as you know is an amphetamine type drug and if you don't have ADHD it affects you very differently.  By virtue of that I'm thinking that the diagnosis is accurate and not environmental.

I could be wrong though, because my heart doesn't want to believe that I have caused their difficulties!!  More than by passing on the genes anyway.

I'm quite sure that an ignorant and bad minded social worker could 'run' with the theory that my children have 'learnt' their ASD/ADHD from me and that my own ASD/ADHD is some kind of new age 'emotional abuse' if they were bad minded enough - in 17 years though no one has had the cheek to say it to my face and long may that continue for the sake of them!  I suspect because professionals say that my kids are 'nice kids' and 'happy' that they would struggle to get anyone to back up this idea!

Also these kids are older and are able to talk about their own fairly severe sensory issues and general issues with concentration and organisation which makes me think that they are genuine.

I myself am an odd one as I am super organised, clean and tidy and usually you find the opposite in ADHD.  If this was all learnt then you'd think that they would be the same!  They are NOT!  The ADHD ones are messy and untidy and quite happy to sit in it  So if it is all learnt - that bit got lost somewhere along the way - LOOOOL x

One ADHD child has SPLD and ADHD - she is dyslexic and has dyscalculia.

I suspect that yes the ones with ADHD are on the milder end of the ASD spectrum and I wouldn't bother pursuing diagnosis as I don't think any doc would be brave enough to diagnose to be honest.  Not necessary either at this point.

Would be very interested to know though about the type of ADHD your kids have.  I heard somewhere that PI type ADHD is the least aligned to ASD for some scientific reason I can't remember now.  

I'm autistic and work with students with an SpLD, inc those with ADHD. I have many ADHD students who are able to maintain friendships and have excellent social skills, inc taking on management roles alongside their studies. This leads me to believe they can be separate diagnoses. 

Could the challenges that your children are facing be learnt behaviour from having an autistic parents and siblings? It could also be a misdiagnosis and if fact they are on the milder end of the autistic spectrum. I only had an SpLD diagnosis for ten years before autism was added to the mix.