Hi, I'm trying to find out how best to help and support my girlfriend's brother. He's 24 and has been living by himself in 'housing association' accommodation for the last few years. His family has suspected since a young age that he has aspergers but a recent assessment by social services came out negative. I'm well aware that this is an extremely complicated area and it would appear that the test given was fairly shallow, based largely on a single face to face test. (I apologise for the length of this post but there's a lot i want to cover...thanks to anyone who has the time to take an interest)
As you can imagine, the family find it very difficult, making the balance between supporting and fostering independence. Although he does live alone and looks after himself, i loose the phrase very loosely...the flat is a complete mess, he rarely washes clothes, himself, dishes etc, so constantly smells bad. To an extent he is aware of this but isn't embarrassed by it as the rest of us would be. His mindset is very similar to that of a teenager, egocentric and quite short sighted in that he doesn't think ahead to tomorrow and today's consequences.
Keen to spend some time with him and also to provide a change of scenary and hopefully establish some basic routines etc, my girlfriend brought him to stay with us 2 weeks ago. In some respects he's done very well. Whereas usually he won't go out, he's spent quite a few hours walking and cycling, exploring our local area, which he is very pleased with. But unfortunately there are a range of deeply embedded traits that i think we he will struggle to change. Spending time with him has given us a chance to assess him quite closely but in my mind i'm not sure that it 'fits' entirely with Aspergers. The main traits are: low self esteem, lack of social responsibility, egocentric, possible depression, introversion, social anxiety, apparent laziness, appears to be OCD with climate change research/conspiracy (at the moment), also OCD with reading books which he uses as his main reason for not bothering with a job (he will loose reading time). His diet is very poor, ie; mostly he lives on eggs and beans although we've made some headway with this over the last week (hopefully some of it will stick when he goes back home).
In contrast to Aspergers, he does appear to have understand jokes and holds a fairly good conversation. He is aware of facial expressions which he uses quite a lot.
In general his attitude is similar to that of a teenager: We went to B&Q a couple of evenings ago which took a lot longer than anticipated (typical DIY!) All the way back, he was slumped in against the door in the car with a frown and barely responded to any communication from either of us, almost like a stroppy teenager. (it's the first time i've seen this in him).
As you can imagine it's incredibly frustrating for his sister and family who don't know what they can do. He receives benefit but doesn't manage his money well (for example with 2 weeks left until his next benefit he's already spent all of his cash and forgot that he still needs to pay council tax.
Since he's been with us we've tried putting together a timetable for him to follow, which includes basic things like getting up at 8am, going for a walk, washing his clothes, cooking dinner (planned with him), but so far he won't do it unless we're there all day telling him what to do and is quite defensive about his routine, health, hygiene etc.
My reason for posting on here is to look for some advice in terms of diagnosis, but more importantly steps forward. We'd like to be able to help in such a way that when he returns home in a week or so he can make some significant changes to the way he lives. Sometimes he seems receptive to the idea of a job and our goal is for him to be in employment but when it comes to the crunch in the past he hasn't turned up to interviews, jobs etc.
Personally i'm struggling with whether it's aspergers that needs addressing, or depression which seems to share many traits.
Once again, thank you for taking an interest, i look forward to any responses and advice. Please feel free to ask more questions.
