If I can comment on an aspect of this, I am familiar with it as information on student disabilities. It is one of those terms that professionals like, and must be intended to help, but which is completely uninformative. It also tends to imply multiple mobility conditions rather than less visible disability, so people may react to complex needs as if there is more to it than actual.
ASD may be comorbid with a number of things - learning disability, dyslexia, dyspraxia (though they overlap), epilepsy, ADHD, OCD, depression and anxiety and a whole lot more.
Some of these combinations lead to complications, whereby the characteristic symptoms ought to contradict, eg with ADHD and ASD. The risk of having a single diagnosis of autism is that comorbid conditions are easily overlooked. For example you can be blind or deaf and have aspergers, but the aspergers is likely to go unnoticed.
Similarly a lot of people are diagnosed with anxiety or depression or OCD without autism being detected, and wrongly treated for years.
So it is broadly a good thing to get multiple factors and their interactions recognised, but complex needs as a label can be less helpful.
If I can comment on an aspect of this, I am familiar with it as information on student disabilities. It is one of those terms that professionals like, and must be intended to help, but which is completely uninformative. It also tends to imply multiple mobility conditions rather than less visible disability, so people may react to complex needs as if there is more to it than actual.
ASD may be comorbid with a number of things - learning disability, dyslexia, dyspraxia (though they overlap), epilepsy, ADHD, OCD, depression and anxiety and a whole lot more.
Some of these combinations lead to complications, whereby the characteristic symptoms ought to contradict, eg with ADHD and ASD. The risk of having a single diagnosis of autism is that comorbid conditions are easily overlooked. For example you can be blind or deaf and have aspergers, but the aspergers is likely to go unnoticed.
Similarly a lot of people are diagnosed with anxiety or depression or OCD without autism being detected, and wrongly treated for years.
So it is broadly a good thing to get multiple factors and their interactions recognised, but complex needs as a label can be less helpful.
